Rent-a-Priest

In the fall of 2019 the US Bishops began their ad limina visits to the Vatican. The Amazon synod had just concluded, and their was much angst by leaders of the US Bishops in regard to two recommendations of that synod gathering. The two issues were, quoting from the National Catholic Register: "calls for the ordination of married men as priests and for women to be considered for diaconal ordination." Parts of the Amazon go over a year to be visited by a priest. Hence, the region felt, and I suspect continues to feel, that more needs to be done to allow the sacraments to the disenfranchised members in far flung regions of the earth. The US church has more capabilities, which many a diocese in the developing countries lack, so in the US the priest shortage has been mitigated by foreign priests, what I refer to as rent-a-priest. However, the effectiveness of the rent-a-priest program is now challenged by US immigration rules.

Amazon Synod, Opening Mass, 9 Oct 2019

Some foreign born priests are very good. Others are difficult to understand, and some tend way too traditional going against Vatican II. We have a priest from India serving the St Cletus pastorate after Fr Kelley was moved to a different pastorate in Southwest Wisconsin. This foreign priest's English is understandable to me, and he says a good mass and has a good homilies. He was in the US for several years serving in far Southwest Wisconsin, left to go back to India for a few years and then came back to the US about two years ago. I often prefer the priests from India, even difficult to understand, to the young radical traditional priests who do not know how to give a somewhat decent homily (much less a good homily), and with their method of saying mass making it about them and not God, but that is another story. The foreign priests I have heard say mass usually say it in the way that we had become accustomed until the young rad trads showed up, bent on destroying parishes. Foreign priests, however, require special immigration documents. The visa issue is not new, an internet search turned up articles well over a year old.

The R-1 Visa program many are under allows them to be in the US for five years and then apply for permanent status or go home. The problem according to the Milwaukee and Madison dioceses is an interpretation made by the Biden Administration last year. For the news reports see the Channel 3000 news report for the Madison Diocese here, and for the Milwaukee Archdiocese a WTMJ news report here. Quoting from the Channel 3000 news report:

The problem according to the Diocese of Madison is that priests applying for permanent status are being met with a backlog after the Biden administration removed a special categorization for immigrants applying from central American countries. This action has placed everyone else's wait times in the same boat as those countries applications, putting wait times for everyone else close to 14 years, according to Bishop Donald Hying.

WTMJ reported a five year plus time frame to obtain the EB-4 visa: 

As a result, the employment-based, fourth preference (EB-4) visa that used to take one year to receive now could take more than five years to get. According to the State Department, the EB-4 is not just issued to religious workers, but also to special immigrant juveniles, certain U.S. government employees, certain international organization retirees, and certain international broadcasting employees, among others.

Archbishop Listecki, per WTMJ,  has sent a letter to congressional representatives asking for their assistance in which he noted: “We urgently seek your help addressing these issues, not only for the sake of religious workers and their employers, but for the many American communities that rely upon them for a wide range of religious and social services,”  He was also more blunt, with WTMJ saying and quoting him: 

"The ministry of the remaining parish priests will be stretched thinner,” said Archbishop Listecki. “This flies in the face of Congress’s intent when creating the Religious Worker Visa Program: to ensure religious organizations in the United States have access to needed workers to carry out their wide-ranging religious and charitable activities, consistent with the First Amendment and the freedom of religion." (Bold by author)

According to the Channel 3000 news report, the Madison Diocese has about 30% of its priests as foreign, and those foreign born priests affect about 60% of the parishes. The St Cletus pastorate, with one priest from India, has five different parishes, and due to the rotation of saying mass at each parish, his presence affects five parishes. The realignment Bishop Hying undertook, by creating pastorates, was to attend to the shortage of priests, but now all of a sudden the diocese is once again concerned.  A sad reality, that I have noticed, is that foreign born priests are given the assignments which require a good deal of travel, and have to handle many small parishes. One example, in 2017, while camping at Day Lake near the unincorporated hamlet of Clam Lake, we went to mass at a small, beautiful little log church near Clam Lake. The priest from India was hard to understand, but he was kind enough to print out his homily so we, and the 12 or so others, could read along. I recall seeing that he had to say at mass at four parishes, one mass at each, spread up to more than an hour apart. I recall his secretary saying they he had to travel over one hour to at least two of the parishes. I don't think Clam Lake is affiliated with that grouping any more, and the Diocese of Superior website does not even have a link for its location, as it does other churches. Who knows if it is even open. Can you imagine traveling over an hour and back, on the icy back roads of northern Wisconsin to get to a rural out of the way small church? Although, it is probably better than travel in the Amazon. 

The US Catholic Church's reliance on foreign priests is now challenged by the change in the US visa program, which raises the question of whether rent-a-priest is a sustainable program.  A US diocese may pay the foreign country diocese, which those small impoverished dioceses like as  revenue source. Nigeria has many priests, some of which make their way to the US. The Madison Diocese has mainly priests from India and some very conservative traditional priests from Spain. (The Spanish priests seem to wish to fate of Spain, as a once Catholic country, onto the US as they have been successful at destroying some parishes; you can read about one parish experience here.) Many US bishops, rather smug at those 2019 ad limina visits, did not wish to see anything that could affect the single all-male clergy and the privileged clerical status they enjoy. Hence, their concern with the two proposals by the Amazon Synod. The US hierarchy cared little of the situation in the Amazon or elsewhere. If you do not think clericalism is a problem one needs only to come to the Madison area and see the young priests in their soutanes, little birettas, and other clerical garb that is common place, and marching and acting like they are king of the hill. They keep to their own little groups living in an alternate reality. 

The whole idea of foreign priests to the US raises a few issues. First, it deprives the host nation of clergy. While some of the host countries seminaries are full, that does not mean they have an excess number of clergy per 1,000 population since they baptize more children and have more adult converts. From a numbers standpoint, such host nations have fewer priests per 1,000 population than does the US.  Second, it is pure and simple unequitable and unjust. Pope Francis preaches about a poor church for the poor, but he has done nothing to assist the poor in the Amazon with their faith journeys. What would people in the US say if they had to wait more than a year for a mass, and the now even rarer baptism or wedding? Wealthy countries on the other hand can rent-a-priest to see that the shortage of clerics is mitigated and mass and the sacraments are more readily to available to many in the US more than once a year. If the host diocese does not get money, the priest usually sends a portion of his more substantial US salary back to the home diocese. 

Archbishop Listecki makes the case that the foreign priests are required to "carry out their wide ranging religious and charitable activities." It seems a rather broad statement, and I would suggest that the ordained are not required for all the duties encompassed in his statement. If priests are so important to the religious and charitable activities, should not more sustainable clerical solutions be implemented? Should a smug US hierarchy now embrace what was recommended by the Amazon synod?  The situation highlighted by Archbishop Listecki on the need of priests to carry out religious and charitable activities shows how dependent the US and world-wide Church has become on a single all-male clergy. This also shows the need for dioceses, and the Vatican, to think of new ways of being Church if they are going to continue to rely on the single all-male priesthood. For over fifty years people have been praying for more priests, and perhaps the Holy Spirit has given options, to which the all-male clergy and hierarchy does not wish to hear. 

In a generation or so the US the priest shortage may not be a problem. Few young families are in church. Mass attendance is mostly populated by older persons. Attending mass, I feel as if I am the youngest 10% of those gathered. If this trend continues, this will lead to parish closures and consolidations making the remaining faithful drive further and further to find a mass or obtain a sacrament, or likely just leave and go to a nearby Protestant church. Hey, but in a developed country at least we have paved roads. In Tanzania it took over an hour to travel 12 miles on a rutted dirt road to get from Old Maswa parish to St Peter's parish in Nkololo. The parish priest at St Peter's travels by motorcycle to his outlying parishes where he has often to spend the night.

In his Into the Deep project, Bishop Hying noted a few main reasons for establishment of pastorates. Reduce the workload on priests, spending too much on buildings and infrastructure, get 50% of the masses at 50% or more capacity. They have cut masses by almost a quarter, but so far nothing has been done on parish closures or building consolidation.

The Catholic Church has more issues than decline in mass attendance. It has a major issue in people leaving the church (an 18% decrease in affiliation from 1998 to 2018), a mass that fails to meet spiritual needs (78% of people who move an evangelical church said this was the main reason), it has problems with transparency and trust due to the abuse crises (which took away any moral authority the institution had left), it has issues with the number of nuns and priests, and it has issues with relevance in a changing world. It needs to break out of its old methods and ways of doing things to become more creative in personnel and in empowering the laity. 

The rent-a-priest program is now seen as challenging to many dioceses, due to immigration laws. Time will tell if the US will continue on its preferred path of clericalism or embrace ideas as expressed by the Amazon synod. The US Bishops response is to blame the government for the rule interpretation rather than to think of creative ways to address the issue. They may just wish to wait the situation out, as in a generation the shortage in the church may well be of laity and not priests. Who knows, perhaps US priests will be part of rent-a-priest program going to Africa or East Asia in a generation or two.