A commentary on America as the new
missionary destination
News Analysis by
Jon C. Altmann
Distributed
exclusively to American Freedom by Media News Services
Two of the taboo
social topics are generally politics and religion. However, I write on politics, public affairs
and government, so folks know I am going to talk about it when sitting down to
sip a Dr. Pepper or coffee. When it
comes to religion, I like what Pope Francis said in context to something else,
"Whom am I to judge?.
Admittedly, I am a
cradle Roman Catholic, a product of 12 years of Catholic education in Arizona,
an altar server for seven years during elementary and high school and a lector
since 8th grade. Being a man in his 60's
that went to school in the 60s and 70s, I remember the only "foreign"
priests we had were Irish, and there were a lot of them around. Sadly, several of them poorly represented the
Catholic faith and their national heritage by turning out to be involved in the
child abuse scandals that shocked so many.
I have one close friend who had an attempted victimization and over my
22 years of Navy service, met another Sailor who was a victim that fought back. Let me also note that I am proud that my
school-age son is an altar server and his faith experiences have all been
positive.
Today, more than
one million Roman Catholics are being served by the Diocese of Phoenix. A recent Sunday sermon I heard provided some
insight into the need for vocations In the Diocese of Phoenix. The Diocese today has approximately 200
priests serving - and priests cannot retire until age 72. Of the 200, about 60 are from religious
orders (such as Jesuits, Carmelites, Dominicans, Crosiers - orders that take a
vow of poverty and live communally). The
balance are diocesan priests - priests that have gone to seminary through the
Diocese (or another Diocese) and serve directly for the Bishop of the
Diocese. The diocesan priest does not
take a vow of poverty, receives a modest salary, housing, health care, allowances
and retirement plan. The pay package for
the diocesan priests, when considering they get housing, probably measures
about $70,000 annually. The priests from
orders don't have many personal possessions, share what they have and any pay
they get from working for a parish is paid to their order, not to them, who, in
turn, cares for their needs.
Out of the 200
priests in the Phoenix Diocese, about half were born somewhere other than the
U.S. Many are serving on religious
visas, others have gone through residency and are either permanent alien
residents or have become U.S. citizens.
If we turn back
the clock 100 years, American priests, along with others from European
countries, were providing missionary work around the third world. Today, the situation is reversed. The U.S. Catholic Church is the new
missionary location as foreign priests are being invited via Bishops to come
serve here. For a foreign priest from
the Philippines, South America or Africa, the invite is a world of economic
change. If they are from a religious
order that has a vow of poverty, the get a bump in their surroundings. They are not serving in a country that has
random killings of priests, as has happen in parts of the Philippines and
Africa and the standard of medical care is arguably better.
The challenge for
the non-U.S. priest is learning enough English to be understood not only from
the pulpit, but in providing the religious counseling, visits to the sick and
Catholic faith education duties that parishioners seek from their padre. Add to the language barrier is the cultural
barrier. Catholicism in some other parts
of the world is generally regarded as far more conservative than America or
Europe. The American Catholic now has
priests who are more conservative, have not been part of our culture and may be
hard to understand.
The Church is not
without its voice in the process. The
bishops of Phoenix, Tucson and Gallup along with the Byzantine Catholic Eparch
of Phoenix are represented at the Arizona Legislature with a full-time lobbyist
working for the Arizona Catholic Conference.
The Conference is vocal on school choice, right to life and humanitarian
issues (to include immigration). With
some irony, the groups represented by the Arizona Catholic Conference are
highly reliant on immigrant labor, i.e., foreign priests with R-1 visas that
can provide up to five years of legal residency or use the EB-4 status to gain
"green card" residency and eventually apply for and qualify to be
U.S. citizens, as several have already.
The call to the
vocation of being a priest is not as popular as it used to be. While the Diocese of Phoenix is celebrating a
small up-tick in the number of men in seminary over the past several years, the
numbers are not great enough to keep up with retirements. As America has a challenge with millions of
people who have immigrated into the land without the proper legal entry, it
also has its religious challenge in simply meeting the needs of the pastoral
flocks of Roman Catholics needing a priest. Rarely does a parish have more than
one priest assigned today and the chances in Arizona that the padre is from
some other country are now one out of two.
Arguably, today,
the United States is the missionary destination for many Roman Catholic priests
as they come to assist in our urban jungles.
