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Michael Shifter
From 2006, a survey of the complicated political picture in Venezuela, Nicaragua and elsewhere
Poetry
Paul Mariani
From house to house he treks, and inn to inn, the feral dogs
FaithThe Word
Daniel J. Harrington
For most Christians the family is the first school of spirituality In that context we learn or do not learn the basics of morality and religion and we develop our sense of responsibility and mutual respect On Christmas Day we celebrated the birth of Jesus through whom we believe that we have e
Current Comment
The Editors
Papal DiplomacyThe visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Turkey in the final days of November was by far the most challenging of any of the trips undertaken thus far by the pope. It was this pope’s first visit to a Muslim country and came after the Muslim world had been angered by his now-famous allus
John F. Kavanaugh
A newly fashionable atheism has emerged in public discourse. Religious faith, in this account, is not only quaint; it is dangerous. In a recent conference titled Science, Religion, Reason and Survival, sponsored by the Templeton Foundation, religion took a beating. Steven Weinberg, a Nobel laureate
Rabbi A. James Rudin
In the Bible used by Catholics, a pair of books celebrates an extraordinary Jewish military success that took place in 165 B.C.E. in the land of Israel. Surprisingly those two books are not included in the Hebrew Scriptures; nor do they appear in the Protestant canon. Can you name them? Hint: There
Letters
Our readers

Those Who Serve

Religious You Will Always Have With You, by Richard Rohr, O.F.M., (10/16) was one of the finest and most thoughtprovoking articles I have read on the subject of religious life in today’s world. The author has shown how religious life can be and often is an initiation to a fuller Christian life, which may well be lived outside the convent or monastery.

When I go to Pax Christi meetings and others, in which I find many dedicated persons trying to live a life according to the Gospels, I am not surprised to find that a large number of them are former religious. Each had his or her own reason for leaving, but the reason was rarely that they wanted a more comfortable and less demanding life. On the contrary, they have often chosen to live a difficult life of service.

But I also believe that the loss of members in religious life as well as the opening of opportunities to do the work formerly done by religious is the nudging of the Spirit. The old elitist concept of the called can now be changed to a call to all of us to be a part of the only kind of elite that Jesus spoke about, those who serve others.

Lucy Fuchs

Arts & CultureBooks
Daniel J. Harrington
In the more than 40 years since Vatican II the short document on the relationship of the Catholic Church to other religions Nostra Aetate has emerged as especially important Its section on the Jewish people suggests that mutual understanding and appreciation can best be furthered by biblical and
Editorials
The Editors
The most commonplace symbol of our Christmas celebration is a light shining in the darkness: a candle in the window, a star on top of a tree. The symbol is so familiar that we can sometimes fail to appreciate its distinctive message. Many lights shine in the darkness. Some of them can be brutal and
Sally Cunneen
Because the world is passing through a dark period, in which its very existence is threatened, it is more important than ever to be open to the astonishingly good news of Christmas: God has taken on our flesh, and through that inconceivable act God has brought joy and hope to all creation. It is new
George B. Wilson

Every year, as dioceses struggle to meet to the need for priests to pastor the growing Catholic population in the United States, the bishops import more priests from other countries. While the practice varies by diocese, in the aggregate it grows apace. It seems so far to be a helpful stopgap measure. The most significant cultural issues that have arisen—some priests with seriously deficient communication skills and authoritarian, sometimes patriarchal styles of pastoral ministry, for example—are being addressed. (One of the most awkward situations is that of a priest who comes from an English-speaking country but cannot be understood because of an accent that was perfectly intelligible to his own people back home.) High-quality programs promoting accent reduction and cross-cultural sensitivity are now available in some regions, and more dioceses are requiring non-native priests to be accredited by such a program before they may assume a permanent assignment as a pastoral minister.

 

But perhaps the focus on the practical effectiveness of international priests is misplaced. Perhaps it begs the more fundamental question: Will the practice of importing clergy into the United States serve the long-term good of the church universal?

A Comparison: Nurse Shortages

A front-page story in The New York Times on May 24 reported a crisis in U.S. health care brought on by a serious shortage of nurses. To fill the shortage, nursing schools and hospitals recruited students and professionals from poorer countries, such as the Philippines. While the practice appears to be beneficial for the United States, the article highlighted the adverse effect it is having on the countries from which the nurses come. “Health care has deteriorated [in the Philippines] in recent years as tens of thousands of nurses have moved abroad,” the article claims. Since the most precious resource of any nation is its skilled human capital, that resource is diminished whenever skilled workers leave. The president of the Philippine Nurse Association has observed: “The Filipino people will suffer because the U.S. will get all our trained nurses.”

As the United States imports foreign priests, what attention is being paid to the “brain drain” or “skills drain” in the sending countries? How can we justify this when the explosion of converts in some of those countries requires ever more sophistication in leadership, planning and management of the church’s future there?

According to the Times story, it is difficult for nurses from developing countries to “resist the magnetic pull of the United States.” Coming to the United States allows them to improve both their own and their families’ economic status. Nurses overseas “send home billions of dollars each year to their families.”

Experience indicates a similar magnetic pull among the international clergy. The bishops who send their priests to the United States hope that their time abroad will help the priests to become better trained and that the skills they acquire will enable them to improve the church when they return. It is a laudable vision: transfer skills from the wealthy to others who need them. But once the priests have tasted the affluence of the United States, many are reluctant to return to their country of origin. It would take an angelic view of ministerial calling to deny that economics plays a role in some priests’ eagerness to go on “reverse mission” to the United States in the first place. Remember that old saw, “The missionaries came to do good, and did well.”

The magnetism of affluence can have a negative effect on the priests’ work in the United States as well. One hears of priests from foreign cultures who seem to attend as many rituals in the communities of their expatriates as they can, assured of generous cash offerings to send home. The practice is understandable. The priests are far from home, and their families may be in serious economic need. But if this results in neglect of the community to which the priest is supposed to be ministering by his official assignment, his priorities would need realignment.

Emergent Questions

Even such a sketchy comparison between these two scarcities suggests further questions. Looking beneath the rhetoric of reverse mission, we might ask, Is this recruitment practice the ecclesiastical version of a secular scenario, in which the resources of the poor are exhausted to serve the short-term needs of the rich?

An analogous trend can be seen in the way American priests in general are currently being assigned, on the basis of quantity. The parishes with the most parishioners get the priests. As a result, the suburban parishes “get richer” in leadership at the expense of the inner-city and rural parishes. How does such a practice embody “the new evangelization” or a church in mission?

Is our practice of recruiting priests from other countries simply another example of the American penchant for the quick fix? And beyond its consequences for the developing churches, what are its consequences for the U.S. church? Does focusing on our immediate shortage prevent us from considering other available alternatives that might be more pastorally effective (for ourselves and others) in our changing world? If we are going to apply a Band-Aid, we should use one that is effective, but first we need to be sure that such a treatment is suited to the good of the body as a whole. Band-Aids are for minor cuts, not cancer.

A New Study of International Priests

A study by Dean R. Hoge and Aniedi Okure, International Priests in America: Challenges and Opportunities (Liturgical Press, 2006), asks whether U.S. dioceses should keep importing international priests—the authors tend to think they should—and how this could best be accomplished. The book is significant for the wealth of comparative data it offers on the general U.S. Catholic population, the number of U.S.-born seminarians and priests, and the number of international seminarians and priests as well as the countries from which they come. It describes the variations in the ways international priests are trained and ordained, whether and to what extent their home dioceses are compensated for seminary education, and how the international priests are accepted in U.S. parishes after they have been assigned. This information ought to be part of the ongoing discussion about the future staffing of parishes, whether in the United States or elsewhere.

Arts & CultureBooks
James Martin, S.J.
In November 1949 the year after the publication of his bestselling autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain Thomas Merton dropped a note to his old college friend Robert Lax about the latest news from the Abbey of Gethsemani quot People keep writing from India we should start a monastery there
Columns
Maryann Cusimano Love
Last year as we set up our Nativity set, our then two-year-old daughter asked why so many of the figures were kneeling. Plopping baby Jesus in the manger, she quickly answered her own question, "Oh. To better see God." This year we have a newborn son in our home. And as we raid the rafters
Poetry
Brad Reynolds

Because Christmas is almost here

Film
John P. McCarthy
The idea that Hollywood has found religion gets a boost from The Nativity Story, touted by its distributor, New Line Cinema, as the first-ever major motion picture devoted to the story of Jesus’ birth. Whether or not that claim is true, the movie is the best example of the recent rapprochement
Arts & CultureBooks
Lisa Sowle Cahill
Just Love’s thesis is that justice is central to sexual morality, especially justice in the sense of respect for the real identity and needs of the other.
Editorials
The Editors
"We can’t pull out; we can’t win. Like a tar pit, Iraq has trapped the United States. If American troops remain there, few observers expect things to get better; and they may well grow worse. If the troops pull out, problems will certainly worsen for nearly everyone: for Iraqis abov
The Word
Daniel J. Harrington
What makes you happy Where do you find your joy In what do you rejoice These are serious questions and for many people today they are not easy to answer Much in our culture promises joy but fails to deliver According to the Bible the origin and object of true joy is God The Third Sunday of Ad
Elizabeth Kolbert
As a reporter you have gone from covering New York politics to global warming. Is it fair to say you’ve moved from one disaster to another?That’s not a bad way of putting it. In covering both I’ve seen people look some fairly obvious truths right in the face and dance around them.
Faith in Focus
Bea Broder-Oldach
Among the best-kept secrets of World War II was the presence of prisoner of war camps in the United States. With food in short supply in Europe and American supply ships returning empty from the front, the U.S. military devised a plan to maximize resources at home and abroad: supply ships would retu