“Estimates are that one in six Catholic priests currently serving in the States comes from abroad, and roughly 300 new international priests arrive every year.” (John Allen, http://ncronline.org/blogs/all-things-catholic/foreign-priests-and-risk-plunder)
I have a definitely biased reaction to that statement. I’m a former priest, who had to leave the clerical club because I wanted to also find God in human love (which means I didn’t want to sleep alone). If I could have stayed, there would have been one less reason to rent a priest from abroad.
That’s what the Catholic Church in the US is presently doing — it’s renting — really, stealing — priests from other countries who need priests even more than the US RC Church does, especially Africa and Asia. In the US (and Europe), the ratio of priest to Catholic laity is 1 to 1,300. In Sub-Saharan Africa, it’s 1-4,786; in Southeast Asia: 1-5,322.
Many of this foreign sacerdotal acquisitions are doing a fine job of shepherding a flock whose customs they often don’t understand and whose language they often speak with heavy, hard-to-follow accents. Many of them aren’t. Whether they are or aren’t, it’s a shame that they cannot stay at home and tend their own flocks. It’s a shame that so many parish-flocks throughout America are without shepherds.
It doesn’t have to be this way. There’s a simple solution, and it’s staring the Vatican and American bishops right in the face: Ordain married men and women. As any Catholic theologian who doesn’t work for the Vatican or the Bishops’ Conference will tell you, there’s no theological reason why that can’t happen. The only obstacle right now is, literally, “a man-made law” — that is, men huddled around one of the the last surviving real monarchies in the world — a monarchy that wants to hang on to its patriarchal power.
I say all this not from outside the Catholic Church, but from inside. I love this church. And it’s killing me to see how man-made rules are killing it.
I agree with what you state, Paul, and I say “state” because it is not opinion, but fact!
You were a great RC Priest, and I knew a few more too. They left for the same reason that you did.
However, here we are, not jumping ship…loyal, and hoping that things will change. Is there any thing that you can do? Or are you?
I like your blog.
Thankyou for sharing the site!
I heard that Orthodox Church has a kind of middle-way clerical structure between Catholic and Protestant ones, namely, that parish priests can be married and bishops and cardinals cannot. Maybe, Catholic Church can START with this middle-way solution.
I read a article under the same title some time ago, but this articles quality is much, much better. How you do this?