Asian-Americans boost priesthood
SAN JOSE, Calif. — It wasn't the voice of God that summoned Mai Thanh Luong to church every Sunday as a youngster in his native Vietnam. It was the voice of his mother: persistent, unyielding, non-negotiable.
"My mom influenced me in a very concrete way. She dragged me to church at a very early age," Luong recalled, unable to stifle a chuckle. "I slept right through, but it became a custom."
Six decades later in 2003, Luong became America's first and only Vietnamese-American bishop. As auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Orange County, Calif., Luong, 65, is the Catholic spiritual leader of the largest Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam.
At a time when priesthood ranks in the United States have been shrinking — down 26 percent from 57,317 in 1985 to 42,528 in 2005 — the number of Asian-Americans in seminary schools is growing, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.
And while exact numbers by ethnicity are not available, church officials say Vietnamese and Filipinos comprise the largest segment of the Asian seminarian population. Indeed, from Australia to Canada, where their numbers are in abundance, Vietnamese priests have been dubbed "the new Irish."
"If you ask any father or mother what they want their child to be," said Luong, "if they're Catholic, they will say a priest. In our culture, we think highly of priests, it's very deeply rooted."
Fewer than 2 percent of American Catholics are Asians or Pacific Islanders, but make up 12 percent of U.S. seminarians. That's up from 9 percent five years ago: from 313 out of 3,474 in 2000, to 397 out of 3,308 seminarians in 2005, according to CARA.
Justin Le, 33, of San Jose came to the U.S. in his late teens and hopes to be ordained in three years. Le remembers his mother taking him to different churches in Saigon each week allowing him to sample the aura and aromas emanating from each cathedral. At home his family worshipped together.
"The family was where my faith grew," Le said.
About 10 percent of Vietnamese in Vietnam are Catholic, with most others practicing Buddhism, Confucianism or ancestral worship.
"When the family leans strongly toward a direction," said Le, "children tend to follow, in the business world or spiritual."
For years, church leaders have been anxiously monitoring the dwindling number of priests-in-training. Two factors are often blamed: the pursuit of consumerism over spiritualism and the scandalous revelations about priests abusing minors.
From 2000-2005, the number of seminarians in the U.S. dropped 5 percent, with whites falling from 69 percent to 65 percent. Black seminarians increased from 4 percent to 5 percent; Hispanics held steady at 15 percent.
The noted rise of Asian-American priests seems to lie in the cohesiveness of the immigrant family and the central role of Catholicism in Asian cultures. From family prayers to the prominence of the crucifix and Madonna — sometimes on front lawns — religion is part of everyday life.
No wonder that when a child announces his intention to become a priest, it can be a cause for celebration bestowing the whole clan with a blessed social rank.
For Asians, Bishop Luong said, "Religion defines the meaning of being human, and that is definitely different from the Western concept of religion. My family instilled in me the seed or germ that blossomed as I journeyed through life."
