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International Priests in the US
January 21, 2006
Catholic World Report
Charles Lane
This year, approximately 400 priests from foreign countries will come to the US seeking assignments. This equates to half of all new priests received by American parishioners. While adding to the diversity already present in American culture, international priests also contribute to the spiritual richness of Catholicism in the US. However, as with immigration in general, foreign priests present challenges to dioceses in terms of language and cultural skills. Until recently these have been left unexplored and without unified policy recommendations.
“That’s a real problem,” says Monsignor J. Cletus Kiley, director of the
Secretariat for Priestly Life and Ministry at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. His committee is currently investigating the issue of international priests
“Why are they here? How long are they going to stay? What’s the purpose here? Long term? Short term? Is it for a specific community? From my perspective, right now we’re all over the map.”
In September, the USCCB made only minimal recommendations that would rule out the possibility of receiving international priests who may have criminal records or a history of sexual abuse. However, a new study commissioned by the National Federation of Priests’ Councils is now being completed by researchers at Catholic University of America, Dean R. Hoge and Rev. Aniedi Okure.
The study found there are currently 5500 foreign priests in the US, the vast majority of which are diocesan. On average, they make up 16% of the nation’s priests and are concentrated on the east and west coasts. However, individual dioceses do not use international priests the same way. In the New York region, for example, dioceses tend to have more foreign-born priests (sometimes accounting for as much as 30% of total priests) and they tend to be more culturally distinct from local parishioners. Miami, on the other hand, does not monitor the number of international priests because they blend so well with their parishioners and are often indistinguishable from domestic priests.
Rural areas have an entirely different problem. Because the population is more dispersed they receive a very low percentage of international priests, but rely on them entirely to keep parishes open. Additionally, rural parishes have little to attract international priests (in terms of immigrant groups, geography, and education centers) and so they must depend on establishing relationships with trusted bishops abroad in order ensure that international priests will adequately meet their needs.
CULTURAL NORMS AND COMMUNICATION
Normally, the subject of international priests in America would not be noteworthy given that America is an immigrant nation and that priests have always come to the US adding evermore to our diversity. What’s markedly different in the current wave of priestly immigration is that the majority of incoming priests are from Asian and African nations which tend to have a more traditional culture that is distinct from the modern culture in the US.
Culture shock is quite common for both the priests and the parishioners. For an international priest arriving in the US, he must come to terms with a society with fractured family structures, one that does not elevate priests and insists on lay involvement, has many leadership roles for women, and has much looser standards in regards to marriage preparation and homosexuality. For the American parishioner, international priests can sometimes represent misogynistic and patriarchal cultures that can seem standoffish and backward.
“Most of us have been taught that theology is the same regardless of culture. But it is always tinged by culture and here we have a difference between traditional cultures and modern cultures,” says Father Kenneth McGuire, director of the Cultural Orientation Program for International Ministers, an acculturation program attached to Loyola Marymount University.
“In traditional cultures Father always knows the answer and his authority is absolute. But in modern cultures we go to experts and it’s more democratic. We are more open and authority is more spread around.”
Father McGuire fears the differences between the modern and traditional cultures will impact the non-sacramental services churches try to offer. For example, parents, normally inclined to receiving parental guidance from their pastor, may find it difficult to reconcile the demands of modern living with the advice garnered from a more traditional background.
In addition to cultural issues, language barriers might also separate Catholics from their ministers. Even if an international priests does speak English—which is not always the case—the priest’s accent may make him incomprehensible from behind a microphone in acoustically-poor churches. So while churchgoers may receive the Eucharist they go without the word of God.
“Americans are very prejudice for accent,” says Father McGuire. “If we were talking, I can understand the international priest very well, but when he gets up to read the Gospel I can watch and see people just turning him off.”
Father McGuire believes “alienated Catholics” to be a growing group in the US. He worries that in not receiving an engaging commentary on the word of God people will be further alienated and possibly legate the importance of mass to an unpleasant chore. Combined with a widening cultural divide, Father McGuire sees a drop in attendance by already wayward Catholics.
However, Father Robert Silva, president of the NFPC, couldn’t disagree more.
“If that’s why they leave the Church, because of more traditional practices, then they don’t have much of a Catholic faith to begin with. It’s a good smoke screen,” he says, “but that’s just what they tell their parents. One doesn’t leave the faith because the priest is from another culture.”
Father Silva admits there are a great many barriers in using international priests, but he sees a solution in the growing number of acculturation schools around the country.
LEARNING AMERICAN, INTERNATIONAL PRIESTS GO TO SCHOOL
Sister Margaret Kelly, a Daughter of Charity, is the executive director of the Vincentian Center for Society which runs an acculturation program at St. John’s University in Queens, NY. It is an intensive, five day residential program where priests already conversational in English come to learn about the history of the Church in America, the pastoral needs of Americans, and more quotidian things like time management and interpersonal communication skills.
“They need to understand what is considered appropriate,” Sister Kelly says, “For example, using a person’s first name is quite common in the US even when there is a 20- or 30-year age difference. But that’s not true in many of their countries.”
The program’s main focus is to acculturate foreign priests to America’s core values like individualism, multiculturalism, and egalitarianism. Sister Kelly particularly emphasizes multiculturalism because New York has such a diverse population. But sometimes the idiosyncratic cultural traits of Americans can put foreign priests in awkward circumstances.
“Americans are very privacy oriented,” Kelly says explaining the notion of individual personal space, “so in our class we teach the men that there’s a bubble around you when you hold out your arms and not to come into another person’s bubble.”
Professor Dean Hoge, who authored the NFPC study, says acculturation schools are paramount if the Church intends to use more priests from foreign countries.
“To give you an idea of the culture from where most these men came from. Some of them have never had a driver’s license, never had social security cards, never used a computer. They come to the US and people assume you can do all these things and it can be somewhat of an embarrassment to them and they won’t be taken seriously. It can be a depressing situation for them.”
Aside from just offering cultural skills that priests can use, acculturation schools allow the men to interact with other international priests. Hoge says the networking potential is critical for the success of a foreign priest. This is why he recommends dioceses create programs that are residential and recurring: recurring in order reaffirm relationships with other priests; residential in order to remove them from their daily tasks and allow the priests to focus entirely on acculturating themselves. If the programs are held, for example, in a series of afternoons, the temptation for a pastor to reassign an international priest to cover a mass or funeral would be much greater.
This underscores one of the first problems acculturation schools must endure: bishops eager to keep the priest busy from the start. Often, international priests are brought in to serve a desperate need in the diocese. If acculturation is treated lightly the international priest will understandably under-inflate the importance of acculturating himself to American ways. The difference would be between a priest who sees himself as part of the parish and greater community and a priest who sees himself only as a temporary employee with little connection to the people other than doling out sacraments.
The dioceses that have acculturation programs attest to their benefits, but even they admit it might not be enough. The NFPC study revealed that international priests typically only spend 3-5 years in the US. So after the priest has been fully acculturated it is time for him to go home. Professor Hoge suggests the best solution would be to train potential priests here in US seminaries. In doing so the American diocese will incur the cost of educating the priest in exchange for his temporary service after ordination. The ancillary benefit in educating another nation’s priest is that it helps cure one of the social injustices in using international priests.
USING INTERNATIONAL PRIESTS AND ITS SOCIAL INJUSTICE
Monsignor Robert Guglielmone is acutely aware of the benefit in using international priests. He is the Director of Clergy Personnel at the Diocese of Rockville Center on Long Island, NY. Because immigration patterns have transplanted entire towns from Latin America to Long Island, nearly half of all parishes in the Rockville Center diocese have a Spanish mass. In fact, the Spanish speaking population is so great that Rockville Center requires all seminary graduates to speak Spanish before they are ordained.
“You don’t find a lot of international priests wanting to speak Spanish,” Monsignor Guglielmone says. “Most that come here are African and Asian so they won’t speak Spanish. So we do have to do a little recruiting in South America and every time we do find priests who speak Spanish we give them special attention. We need priests who speak Spanish.”
Monsignor Guglielmone’s recruitment of South American priests is to the statistical detriment of South American Catholics. There is currently one priest per 7000 Catholics in South America compared to one priest per 4000 Catholics in the Rockville Center diocese. Looking at international priests in this light questions the notion of a priest shortage in the US. It also suggests that American parishioners are robbing the resources of foreign churches in order to satisfy their own demand for priests.
Father Silva and the NFPC sees using international priests to serve immigrant communities as necessary. But he shrinks away from using them when there is not a clear need to serve an immigrant community.
“Why are we bringing in those priests? Is it a question of once again exploiting those countries? Are we creating a brain drain?”
Monsignor Guglielmone also worries that the US is importing international priests because, as a wealthier nation, it can support a higher priest-to-parishioner ratio. But he points out that some countries cannot afford to support the number of priests that they do have.
“Bishops are sending them to the US to study and they are going to study someplace. The money from our parishes pays for their tuition so we are actually helping priests from Africa and Asia get advanced degrees.”
It is unclear how many international priests come to the US for advanced degrees though it is unlikely that all of them do. It is, in fact, well known that priests from poorer countries come to the US in search of money. Becoming a priest in Asia and Africa is often one of the few means toward an education and elevating one’s station in life. This has created more priests than the local population can support. In that situation a bishop might try to place his “surplus” (i.e., unaffordable) priests with wealthier bishops in the West in hopes that the priest will remit part of his salary.
In some parishes this system has organized itself into an informal symbioses. For instance, a visiting priest from a developing country will serve Americans who might be without a priest. He would win the hearts of the American parishioners he serves and then channel money back to the poorer church by directly soliciting funds from a sympathetic laity.
That is, if the men return. Professor Hoge and Rev. Okure point out in their lecture to the Religious Research Association that not all international priests do return. In the Rockville Center diocese, Monsignor Guglielmone has increased the number of incardinations which means that the poorer diocese abroad incurred the expense of educating and ordaining the priests only to have them leave to serve Americans wealthy enough to support him.
Indeed, the social justice of using international priests is complex and often subjective. While it appears that both sides benefit from the exchange (American parishioners fill rectories while foreign churches can potentially fill coffers), this was never the intention, rather, an unintended consequence driven by self preservation. In other words, the ad hoc system for importing international priests is left in a haphazard balance and does little to remove the possibility of abuse nor does it consider the needs of the future.
BAND-AID SOLUTIONS AND THE FUTURE CHURCH
The obvious mechanism driving the desire for international priests is the dwindling number of Americans joining the priesthood. Given all the inherent problems in using international priests the question of sustainability is raised. Can Americans rely on the world community to support its churches?
The argument has been made that using international priests is only a temporary solution to a long-term problem of encouraging more Americans to become priests. In fact, some suggest that international priests might stymie efforts in recruitment by helping Catholics ignore the looming crisis. Professor Hoge calls this the “Band-Aid solution,” because using international priests as a stopgap does little to heal the long term problems of a priest shortage.
“In the short run they are necessary, but in the long run I question the flow of international priests. There are many arguments against using them. I think we might think of other ways to satisfied our need for priests.”
Monsignor Guglielmone hesitates to guess what the solution is, but questions the long-term implications of relying on international priests. “I can’t see this for the life of the Church in the next 20 to 25 years. I think we have to start to make some changes soon. It’s difficult for the people in the parishes.”
Father Silva, does see a need for increasing the number of domestic priests, he takes literally that the Church is catholic and should not be divided by nationalities. “We are a world community, we can be a richer and more wonderful Church when we open ourselves to the gathering together of all these different cultures and become a new people of God.”
Sister Kelly also has little fear of a more global Church in the US. “The Church needs to understand we are all one family and the Church is in a position to bring nations together.”
Doubting America’s presumption of dominance, She then quotes theologian Carl Rahner: “The greatest contribution of Vatican II is that we moved from a Western Church to a world Church.”
Posted by 1000monkeys on January 22, 2006 03:33 AM