Catholic Priest "Shortage" is the Route to U.S. Citizenship



The newspaper in Iowa ran a story about the common Catholic practice across the country. Parishes are closing and being combined. Mass attendance has fallen by about 50% and the numbers of available priests is falling. To become a priest requires several years and is, therefore, very expensive. Add to that, of course, only males and no marriage. To increase attendance, the denomination needs to open parishes on every corner like McDonalds. By maintaining its expensive requirements for priesthood, the Catholic denomination has shot itself in the foot. 

What jumped out in the report about the Catholic denomination in Iowa is that about half the current priests were born in other countries. It got me to wondering if the unstated method for keeping the denomination alive is a pipeline of priests from poorer countries. If the percentage is now 50% will it be much higher 10 or 20 years from now. I found a study of the priesthood and tried to find out where these foreign-born priests come from and what happens to them once they are excepted for positions in this country. Do they live out their careers as priests or do they leave the profession, marry and move on as U.S. citizens? 

While the Catholic study was done for purposes other than my own curiosity, I found it peculiar there was little to no study of why men leave the priesthood and what they do afterwards. It said leaving priests is a problem but not a problem officials want to know more about. The study claimed dioceses are not required to collect data on why priests leave. It mentioned the work load is heavy and implied this is the reason men leave, 

In economics we make the assumption, rightly or wrongly, that humans move toward opportunity and from the lack of it. That is, they move toward higher standards of living. We know that in reality people also move away from other people or professions they do not like. Large movements, we assume, take place because of economics. 

Data is not available to answer this, but I wonder if men in other countries see the priesthood in the U.S. as a chance to move up? I wonder how many of them apply and receive citizenship then leave the profession? A huge number of priests have reached or will soon reach retirement age. In time a U.S. born priest may be unusual.   

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