We are down a priest, again. Our associate pastor (parochial vicar? I'm unsure of what the latest proper lingo is) of a year has moved on. Like many new priests of our diocese, he is from another country - Sri Lanka, in this case. I know nothing of how he dealt with parish life here, except in terms of liturgy. Unfortunately, that did not go well, and I think it caused some problems in the parish. His accent was heavy, but that wasn't the real problem. If he spoke relatively slowly and stuck to the order of the Mass, we all did fine - if you had a sense of what he was
supposed to be saying, you could usually figure out
what he was saying. You could understand about the first five minutes of his homilies, as well - after that point, he got into it, started speaking more quickly, and became unintelligable except for his frequent punctuation of "And so, my dear friends."
No, the problem with this fellow was that he didn't stick with the order of the Mass - he indulged in more extemporaneous comment than I've experienced in a Catholic Mass since about 1975. He'd precede the Introductory rite with sometimes five minutes of commentary. He'd end the Prayers of the Faithful with the same. At several points during the Eucharistic Prayer, he'd go off. Often, at the Breaking of the Bread, after the Agnus Dei, he'd inject some comments as well. Earnest, lengthy and unintelligable comments. It was really awful. At some point, I understand the pastor tried to put a stop to it, with only moderate success, and near the end of his term here, it seems as if the pastor took over all preaching responsibilities.
Well, that's over now. He's been transferred to hospital ministry in another town, a move prompted by another factor, I understand: he failed his driving test and needed to be stationed somewhere was driving was unecessary - he'll be living right across the street from the hospital.
One muses on this issue at the great risk of sounding parochial, xenophobic and less than catholic in one's Catholicism. As I wrote to someone last week, there is no doubt that the Catholic Church is the most "multicultural" institution on the planet, and it's something intrinsic to our identity and something to celebrate as well. Part of that identity is the interchange of people - folks from all variety of ethnicities ministering to each other when needed. That's great.
But the hard truth is that in some dioceses (I'm not saying it's the case in mine, because I don't know), an influx of priests and seminarians from other countries is being used to cover up the reality of the priest shortage in the United States. Look carefully at the figures when your bishop boasts about how many seminarians he have. How many of them are actually originally from his diocese? How many have been recruited from overseas? There would be no problem with this if all these recruits were being trained to be proficient in English (or whatever language they need to know to minister in their community) before they were sent out, but they're not, and there are other problems as well.
This poor preparation and desperate placement of recent immigrants into large, complex parishes is completely unfair - not only to the parishes, but, more importantly I think, to the priests who are put in situations that are built for their failure and demoralization.