{"id":964,"date":"2008-12-30T00:59:19","date_gmt":"2008-12-30T00:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2008\/12\/second-thoughts.html"},"modified":"2008-12-30T00:59:19","modified_gmt":"2008-12-30T00:59:19","slug":"second-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/12\/second-thoughts.html","title":{"rendered":"Second Thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"

The third and last segment of Laurie Goodstein’s excellent NYTimes series on foreign-born priests in the US, focusing on India – and questions about what’s going on – from the supply end.<\/a><\/p>\n

Bishop Pazhayattil said he chose which priests to send abroad very carefully. Some who volunteer, he said, could easily go astray so far from home.
\nAnd some do not want to go. The Rev. Jolly Vadakken had studied in Rome and worked short-term in parishes in Germany, Minneapolis and Birmingham. Tall and prepossessing, fluent in five languages, Father Vadakken had offers to work as a parish pastor in Italy and Atlanta. But he preferred to stay home.
\nIn Irinjalakuda, he runs a Catholic resource center across the street from the diocese\u2019s towering pink cathedral. He buzzes around the diocese on a motorcycle, often in his cassock, his cellphone ringing incessantly. He operates a suicide hot line (Kerala has one of the highest suicide rates in India), counsels couples, teaches courses in parenting and runs a program that mediates local conflicts.
\nHe said he feels more vital here than he did in the United States or Europe, where he was needed only for the sacraments.
\n\u201cIn the other world, we are official priests,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are satisfied just doing the Mass and sacraments, everything on time, everything perfect.
\n\u201cIn India, the people come close to us,\u201d he continued. \u201cThe work satisfaction is different. Our ministry is so much wanted here.\u201d
\nAt the same time, the Catholic church in Irinjalakuda is expanding. When Bishop Pazhayattil was appointed in 1978, the diocese had 78 parishes; it now has 129. He said it was unlikely he would be so eager to send his priests to Europe or the United States in the future.
\nThe rectors of both large seminaries in Aluva, with over 400 students each, each said in separate interviews that the Catholic church in the United States and Europe would eventually need to stop relying on India to supply priests.
\n\u201cIt is not a solution,\u201d said Msgr. Bosco Puthur, the rector of St. Joseph Pontifical Seminary in Mangalapuzha. \u201cIt is only a stopgap that does not solve the problem.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This was an excellent series. Kudos to Laurie for some really fair reporting. It’s a complex situation, and I would say that the only major piece missing is related to the situation before ordination – that is, foreign-born seminarians studying in the US for various dioceses, most of whom (my general observations indicate) come from Latin America, also recruited, also meeting with mixed records of “success,” if you want to use that word.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The third and last segment of Laurie Goodstein’s excellent NYTimes series on foreign-born priests in the US, focusing on India – and questions about what’s going on – from the supply end. Bishop Pazhayattil said he chose which priests to send abroad very carefully. Some who volunteer, he said, could easily go astray so far…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nSecond Thoughts - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/12\/second-thoughts.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Second Thoughts - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The third and last segment of Laurie Goodstein’s excellent NYTimes series on foreign-born priests in the US, focusing on India – and questions about what’s going on – from the supply end. Bishop Pazhayattil said he chose which priests to send abroad very carefully. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}