Friday, November 9, 2007

Foreign priests too dogmatic for the British

According to an interesting news byte in the Anglican Journal, foreign Roman Catholic priests coming to work in Britain now undergo training in "Britishness," which includes an attempt to make them less dogmatic:

“Some foreign priests working in Britain tend to be too dogmatic about the church’s moral rightness on just about everything,” said Rev. Terry Drainey the president of Ushaw College. “That’s not how we do things here. This course shows how we deal with a whole range of issues affecting Catholics, including the role of women, divorce, the lay ministry and homosexuality.”It is the first course of its kind and is the brainchild of Bishop Crispian Hollis of Portsmouth. The number of foreign priests in Britain is rising as the number of home-grown priests declines. The priests undergoing training in “Britishness” come from English and Welsh parishes. "

Here in Wisconsin, we have a large number of foreign priests, mostly from India and Africa, working in our parish. I can confirm that most of these priests have a dogmatic tendency. What a wonderful thing -- having priests who know what the Church teaches and aren't afraid to say it! Thank God for these foreign priests! It shouldn't puzzle us very much why the Church is growing in India and Africa while British and American Churches suffer. I hope the foreign priests coming to Britain prove resistant!

4 comments:

Dad29 said...

A number of years ago, Abp Weakland nixed the idea of bringing in a number of 'foreign' priests to Milwaukee--priest-shortage notwithstanding--on the grounds that they "were hard to understand" and that they were "at a cultural disadvantage."

Yah, right.

I should add that the Priests' Council of Milwaukee joined in objecting to these fellows...and the spokesman at that time is now a Marquette U professor who ALSO contradicted Church teachings in his published musings on the Gay Marriage issue.

Cathy_of_Alex said...

Franz: That is a disturbing article. I hope the foreign priests stick to their guns!

Christine said...

Crispian Hollis is the same Bishop who supports legalizing prostitition, so I'm not surprised

story here

Christine said...
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