Papal Visas
Papal Visas
Date: Wednesday, April 20, 2005 12:47 AM
JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER
by Rob Sanchez
April 19, 2005 No. 1236
Since so much attention is focused on the Pope and the Catholic Church,
we should talk a little bit about the Church's claim that they can't
find enough Americans that want to be priests. For once I might agree
with the shortage shouters - this is a job that not very many Americans
want to do. Celibacy and poverty just isn't that popular nowadays and
of course as we know the church has had some other problems with
scandals such as child abuse.
The Catholic Church imports foreign priests to work their in their
churches in much the same way as high-tech companies use H-1B and L-1
visas. Priests and other clergymen typically come to the U.S. with
visas such as Green Cards, Q-2, "R" visas, and in some cases they even
use H-1Bs. According to the Catholic Church about 20% of the priests in
the U.S. are foreign born.
"R" visas are short for "Religious" and they aren't just used by
Catholics either. All manner of organized religions use them including
the Jewish and Muslim faiths.
The first article below is making the rounds of the internet but it is
somewhat misleading as readers might conclude these priests are coming
only from India. Other top areas where these priests come from include
Mexico, South America, Africa, Spain, Poland, East Europe, Russia,
Vietnam, the Philippines, and Ireland.
To learn more about the "R" visa, and the Catholic shortage-shouting,
go to the newsletter archive and read these newsletters:
2002 06-14 Foreign-born priests ease shortage
2003 02-13 The R visa
2003 09-10 Q-2 The Walsh Visa
2004-06-14 U.S. Catholics Outsourcing Prayers to India
NOTE: If you are a Catholic please excuse my sarcasm. The overindulgent
news coverage of the Pope has put me in a Catholic bashing mood. I'm
sure the church could find more priests if they were willing to pay
more and possibly get rid of some of their arcane requirements. I
really don't think labor shortages are ever a valid excuse for
guest-worker visas, even for the purpose of preaching the Bible or the
Koran - AND ESPECIALLY THE KORAN!
Articles Used for this Newsletter
http://www.keralanext.com/news/indexread.asp?id=183770
India ; Catholic priests join India's outsourcing bandwagon:
http://www.southbendtribune.com/stories/thisday/local.20050412-sbt-LOCL-A1-Foreign_priests_reve.sto
Foreign priests reveal church's universality
Clergy from abroad help counter shortage of priests.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.rodricks10apr10,1,7521843.column?coll=bal-local-columnists&ctrack=1&cset=true
Shortage of priests breeds abuse
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/nation/11409415.htm
New pope must face priest shortage
http://ncronline.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2003d/101703/101703a.php
Just how bad is it?
Priest shortage worse than experts predicted; laity, foreign priests
filling the gap
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http://www.keralanext.com/news/indexread.asp?id=183770
India ; Catholic priests join India's outsourcing bandwagon:
[India News] BOMBAY, April 19 (Reuters) - Catholic priests in flowing
white cassocks are the latest to join India's booming outsourcing
bandwagon.
Faced with a shortage of clergymen and dwindling churchgoers, Catholic
churches in Europe, the United States and Latin America are seeking the
services of Indian priests to run parishes and say Mass, church
officials said. "I would call it a twist of history. It's a reversal of
roles taking place," Father Paul Thelakkat, a spokesman for the
Catholic Church in southern state of Kerala said.
The Syro Malabar Church in Kerala, with an estimated 3.3 million
followers, is a major contributor of clergymen for overseas missions.
The 18-million-strong Indian catholic church says up to 5,000 priests
are working in Europe, the United States, Africa and Latin America.
The growing influence of the Indian catholic church became evident when
Vatican experts tossed up the name of Bombay's archbishop, Ivan Dias,
as the only serious Asian contender for the next pope.
Cardinal Dias spent more than 30 years of his priestly career serving
the Church outside India and his proximity to Pope John Paul and
engagements in different continents have helped raise his profile as
the leading candidate from Asia.
"Outsourcing has become a part of life and the church is no exception
to it," said Henry D'Souza, executive secretary of the Catholic
Bishops' Conference of India's Commission for Social Communication.
"There are several Europe-based religious congregations which move
Indian priests to anywhere in the world according to each one's skills
and requirement," he said.
Companies and governments from the United States to Europe have tapped
into India's huge army of knowledge workers to handle sophisticated
software services or take helpdesk phone calls at a fraction of the
cost in their countries.
Exports of software and information technology-enabled services from
India jumped 35 percent to $17.3 billion in the past year that ended on
March 31, industry estimates showed.
Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. Infosys Technologies Ltd. and Wipro
Ltd., India's top three software services companies, get about 90
percent of their revenue from the United States and Europe.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.southbendtribune.com/stories/thisday/local.20050412-sbt-LOCL-A1-Foreign_priests_reve.sto
Foreign priests reveal church's universality
Clergy from abroad help counter shortage of priests.
By SARA TOTH
Tribune Staff Writer
See related stories:
Holiness, not geography, key in choice
Latino pope? Many believe time has come for historic decision
With the number of Catholics growing in Africa and Asia and Pope John
Paul II's international travels, many have said the Roman Catholic
Church is now a world church.
The globalization of the church is present here in the Roman Catholic
Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend: Officials are relying on clergy from
abroad to lead parishes here as the American priest shortage continues.
At any given time in the last decade there have been about 20 foreign
priests in the diocese, said Vince LaBarbera, director of
communications for the diocese. There are currently 17 foreign priests
working in the diocese, he said.
"We've become like a mission," LaBarbera said.
In addition to keeping parishes open, the priests from abroad "really
express how universal the church is," LaBarbera said.
The order of the Mass is basically the same in Nigeria as in Indiana or
in Malawi as in Sri Lanka, he said. (The word Catholic comes from the
Greek for "universal.")
The Rev. Paulinus Odozor, a priest from Nigeria who celebrates Mass at
St. Patrick and St. Hedwig parishes in South Bend and teaches at the
University of Notre Dame, said he sees himself as doing more than
relieving a priest shortage in the United States.
"Even if you had all the priests you need here, it's still a mark of
the catholicity of the church to have priests from other places bearing
witness," Odozor said.
In a sense the new forces of globalization have brought the church back
to one of its original missions: believers cooperating to spread the
Gospel.
"We have now come to the point where each part of the church recognizes
there are other parts of the church," he said. "And what a church has
it must learn to share (with churches elsewhere.) I'm excited about the
church that is emerging in this situation."
Staff writer Sara Toth:
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http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.rodricks10apr10,1,7521843.column?coll=bal-local-columnists&ctrack=1&cset=true
Shortage of priests breeds abuse
Dan Rodricks
April 10, 2005
IATTENDED Easter Sunday Mass in a small-town Roman Catholic church. The
celebrant was an elderly, jolly priest who had come out of retirement
to fill in for the elderly, sickly priest who usually serves the
parish. The weekly bulletin reported a "serious priest shortage" and
mentioned that a "Tanzanian connection for extra priestly help" had
been established.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
It just struck me as quaint, odd and ironic that, all these years after
Anglican and Catholic missionaries went to Tanganyika and Zanzibar to
bring Christendom to the Swahili-speaking natives, here was an American
church in a white-picket-fence town looking to an evangelized Africa
for ... a missionary!
This is actually a trend.
"The number of foreign priests has been increasing [and] there could be
an estimated 2,140 foreign priests in the United States in the year
2005," wrote Joseph Claude Harris, a church financial analyst and
author of a book on the priesthood. "Present trends suggest a decline
in the number of active diocesan clergy from 24,603 in 1990 to 18,544
for 2005, a drop of 6,059 priests. ... The need for new pastors may
well be mitigated but certainly not relieved by international
immigrants."
It would be wonderful to think of this as an effort to globalize - or
denationalize - the American Catholic church, as Pope John Paul II had
wished. But let's be real. It's happening because there aren't enough
priests to go around. In 1999, the American church buried more priests
than it ordained. By 2003, there were more priests over 90 than under
30, according to the National Catholic Reporter.
This shortage has existed for years, and it contributed to the problem
of child sexual abuse, in that the lack of healthy, new blood in the
priesthood forced the church hierarchy for decades to cover up offenses
and to recycle pedophiles and other misfits from parish to parish,
station to station.
The priest shortage and the severe spiritual and financial problems it
caused now provide the church good reason to make celibacy optional for
priests, to allow the Catholic clergy to have open, healthy
relationships and to take the vow of marriage. The ordination of women
should be allowed as well.
But here I am again, doing what conflicted and foolish American
Catholics typically do: offering opinions as if they matter, as if the
Vatican were something other than monarchy, as if anyone but a
white-haired cardinal had a say.
If the American Catholic voice registered at all in the Vatican,
Bernard Law would not be celebrating one of the mourning Masses for the
Pope this week.
Law was one of the men who protected abusive clergy in the Archdiocese
of Boston. He was forced to resign in disgrace two years ago, amid
criticism that he had failed to remove abusive priests from ministry
and even commended some while knowing they had been accused of
molesting children.
Law left Boston and lived for a year at the Sisters of Mercy of Alma
convent in Maryland. Then he got a position at the Vatican. He has been
given the honor of presiding over a Mass for John Paul during the
nine-day mourning period for the pope. Law also will have a say in the
selection of the next pontiff.
So will the leader of the Archdiocese of Tegucigalpa, Cardinal Oscar
Andris Rodrmguez Maradiaga.
He's had a brush with clergy sexual abuse, too. According to a 2004
report in The Dallas Morning News, the Honduran cardinal sheltered a
Costa Rican priest who had admitted molesting a 10-year-old altar boy
and who was a fugitive from his native country for a few years.
Maradiaga gave the priest assignments in two Honduran villages in 2003,
the News reported. The priest fled the country in early 2004.
It is not clear if Maradiaga had been aware of the priest's background,
which included stints in New York and Hartford, when he put him to
work.
But Maradiaga might have been more concerned with a problem drearily
familiar to his colleagues in the north - the priest shortage. "He has
about 150 priests to serve a Catholic population of more than 1.6
million," the News reported, "and, like many of his U.S. brethren,
sometimes relies on foreigners about whom little is publicly known."
When the abuse scandal broke in Boston, Maradiaga publicly defended Law
and blasted the media, comparing press reporting of child abusers among
the Catholic clergy to the persecution of Christians in the Roman
Empire. He also said he opposed pastors reporting abuse allegations to
civil authorities. "I'd be prepared to go to jail rather than harm one
of my priests," he said.
Maradiaga is frequently mentioned as a candidate for the papacy.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/nation/11409415.htm
Posted on Sat, Apr. 16, 2005
New pope must face priest shortage
By SHAWN POGATCHNIK
The Associated Press
DUBLIN, Ireland - Patrick Donnelly thought he might like to be a
teacher, or maybe a chef. Then the Roman Catholic priesthood captured
his imagination - an increasingly rare event in this former bastion of
the faith.
In much of Europe and North America, there arent enough Patrick
Donnellys anymore. The winds of social change and sex-abuse scandals
have made the priesthood - with its lifetime commitment and mandatory
celibacy - an unpopular career.
While the number of Catholics around the globe jumped to more than 1
billion during John Paul IIs 26-year papacy, the number of new
priests didnt keep pace. Reversing the decline among American and
European men will be a major challenge for the next pope.
"I know many people think Im facing a lonely life ... a hard life,"
said Donnelly, 25, a student at St. Patricks College, the only
seminary still running in the Republic of Ireland. "But Im happy
with my choice and people respect that. I have a love of God, and I
want to share that love."
The Vatican says the church had about 405,450 priests worldwide in
2003, a 3.7 percent drop from 1978, the year John Paul took charge. But
in the United States and Europe - which account today for nearly half
of the total - numbers have fallen about 20 percent over the period.
While recruitment to the priesthood is thriving in Africa, Latin
America and Asia, its nearly fallen off the map in Ireland, which
for generations was a leading exporter of priests. The average age of
priests here is nearly 60.
"Its a significant problem," said the Rev. Des Hillery, director of
St. Patricks College, a 210-year-old seminary in the bustling market
town of Maynooth, west of Dublin. "I dont think its a crisis, and
it doesnt have to be a crisis. ... But who knows in 10 years
time."
The seminary had about 600 students annually in the 1960s. When Hillery
arrived a decade ago it had 220. Today there are 60, and fewer than
two-thirds are expected to stay the seven-year course. The archdiocese
of Dublin has more than 1 million Catholics - and graduated a single
priest last year, and none at all this year.
The Rev. Kevin Doran, a Dublin priest who directs a network of
recruiters called the European Vocations Service, says while some parts
of Europe produce large numbers of priests - notably Poland and Malta -
"much of Europe qualifies as mission territory."
Doran and seminary directors are divided about whether dropping
celibacy is part of the answer. "The culture we live in has become
highly sexualized. Many people believe it can be very difficult to be
fulfilled if you dont have an active sex life," Doran said.
He cited an opinion poll of Irish priests last October that found 57
percent favored dropping the requirement. But Doran said he is
skeptical that ending celibacy would strengthen the priesthood, which
must focus on the needs of a community over personal family.
"In a mature, integrated human being it should be possible that the
affection and care which normally goes into a marriage can go into the
pastoral care of the community," Doran said.
Others say the priesthood is shrinking in Europe because todays
young Catholic men are products of a more selfish age and increasingly
loathe to make any long-term commitments in their late teens and early
20s.
"The problem is attracting people to Christian life," said Juan Miguel
Prim, rector of a seminary near Madrid. "These days, a lot of young
people have no religious experience and see the church as something
very distant."
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://ncronline.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2003d/101703/101703a.php
National Catholic Reporter
The Independent Newsweekly NCRONLINE.ORG
Cover story This week's stories | Home Page
Issue Date: October 17, 2003
Just how bad is it?
Priest shortage worse than experts predicted; laity, foreign priests
filling the gap
By JOE FEUERHERD
Washington
In the mid-1990s, researchers Richard Schoenherr and Lawrence Young
predicted that by 2005 the number of active diocesan clergy would be
21,000, down 40 percent since 1965.
They were wrong.
Death, retirement and resignation have already reduced the clerical
ranks to that number two years ahead of Schoenherr and Youngs
projections.
Traditionalists and reform-minded Catholics debate the causes of the
priest shortage and argue over what steps are necessary to stem the
tide. What they dont dispute, however, is that the shortage is
having an increasingly profound effect on parish life.
"People have come to expect a daily Mass, " said Fr. Eugene Hemrick,
director of the National Institute for the Renewal of the Priesthood.
"And we just dont have the ability to produce at that level
anymore."
Catholic University of America sociologist Dean Hoge, a student of
priesthood trends for three decades, doesnt underestimate the
impact: "It could be that the sacraments will be defined as not so
important. Were talking about the center of what Catholicism is."
So just how bad is the U.S. priest shortage?
There are more American priests over age 90 than under age 30; by 2010
the number of active diocesan clergy (just over 15,000) will be less
than the countrys 19,000 parishes (assuming no widespread parish
closures). The number of "priestless parishes" -- those without a
resident priest -- will rise from the current 3,000 (16 percent of U.S.
parishes), even as seminaries graduate only one new priest for every
three clerics (average age approaching 60) who retire, die or resign.
"Theres no reason to expect these trends to shift or reverse," said
Hoge.
The approximately 4,000 religious order priests who assist in parishes
mitigate the problem to some extent, as do foreign-born priests,
recruitment of whom has borne some fruit while raising sensitive issues
of U.S. church-poaching in priest-needy Latin American, Asian and
African nations.
Not reflected in the current statistics are the hundreds of diocesan
clergy who resigned or were removed from ministry as a result of the
clergy sex abuse crisis. Likewise, the scandals impact on seminary
recruitment has yet to be measured.
The shortage is most acute in the Midwest and the South, though the
once priest-rich Northeast is feeling the crunch, as are Western
dioceses, where high-immigration rates fuel pastoral needs.
In the 124-parish diocese of Belleville, the southeastern Illinois home
of Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic
Bishops, church administrators are planning for a drop of nearly 50
percent in the clergy rolls over the next 27 years, leaving just 43
priests to serve the 11,600-square-mile see. In New Yorks Brooklyn,
160 of the dioceses 400-plus diocesan clergy will become
retirement-eligible over the next decade.
An increasing number of parishes will have to meet the eucharistic
needs of the community through a "Sunday Celebration in the Absence of
a Priest." Beyond Mass, demands for other sacraments presided over by
priests -- anointing of the sick and dying and reconciliation are
primary among them -- tax an already overburdened diocesan priest
corps.
Unquantifiable is the effect on a Catholic culture where, according to
Pope John Paul II, "it is the priest who, as an ordained minister and
in the name of Christ, presides over the Christian community on
liturgical and pastoral levels."
Various treatments are debated.
Reviewing the celibacy rule
High on some lists of recommendations is revisiting the hierarchys
commitment to mandatory celibacy. "We urge from now on celibacy be
optional, not mandatory, for candidates for the diocesan Roman Catholic
priesthood," 169 Milwaukee priests told Gregory in an Aug. 16 letter
(NCR, Aug. 29). The Milwaukee priests dont see their recommendation
as a total solution, said Fr. Thomas Suriano, one of three Milwaukee
priests who spearheaded the letter, but "it stands to reason if we can
draw priesthood candidates from married as well as celibate candidates
we are - going to have more candidates than if we draw from celibate
candidates alone." The Milwaukee archdiocese is served by fewer than
300 priests, down from 665 in 1966 and 478 in the mid-1980s.
More than 60 percent of American Catholics, meanwhile, support
expanding the priest eligibility pool to include women, an idea taken
off the table, at least for the time being, by John Paul IIs 1994
apostolic letter "On Reserving Priestly Ordination to Men Alone."
Others of a more traditionalist bent say the shortage is a byproduct of
wishy-washy teaching, noting that dioceses and religious orders known
for their orthodoxy experience comparatively more success in
recruitment than the rest of the U.S. church.
"It seems to me that the vocation crisis is precipitated and
continued by people who want to change the churchs agenda, by people
who do not support orthodox candidates loyal to the magisterial
teaching of the pope and bishops, and by people who actually discourage
viable candidates from seeking priesthood and vowed religious life as
the church defines these ministries," according to Archbishop Elden
Curtiss of Omaha, Neb. Omaha has 33 seminarians, a relatively large
number for a diocese of 220,000 Catholics.
Such "orthodox" dioceses -- Denver; Arlington, Va.; and Peoria, Ill.,
are frequently mentioned in the same breath -- enroll prospective
priests attracted by the unswerving loyalty to the churchs
magisterium promoted at their seminaries.
But its still a drop in a rather large bucket, and one that is not
likely to be emulated by enough dioceses to reverse the trend. "It is
true that the more conservative dioceses have more seminarians," said
Hoge, "but not enough to turn the thing around."
One area of agreement: No one expects dramatic new steps to deal with
the problem during the remainder of John Paul IIs pontificate.
Paradoxically, priestly identity is perhaps no less threatened by
married or female priests than by the effects of the shortage itself.
"I dont see how the authority and the esteem of the priesthood can
be maintained if their numbers are down," said Hoge. Increasingly,
pastors are strangers to their parishioners, says Hoge. "They dont
see him and they may not even know his name. Thats a very serious
question."
Further, the shortage has prompted dozens of priest-starved dioceses to
exhibit considerable flexibility in providing alternative coverage for
parishes.
More than 3,300 U.S. parishes are led by pastoral administrators, of
whom nearly half are lay, a third women religious, and nearly 20
percent permanent deacons. These non-priest parish administrators
perform many of the functions -- short of priest-only sacramental
responsibility -- traditionally associated with a parishs pastor and
his associates.
While the debate on how to fix the priest-shortage problem will
continue, on the ground it is no longer unusual to see an alb-garbed
lay woman or man presiding over a Sunday Communion service that has the
look and feel of a Mass.
Lay ministers filling the gap
Meanwhile, over the past three decades, according to the Center for
Applied Research in the Apostolate, enrollment in lay ecclesial
ministry programs has more than tripled -- from 10,500 to more than
35,000. They will join an additional 35,000 fully certified lay
ecclesial ministers and 13,000-plus ordained permanent deacons.
That development is a decidedly mixed blessing. On one hand it is a
recipe for lay empowerment, non-clerical dynamism and parish
collaboration typically valued by church reformers. On the other hand,
the trend is a source of frustration because the new approaches to
parish ministry, say those who support expanding the priestly
ordination pool, allow church leaders to ignore the root cause of the
shortage.
More traditionalist American Catholics, meanwhile, value the service
provided by the laity and deacons, while fearing confusion in the pews
over who is supposed to do what in a Catholic parish community.
"Involvement by the laity becomes a form of clericalism when the
sacramental or liturgical roles that belong to the priest are assumed
by the lay faithful or when the latter set out to accomplish tasks of
pastoral governing that properly belong to the priest," said John Paul
II.
Nearly a decade ago, the bishops of Kansas recognized the trend and the
threat it poses. "Holy Communion regularly received outside of Mass is
a short-term solution that has all the makings of becoming a long-term
problem," they wrote. Such practices blur "the difference between the
celebration of the Eucharist and the reception of Communion" and
confuse "the distinction between a priest and a deacon or a
non-ordained minister presiding over a Communion service." Moreover,
said the Kansas bishops, the practice weakens the parishs connection
to the universal church while leading the faithful to question "the
need for priests."
Said the bishops: "The priest is not just a functionary who consecrates
the Eucharist, pours water, anoints with oil or absolves the penitent,
important as these functions are. He is not just a circuit rider who
offers Mass and celebrates the sacraments."
The Kansas bishops are not alone in their concern.
"A number of bishops have said [a Sunday service without a priest]
creates more difficulties than it solves," said St. Joseph Sr.
Christine Schenk, executive director of the reform-minded FutureChurch,
based in Cleveland.
"Usually how it translates is that people say they like Sisters
Mass better than Fathers Mass. And so the whole notion of
what Eucharist is and what that dynamic is - changes dramatically."
Said Schenk, "Its really not the same at all, but the danger is that
people will think it is."
But it is here to stay.
"The reality is that there will be more and more lay leadership leading
more and more parishes, which in one sense is a good thing because we
like to have more lay people participating in church decision-making,"
said Schenk.
"These parishioners are running the parish and theres a lot of life
going on in these parishes," said George Washington University
sociologist Ruth Wallace, author of the recently released They Call Him
Pastor: Married Men in Charge of Catholic Parishes (Paulist Press).
Combined with her 1992 book on Catholic women heading parishes, Wallace
has documented 40 examples of nontraditional parish administration.
She concludes that such communities demonstrate a level of
collaboration and lay involvement that is difficult to find in
priest-led parishes. "It pulls the people together because theyre
scared to death that the parish is going to close," says Wallace.
"Its not even a matter of debate if you want [lay ministers and
pastoral administrators] or not -- we cant do without them," said
Hoge. "The only issue is whether [the trend] removes the priest
shortage as a crisis. And thats partly true because if there
werent any lay ministers wed have to close up shop. And since
there are lay ministers it reduces the scope of the crisis because they
can be in charge of the liturgy and Christian education and some other
things."
In fact, says Fr. Paul Sullins, the level of lay involvement, combined
with increased use of deacons and falling rates of church participation
among the nations 66.4 million Catholics, makes the whole question
of a priest shortage not a crisis, but a manageable problem.
A distribution, not a shortage, problem
"Its not a national shortage," said Sullins, a married former
Episcopal priest and father of three who was ordained into the Catholic
church in May 2002. Rather, "its a shortage in certain dioceses"
resulting from a "poor distribution of priests."
"If the priests were evenly distributed among the country there would
be at least one - per parish. The number of parishioners has grown a
lot in the past 40 years, but the number of parishes has not grown as
much."
In a controversial paper -- "Empty Pews and Empty Altars: A
Reconsideration of the Catholic Priest Shortage" -- Sullins, a
sociologist, notes that while the supply of priests is lower than its
peak in the 1960s, the demand for priestly services has decreased,
despite an increase in Catholic population. "Todays Catholics attend
Mass and partake of other sacraments in much smaller proportions than
in 1965," he wrote.
Moreover, said Sullins, "the rapidly growing involvement of lay persons
in pastoral care activities that just a generation ago were largely
confined to priests" combined with the growth in the permanent
deaconate "counteract to some extent the declining availability of
clergy."
Sullins model falls short on a number of fronts, say critics.
"Id like to see how hes going to convince the cardinal archbishop
of New York or the archbishop of Boston to send X numbers of priests
out to Dubuque," said Schenk. "It would require a totally different
government structure than we have right now in the church.
Theoretically it could work, but practically I dont think it would
ever work," said Schenk.
Furthermore, parishes still need to see a priest at least occasionally
to offer Mass and celebrate the sacraments. The result is priest
exhaustion, said Wallace, with itinerant priests left to serve two,
three or four parishes. "Youre asking a lot of a human being to be
on the road all the time and not have time to be with his brother
priests or have any type of community."
One such priest, 39-year-old Kevin Wester, was profiled in the January
2002 issue of the Catholic Herald, newspaper of the Milwaukee
archdiocese.
"They made me look like Super Priest, " recalled the priest.
Exhausted by the pace of managing three parishes (he averaged 35,000
miles per year on his Dodge Dakota pickup), Wester took an "extended
vacation" soon after the story appeared. "I was absolutely burned out."
Today, Wester and the 900 members of his three-parish congregation are
working to consolidate the three churches, two schools and five other
buildings that house "Shepherd of the Hills." Theyve raised $2
million of the $3 million dollars theyll need to build a church and
school on a neutral site and, with some reluctance, parishioners of the
tiny parishes that make up the newly consolidated congregation have
worked to make the new parish a reality.
"Its the expectation," said Hemrick. In previous decades "we had a
luxury of priests and that gave us the luxury of many Masses, which
built up an expectation, which in turn built up a system."
"The priest was the ombudsman -- that was the model that priests in the
past had," said Hemrick. "[Priests] did everything and they were
responsible for everything. That image is changing and now we look at
the priest as the orchestra leader. - He is still leading, but hes
got a whole orchestra with him."
Still, asked Hoge, "Wouldnt it be nice to have a priest present in
town and people could see the man, he takes part in things, hes a
genuine spiritual leader, and he does his job and works collaboratively
with the people?"
The people of southwestern Wisconsin, members of Westers merged
parish, think so.
As they raise the money to build their new church and school, one
question keeps coming up: "If we raise all this money and build this
well be guaranteed a priest, right?"
Its not a commitment Wester, or anyone else, can make.
Joe Feuerherd is NCR Washington correspondent. His e-mail address is
jfeuerherd@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, October 17, 2003
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