Just after Christmas, The New York Times ran a series of page-one articles on the importing of priests into the United States. Although the focus was on India and various African countries, the phenomenon is much broader than that.

In the past, missionaries were recruited from countries with a surplus of priests, such as Ireland and the United States, to minister in countries with a dire need of priests, such as the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Has something happened to reverse that situation? Is there now a higher priest-to-people ratio in the United States than in the countries from which some American dioceses are now recruiting priests?

The answer is a resounding "No."

According to the Times and the Statistical Yearbook of the Church, in 2006 there was one priest for every 1,510 Catholics in the United States. That contrasted with a ratio of one priest for every 6,276 Catholics in Mexico, one priest for every 8,513 Catholics in Brazil, one priest for every 4,214 Catholics in Nigeria, one priest for every 4,343 Catholics in Kenya, one priest for every 6,845 Catholics in Uganda, and one priest for every 8,478 Catholics in the Philippines.

Only in India, among the countries supplying "missionary" priests for the United States, is the ratio more favorable than that of priests-to-Catholics in the United States. In India, as of 2006, there was one priest for every 786 Catholics.

So the evidence is clear: the Catholic Church in the United States is drawing down the number of priests in countries in much greater need in order to supplement the dwindling ranks of the priesthood in the United States.

Yet another point needs to be stressed: these "missionary" priests are not being recruited from Uganda, for example, in order to minister to congregations of Ugandans in the United States. For the most part, there is not a single Ugandan in the U.S. dioceses to which these Ugandan "missionaries" have been called.

Rather, these imported priests are simply replacing priests who have died, retired or resigned, and are serving in whatever parishes need them for the celebration of Mass and the administration of the other sacraments.

Is there a more pastorally sensible solution to the priest-shortage in the United States than recruiting priests from countries with far greater needs?

Here again the answer is clear, but it is one that many of the Church's pastoral leaders do not seem ready to face.

The Roman Catholic Church (and readers will see momentarily why the adjective "Roman" is crucial here) can almost certainly increase the numbers of its priests if (a) it welcomed back into the priesthood those priests who left to marry and might still be willing to serve as married priests; (b) it dropped the requirement of life-long, obligatory celibacy for its priests, thereby matching the discipline of the non-Roman Catholic churches of the East, which have had a married priesthood for centuries; and (c) it opened the ordained priesthood to women.

Some Catholics, including many in the hierarchy, would have a theological, if not also a doctrinal, problem with the ordination of women, but there could be no theological or doctrinal objection to the ordination of married men, whether formerly active priests or not.

For most of its history, the Roman Catholic Church had married priests --- and more than that, it had married bishops and married popes. Even today there are thousands of married Catholic priests, almost all of whom are in the various non-Roman Catholic churches of the East.

But the Roman Catholic Church also has at least a few hundred married priests who have come over to the Catholic Church from the Episcopal Church or from one of several Protestant churches. There is even a so-called Pastoral Provision to accommodate former priests of the Anglican Communion who wish not only to become Roman Catholics, but to serve the Roman Catholic Church as married priests.

The Roman Catholic Church, however, has been officially kinder to those coming into the Church from non-Catholic churches than to its life-long Catholics who have served the Church for many years as priests and whose only "sin" was to fall in love and to marry.

It is as if they must forever bear the mark of Cain, sentenced to a life of permanent exile from the priesthood.

When one reflects on the recent series in The New York Times, one can only wonder why the Roman Catholic Church in the United States feels the need to recruit priests from regions of the world in far more desperate need, when there are men here at home who are willing and able to serve.

Imported Priests, II
There were three published letters to the editor in reaction to the recent front-page series (Dec. 28-30, 2008) in The New York Times on priests being recruited from foreign countries to serve in dioceses of the United States.

The first two letters were implicitly supportive of the criticisms given expression here in the above column. Paul Lakeland, a professor of theology and director of the Center for Catholic Studies at Fairfield University, referred to the importation of priests as "a classic example of wrongheaded approaches to a real problem" (Jan. 4).

He pointed out: "To turn to foreign priests, however pastorally skilled they may be, places the ministers one step further removed from the communities to be served and risks the ire of a Catholic laity that sociological data show is more than ready to accept women and non-celibate men as its ministers."

A much shorter letter from Nancy Rowles of Covington, Kentucky, the state highlighted in the first and second of the three-part series, called attention to the "brain drain from countries in need of their own educated classes" apparently just to maintain an all-male celibate priesthood.

Father Thomas Costa, a pastor in Glen Cove, N.Y., in the diocese of Rockville Centre, took a different position. He referred to foreign-born clergy with whom he has served as "among the most generous, hard-working and inspiring priests" that he has known. His diocese, he claimed, "could not survive without our brothers from overseas."

"Our people," he continued, "have become accustomed to multiple Masses, a priest available 24/7 for any pastoral need and an extensive variety of services from our large suburban parishes, most of which serve 2,500 or more families."

Many of these Catholics, Father Costa reported, are "deeply grateful to these foreign-born priests for making the sacrifices to leave their homes and families to serve in the church in America." Their presence among us helps us "to appreciate the universal or truly 'catholic' nature of our Catholic Church."

No one, as far as I know, and certainly no one quoted in the series in the Times has questioned the generosity, hard work or inspiring personal qualities of these imported priests. That isn't the point.

It is an indisputable fact, however, that the importation of priests from foreign countries takes priests away from countries where there is a far greater shortage of priests than we have here in North America. The only exception is India, where the ratio of priests-to-Catholics is about half of what it is in the United States.

But Father Costa's letter also calls attention, perhaps unwittingly, to another, equally serious problem, cited by a priest from India in the third article in the series.

Father Jolly Vadakken had studied in Rome, has worked in parishes in Germany, Minneapolis and Birmingham, and is fluent in five languages. He currently has offers to become a pastor in Italy and in Atlanta. But he prefers to stay at home where he runs a Catholic resources center across the street from the diocesan cathedral.

He operates a suicide hot line, counsels couples, teaches courses in parenting, and operates a program that mediates local conflicts. He said that he feels "more vital" as a priest in his native India than he did in the United States or Europe, where, he pointed out, he was needed only for the sacraments (as in the Diocese of Rockville Centre, for example, where many of the Catholics are, as Father Costa put it, "accustomed to multiple Masses").

"In the other world." Father Vadakken noted, "we are official priests. We are satisfied just doing the Mass and sacraments, everything on time, everything perfect."

"In India," however, "the people come close to us. The work satisfaction is different. Our ministry is so much wanted here." (Would it not also have been appropriate to add the words "and needed" after "wanted"?)

The rectors of two large seminaries in India, with over 400 students each, insisted in separate interviews with The New York Times that the Catholic Church in the United States and Europe will eventually need to stop relying on India (and other foreign countries?) to supply priests.

"It is not a solution," declared Msgr. Bosco Puthur, rector of St. Joseph Pontifical Seminary in Mangalapuzha. "It is only a stopgap that does not solve the problem."

Enough said

Fr. Richard McBrien is the Crowley-O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.