A Dirty Little Secret

As we all know, liberal Catholics are all in favor of immigration from the developing countries. (And so are we.)

However, the liberal Catholics are opposed to immigration in (at least) one case: They don’t want Catholic priests coming here to make up for our dearth of vocations. There are two basic reasons for this.

First, we all know that the dearth of vocations is due to the dissolvent of liberal Catholicism. The liberals are quite content with the paucity of vocations, because it’s intended to put pressure on the Church to ordain women and married men — and eventually to have a same-sex “married” priesthood, as in the Episcopal Church. But with immigrant priests filling the gap, the pressure diminishes.

Second, liberal Catholics don’t like the orthodox Catholicism and traditional sex roles that priests bring with them from Mexico, India, Vietnam, the Philippines, Poland, etc. Writing in America (Feb. 16), Fr. Willard F. Jabusch regards “imported” priests as a “problem.” He worries that immigrant priests won’t “have sympathy with our American culture,” that is, our decadent American culture. Jabusch complains that immigrant priests have not “learned” our “American customs and attitudes, especially regarding the laity and the women’s movement.” The “women’s movement”? He means the feminist establishment.

In a follow-up letter in America (March 8), R.J. Kowalik, obviously a deracinated Slav who has “learned” American attitudes and has had his consciousness lowered by the feminist establishment, chimes in that immigrant priests “cannot be understood…culturally.” Clearly, Kowalik fears multiculturalism. Kowalik adds that “lay people” should stand behind the efforts being made “to ordain women and married men to the priesthood.” Well, of course.