Vigorous Campaign Helps Catholic Church Defeat Abuse Laws
Vigorous Campaign Helps Catholic Church Defeat Abuse Laws
Charles Lane
Religious News Service (29 May 2006)
Earlier this month the Colorado Legislature became the latest in a series of states to reject bills broadening opportunities for victims of childhood sexual abuse to sue their perpetrator’s employer. The debate in Colorado was vigorously noisome and experienced teary legislative sessions, high-dollar lobbying campaigns, and polarizing accusations of scandal, cover-up, and discrimination. For those wanting to extend statutes of limitation around the country, Colorado was a depressing capstone in a string of losses that has ominous repercussions for future attempts to bring similar legislation to other states.
This year the Catholic church racked up wins in 13 states by taking a more hard-line approach and reversing from the muted defense it took in 2003 when similar legislation went before the California legislature and ultimately led to more than 800 lawsuits. According to church lobbyists, a more vocal stance and lobbying assistance from the insurance industry and school board associations have been key to their victories across the country.
In all but one state legislation was defeated or stalled. The hold-out, Ohio, legislation was gutted to remove a so-called “look back window” that would have allowed for a one-year grace period for civil suits to be brought in cases where the statute of limitations may have run out long ago. Replacing the look back window is a “civil registry” which allows victims to have their abuse proved in court without the possibility to sue for damages. Many see this law as unconstitutional and soon to be thrown out.
David Clohessy, National Director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests called the defeats “terribly discouraging,” and lashed out against a church that he said “did a masterful job at deception and using hardball tactics like spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to protect the cover up and put kids at risk.”
Tim Dore, Director of the Colorado Catholic Conference who fought the legislation, disagreed and instead framed the debate as a chance to find an equitable way to help survivors. He also noted the church’s right to protect its coffers from civil lawsuits. “It’s a beauty to see the democratic process in action when people come together to protect their church.”
Dore refused to give specifics on how much it cost to defeat the bill, only that it was less than $100,000, which is half the conference’s annual budget. The conference purchased newspaper ads, automated telemarketers, mass mailings, and outside lobbying consultants.
All this is at the extreme end of a new pattern to defend a church that was pilloried after reports of sexual abuse by Catholic priests dominated the media in 2002. On the heels of stories about priests abusing children and bishops covering up their crimes, the church did little to oppose sweeping legislation in California that allowed victims to sue the church for damages now totaling more the 800 million dollars.
“I think in California the matter was pushed through as the church was going through a crisis,” said Mark Chopko, general counsel at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Chopko, who advises Catholic lobbyists facing legislative efforts in their states, added that Catholics “have looked at California aghast at the damaged it has caused the church.”
California Catholic officials said that there was little time to mount a defense and public opinion of the church availed no political leverage.
“It was like a speeding train when it came and it passed in just six weeks,” said Carol Hogan, communication director for the California Catholic Conference based in Sacramento. “It would have been a more egregious bill if we took up the fight because of our political position. It happened in the middle of a feeding frenzy here.”
The lesson of California translated into a starkly more vocal opposition against the lawyers, lawmakers and survivors pushing for statute of limitation reform. In several states the debate turned bitter with accusation of anti-Catholicism and victim advocates alleging the church is still covering up abuse.
Ultimately the church seized the upper hand by defeating attempts to create a California-style look back window in eight states (Colorado, Maryland, Ohio, Iowa, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) and two states (New Jersey and Maryland) that tried to outright eliminate all statute of limitations in sex abuse cases. That said, many of these states already have laws that favor victims of abuse by using discovery language that allow lawsuits to come forward after survivors “discover” the abuse which could be 40 or 50 years after the crime.
Clohessy maintains that Catholics “are winning because they hire tons of lobbyists and high price PR firms.”
However, more potent allies to the church have been found in school districts and insurance companies whose attention is sharpened when bills propose extending statutes of limitation for both public and private institutions, which, according to Catholic lobbyists, is the only way to extend statutes fairly.
“Any time there’s an attempt to extend the statute of limitations we’re against it,” said Julie Rochman, spokeswoman for the American Insurance Association.
Because insurance companies pay a portion of lawsuits against churches the industry dispatched representatives to states where bills looked likely to pass including Colorado, Iowa, and Ohio. In those states, they either helped mollify or completely stalled legislation.
“We really didn’t have to address the issue. It was mainly the insurance industry,” said Sara Edie, director of the Catholic Conference in Iowa where “look back window” legislation was introduced but never made it out of committee.
“It was the school districts working behind the scenes who really helped defeat this,” said Tim Luckhaupt of the Ohio Catholic Conference.
In Colorado, Dore credits school districts for lobbying lawmakers who had little appetite for saddling taxpayers with civil litigation. In speaking about both schools and insurance companies, Dore said “when they stepped in lawmakers couldn’t tolerate it anymore. They saw that it was not just the church having problems with the bill but others as well.”
This year’s legislative season does not bode well for future attempts to pass laws similar to California’s look back window which leaves victim advocates unsure how to proceed. Catholic lobbyists have found a success recipe for victory by framing the debate as unfair in targeting a single private entity. But when language is broadened to be more inclusive it is immediately squashed by multiple groups opposed to opening a litigation free-for-all at tax-payer and industry expense.
Extending Statutes of Limitation
April 1, 2006
Catholic World Report
Charles Lane
In 2002 the Catholic community was shocked with the sober realization that the Church suffers from a deep and festering problem. Over the course of a year stories of clergy sexual abuse and intentional cover-up by bishops steadily marched into the homes of churchgoers who were mystified by the sheer scope and tragedy of the abuse. Something had gone terribly wrong.
Since 2002, more and more victims have come forward to tell their stories, not only about the initial victimization, but also a re-victimization from Church lawyers and review panels set up to evaluate their claims. Survivors often reported that they were met with stonewalling and obfuscation from the Church when they tried to learn more about their perpetrators.
“I don’t care if I get a dollar or a million dollars. I just want to make sure this never happens again,” said Troy Gray, Director of the Colorado chapter of SNAP, the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests.
Part of Gray’s strategy to unlock the secrets kept by the Church is to sue for damages; Gray and many others are seeking compensation by bringing civil lawsuits against dioceses around the country, resulting in billions of dollars in claims. In California and Connecticut, state laws were amended to extend the length of time after an abuse in which a victim can seek monetary compensation. Extending these statute of limitations enables a victim to sue for past abuse, some dating back to as far as the 1930s. Currently, 10 states are in various phases of implementing similar plans. The latest, and most vitriol, is Colorado where the state legislature is considering three such bills.
The Church in Colorado has come out in force against extending the statute of limitations. In an interview with Our Sunday Visitor, Denver’s Archbishop Chaput said, “They claim it's about justice, but it’s very hard to see why it would be ‘just’ for innocent Catholic families today to have their community crippled because of the actions of evil or sick individuals 25 to 60 years ago.”
THE LEGISLATION
Essentially, the bills before the Colorado legislature center on two debates: public entities vs. private entities and criminal charges vs. civil charges.
The Colorado Catholic Conference, the lobbying arm of Colorado’s three dioceses, contends that if the statute of limitations are going to be extended it should include both public and private entities so that public schools will be subject to the same laws and punishments as Catholic schools.
The Church also disagrees that civil lawsuits—those that award victims with high dollar pay-outs—should be granted an extension to the statute of limitations. Bishops in Colorado, however, do agree that criminal charges—which punish abusers with jail time—should be granted an extension so that survivors can reclaim justice even if the crime occurred many years ago.
Currently, the statute of limitations in Colorado states that childhood victims of sexual abuse have until they are 28 to file criminal charges. In order to sue an abuser for emotional or medical damages—a civil suit—charges must be brought before the survivor turns 24.
Of the three bills moving through Colorado’s legislature that extend the statue of limitations, only House Bill 1088 has won the support of the Colorado bishops because it applies equally to both public and private institutions and only allows unlimited statue of limitations in criminal cases.
“Getting abusers off the streets through the criminal process is perfectly fine,” says Tim Dore executive Director of the Colorado Catholic Conference. While Dore will not go so far as to call HB 1088 perfect, he says “there are good public policy reasons to have the unlimited statute of limitations in criminal cases.”
House Bill 1090, however, is “flawed” in Dore’s opinion because it allows lawsuits to be brought against dead abusers and their employers. Dore calls this problematic because once the accused has died, the ability to provide a reasonable defense is diminished. Dore also says that HB 1090 does not include counseling as a reasonable step an organization might take to correct a priest’s abusive behavior. Dore says that counseling is sometimes a reasonable reaction if, for example, a priest is found to be participating in “minor sexual abuse.”
“Let the juries decide what were reasonable steps,” Dore says.
Critics, however, think that the Church’s real opposition to HB 1090 is that it removes the statute of limitation for civil cases, potentially costing the Church millions of dollars—unlike HB 1088 which only allows for criminal cases and applies only to the perpetrators themselves. Tom Doyle, a Washington DC-based Dominican priest and an expert in canon law, testified before the Colorado legislature and shook his head.
"I believe that it is blasphemous to put the financial security of my church or any church above the moral or spiritual well-being of the most vulnerable members of that organization,"
Doyle, also a longtime SNAP supporter, appeared before the Senate State Affairs Committee that was hearing testimony regarding Senate Bill 143, a bill that has drawn the lion’s share of Colorado’s media attention and most of the Church’s ire.
SB 143 creates a single two-year window in which plaintiffs can bring civil claims of sexual abuse involving a child, no matter how old the case is. The alleged perpetrator may be dead or incapacitated, and institutions who oversaw the perpetrator can also be sued. The bill applies only to private organizations and not public organizations because state sovereign immunity laws protect government agencies from being held liable for more than $150,000 per claim.
The degree of attention given to Senate Bill 143 is a result of two related issues. First, the rhetoric surrounding the bill has been either anti-Catholic in sentiment, or at least perceived as anti-Catholic by stakeholders like Archbishop Chaput:
"There’s a new and peculiar kind of anti-Catholicism at work in many of these situations. Some of the worst anti-Catholics are angry, disaffected Catholics. Others are people who don’t like the Church for her witness on abortion or contraception or immigration or the death penalty; the list of grievances is endless. Sexual abuse can become a convenient cover for a lot of unrelated hostility."
This sense of antipathy felt by Colorado Catholics is both due to and further enflamed by the second factor to the overheated debate over SB 143: the collision between the Church and the survivor-advocate alliance, each of which has large, well-organized and well-orchestrated campaigns against each other.
OPPOSING VIEWS
The Colorado Catholic Conference has made its chief defense the issue of equity, saying that private organizations should not be punished by SB 143 while public organizations are exempt.
Dore says that “if you’re going to try and address the issue of child abuse you need to address it as a societal problem and not single out one entity over another.”
Dore points to a study sponsored by the US Department of Education which estimates that 6.7 percent of public school students are subjected to physical sexual misconduct. By those estimates, Dore says, 56,000 public school students are being abused, far more than even the most egregious estimate of victims abused by clergy. He contends that if lawmakers were truly interested in protecting children they should start by creating laws that punish public schools with the same civil penalties as non-profits and religious institutions.
Martin Nessbaum, a lawyer for the Colorado Catholic Conference, underscored Dore’s point by distributing a list of 85 instances of sexual misconduct by Colorado public school employees. He says that it was meant as a “small snapshot to show there are teachers who did this, that sexual abuse is prevalent in our society and we have to be vigilant about stopping it.”
Nessbaum, however, was slow to admit that of the 85 employees 58 were removed from their job and 47 faced criminal charges and were found guilty. The same cannot be said of the Catholic Church.
Moreover, advocates for SB 143 maintain that the Church’s pattern of hiding the truth about abusive priests could not happen in public schools because they are subject to public scrutiny and can be sued under the Federal Civil Rights Act—though doing so is difficult and not profitable enough for trial lawyers to peruse especially for older cases.
All three bills under consideration in Colorado at one point contained sovereign immunity language that exempted public institutions from any extension to the statute of limitations. After a series of amendments both House Bills 1088 and 1090 were changed to reflect consensus among state lawmakers that child sexual abuse should cast a wider net than just private institutions. SB 143, however, because of its far reaching implications, cannot so easily include an open window for lawsuits against the state. The logic of sovereign immunity holds that taxpayer-supported entities need protection from harsh penalties associated with lawsuits.
For victims like Troy Gray, issues over sovereign immunity sidestep the real concern of preventing future abuses. The power of SB 143, he says, is that it forces the Church to release information about abusers.
“It’s about protecting children. It’s about warning communities about serial molester out there—communities are unaware of these guys. My perpetrator worked in a Toys R’ Us. They just let him go and he went right back to working with kids without telling anybody.”
Gray—who gave testimony on behalf of victims in Tucson, is a plaintiff in an ongoing lawsuit in California, and now organizes Colorado’s SNAP chapter—says survivors often seek information about their own perpetrators in order to reach closure and to ensure that the abuse cannot occur again.
“Victims want to know, ‘Did my perpetrator do this to anyone else?’ And they can’t get answers.”
Gray says the success in extending the statute of limitations in California was that the Church was forced to release the names of abusive priests so “advocates could go and inform neighborhoods and communities that they have a predator living in their midst.”
David Clohessy, SNAP’s national director, echoes Gray and adds that offering a window for victims to sue removes a chief roadblock the Church often uses against survivors. “Under our current system,” says Clohessy, “child molesters and their employers have an incentive to destroy evidence and intimate witnesses and eventually run out the clock on these horrific crimes.”
Clohessy sees extending the statute of limitations as forcing Church decision-makers to work harder and be more proactive in preventing future abuse. “It’s not unlike a speeding tickets. If no one gets a speeding ticket you don’t have a great incentive to drive carefully. But if people driving down the highway even see a police car they slow down because they don’t want to endure the financial penalties of a ticket or endure increased insurance rates.”
PROGNOSIS
Neither SNAP nor the dioceses in Colorado can make any predictions on what will happen if these bills become law—or even if they have enough votes to pass (in their current form House Bills 1088 and 1090 have the best chance of moving from Colorado’s lower chamber to the Senate; SB 143, however, does not appear to have enough votes to move on).
In 2003 when California passed its one-year elimination of statute of limitations more than 800 claims were filed resulting in almost a billion dollars in settlements and lawsuits. So far, no Californian dioceses have declared bankruptcy despite often threatening so. However, three dioceses—Spokane, Tucson, and Portland—have declared bankruptcy as a result of settlements paid to survivors and their attorneys.
Gray scoffs at notions of a Church permanently harmed from lawsuits even with the knowledge of dioceses selling land and closing parishes in order to pay for settlements and increased liability insurance. He glosses any negative effects as scare tactics thrown from the pulpit.
“When you think about it, this is actually good for the Church. These aren’t chapter 13 bankruptcies. These are chapter 11. Reorganization. This is the government coming in and helping the Church pay its bills.”
All told, 10 states are seriously considering legislation this year that would extend the statute of limitations for sexual abuse against children: Maryland, Ohio, New York, Michigan, Iowa, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Minnesota, and Massachusetts. In most cases SNAP’s success has been limited or only just begun. For example, Maryland and New York have recently introduced bills that have so far failed to win broad support with the media or lawmakers. In other states (New Jersey and Pennsylvania) the effort is considered all but stalled and will not likely be taken up again this year.
Clohessy admits that SNAP’s struggle is an uphill battle and that their main focus is currently in Colorado and Ohio where they seem to have had the most success. This success, though, has not gone unnoticed by Catholics who are ardent in fighting where California and Connecticut did not. Archbishop Chaput told Our Sunday Visitor that it was fear and guilt that kept other bishops from taking a more rigorous stand. But, for Chaput, that sentiment has changed:
"As a bishop, that means I have an obligation—a serious duty I can’t avoid—both to help the victims, and to defend innocent Catholics today from being victimized because of earlier sins in which they played no part."
An Abbey in the City
January 24, 2005
Prime Time Radio
Charles Lane
Noisy cities aren't thought of as places to find refuge from the chaos and materialism of everyday life. But residents of the Washington, D.C., area are finding solace at the Urban Abbey in Arlington, Virginia. Here they join in daily chants and find peace in an alternative church that fits the demands of modern living. It’s part of a growing trend in Protestant Revivalism.
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.”
Rich Church, Poor Church
15 steps lead down to Saint Luke’s Pentecostal Church. It’s nothing more than a dark basement with multiple hallways and alcoves that could hide a body for days before anyone saw it. It’s a good place for the children of St. Luke’s to play hide-n-seek while their parents read the bible.
Up above is an abandoned clothing store and a car wash where the residents of Westbury, NY might pay two youths with gold teeth to have their car washed. On the other side of the alley is an apartment building with mattresses piled up and vagrants sifting through the dumpster looking for valuables or a meal.
St. Luke’s is a poor church.
Across the country in Lake Forest, CA is the Saddleback Church complex, a collection of a dozen buildings and tents designed in the style of an open-air mall. Red brick connects the buildings with fountains and ponds and a baptismal tanks made of slate stone. In one of the children’s multiple playgrounds is a giant whale made of rubber and concrete that periodically spouts water from its blowhole. Almost all of the children are white and chubby; while they wait for their parents they can play either foosball or on one of the six Sony Playstations nestled into a faux rock wall that has vegetation growing from its crevices.
Saddleback is a rich church.
The theologies of each of the two churches reflect the disparity in the congregates income levels.
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Foreign Priests Minister to American Congregations
December 23, 2005
Voice of America
Charles Lane
The growing shortage of Catholic priests in the United States has reached near critical levels. There are now 3,200 churches without a resident priest. And this number will surely increase because the American Church can only replace one-third the number of priests it needs to maintain current levels. As a stopgap, U.S. churches have been recruiting priests from other countries, but some Church officials worry that this is unfair to both Americans and the rest of the world.
Learning American, Priests Go to School
LEARNING AMERICAN, PRIESTS GO TO SCHOOL
November 12, 2005, Long Island Press
Charles Lane
With a librarian’s face and studious eyes, Sister Margaret Kelly stands in a half circle of 20 grown men who look on with the blinkless gaze of American teens. But at Kelly’s command they all sit up straight and eagerly recite the Lord’s Prayer before beginning the day’s lesson: American culture.
The men in Kelly’s classes are Catholic priests from around the world who come to the US and minister to American parishioners in place of American priests who are in increasingly short supply. Because most foreign priests come from cultures very different from the US, they often face culture shock when they first arrive.
“They need to understand what is considered appropriate,” Kelly says. As a Daughter of Charity and the executive director of the Vincentian Center at St. John’s University, Kelly sees the many cultural norms most Americans take for granted.
“For example,” she says, “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 school, an extension of St. John’s University, focuses on acculturating foreign priests to America’s core values like individualism, multiculturalism, and egalitarianism. Because most of these priests come from more traditional counties in Africa and South America, they are often shocked at the increased role for women, the diminished respect for elders, and the general velocity of American life.
“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.”
The international priests who have graduated from the program are very happy to have attended. Father Gabriel Muteru, a priest from Kenya who now serves as Associate Pastor at St. Joseph Church in Garden City, says that the program gave him a much needed support network.
“Meeting other international priests is very important because we learn each other’s difficulties. We encourage each other and it shows me I’m not the only international priest.”
In addition to cultural barriers, international priests face language difficulties. Even if the priest has workable English, and that is not always the case, public speaking in large chapels through a microphone can make a sermon impenetrable to Americans unaccustomed to foreign languages. Muteru recognizes this problem and urges his parishioners to question him if they don’t understand. But he acknowledges that doesn’t always happen.
“People are very kind to priests and they don’t say they can’t understand you because they don’t want to hurt your feelings,” Muteru says.
Some experts say this is exactly the kind of sentiment that will drive alienated Catholics away.
Father Kenneth McGuire, an instructor at the Cultural Orientation Program for International Ministers, a school similar to the one at St. John’s, fears that Americans would first choose not to attend church before addressing the language barrier.
“Americans are very prejudice for accents,” McGuire says, “So when the priest reads the gospel people don’t listen so my real concern is we’re trying to bring in more priests so Americans will have the Eucharist, but they’re minus the word of God and commentary on the word of God.”
McGuire is wary of the growing trend to use international priests as a stop gap to the domestic priest shortage which has lost 25% of its priests in the last 10 years alone. Because the number of foreign priests entering the country is greater than the number of American priests joining the priesthood, McGuire predicts a point at which the Church is no longer recognizable.
With 106 international priests, Long Island already has a higher percentage than the rest of the country. Since Long Island also has sharply fewer priests per parishioner than the rest of the country, there is little to indicate that the percentage will decrease.
But versed deep in the spirit of the Daughter’s of Charity, Kelly doesn’t mind this at all.
“We’re a country of immigrants,” she says. “The Church needs to understand that we are all one family and the Church is in position to bring all the nations together.”
For Kelly, international priests might be the one thing that makes the Church truly catholic.
Putting Jesus Back Together Again
This audiograph was sparked by a story for the Friendly Men. It’s about an Urban Abbey, a program at St. George’s that uses monastic practices to reconnect people with their faith. Spirituality & Health also wanted an article.
It’s curious how often Americans come up with remedies for healing their faith from the damage of everyday life. Working all week long till Sunday comes and we can dust Jesus off and put him back on the shelf . . . but then tugged by some lingering sense of shame for letting him fall off in the first place.
It suggests an incongruity in our lives, between the way we live and the way we want to worship, as if the two could only get along by bloodying each other up. Just to get by we apparently need things like “10 Ways a Busy Mom Can Build Her Spiritual Life” , prayer gardens, and labyrinths. It’s as if faith should be kept immaculate and separate from the rest of our lives so it can remain untainted by the ungodliness that we suffer upon our soul every other day.
Can the two not touch, not interact?
A Model Urban Abbey
A Model Urban Abbey
Spirituality & Health
November 1, 2005
Charles Lane
Tucked between the tall buildings of Arlington, Virginia’s tech center is Saint George’s Episcopal Church, a small triangular chapel dwarfed by high-rises, directly above Washington, D.C.’s bustling metro. On most evenings, pedestrians hurrying past Saint George’s will hear only the din of the evening rush home. But on Wednesdays the soft sound of Taizé chanting wafts out to the city streets.
The Urban Abbey is the creation of Ronald Crocker, rector at Saint George’s. His intention was to blend together monasticism and Protestantism in order to provide a peaceful sanctuary for its members inside the busy city.
But the Urban Abbey is not a traditional monastery. Instead it adapts the classic abbey model to the demands of modern secular living. All the members have day jobs and families, but they use the rule of Saint Benedict to spiritually reconnect their lives by emphasizing silent meditation, community service, daily prayers, and hospitality.
Evenings at the Urban Abbey begin with hospitality, when any and all are invited to share a meal and fellowship. From passersby to longtime members of Saint George’s, all gather and enjoy each other’s company. Afterward, an intense silence fills the chapel as members begin their lectio divina prayers. A scripture is chosen for each member to memorize and softly repeat, letting it mingle with their thoughts and engage their minds to listen for the murmur of God’s words.
The highlight of the evening is Taizé chanting, a short scripture put to song and repeated hundreds of times. The beautiful sound billows up above our heads, hypnotically narrowing the mind’s focus. A calm develops and melts away the details and deadlines of day-to-day living.
At the Urban Abbey, Saint Benedict’s saying is heeded: “Listen to God with the ear of our hearts; only then can we be attentive to His divine presence in our monasteries and in our lives.”
Long Island’s International Priests
WSHU requested a two part series on international priests serving Long Island churches. The first part looks at the notion of a priest shortage, whether it actually exists on the island, and why international priests are being used to fill it:
The second part profiles a priest from Nigeria and asks if international priests are the best solution for the priest shortage:
Long Island is different than other parts of the country in how foreign priests are used. Miami, for example, isn’t as pressed for priests so they have relatively few priests from nations that are distinctly foreign. They don’t even bother to track how many international priests they have because they blend so well with the laity.
But Long Island fits a pattern where priests are used either to service immigrant populations or to fill shortages. This makes them unique and arouses problems with language and culture.