De Souza: Missionary Failure?

http://m.ncregister.com/daily-news/married-priests-and-missionary-failure

Focusing on the failure of missionary efforts in the Amazon, Fr. de Sousa wrote:

"What’s new in the viri probati proposal is that married men, always Catholics of the Latin rite, could be ordained not only deacons, but priests. It would be a substantial change and a novelty, but not a complete novelty.

It is a novelty as a response to the lack of clergy in a large mission territory. Those familiar with the history of the Church in the United States and Canada would recognize the situation of the Amazon as similar to the early years of the Church in North America, where the few missionary clergy from France and Spain had immense territories to cover. Those historical accounts can be read in the Jesuit Relations or in the letters of the Spanish missions or the first bishops of Quebec. Willa Cather’s acclaimed novel Death Comes for the Archbishop gives that same history dramatic treatment in the setting of New Mexico.

The problem of pastoral care of the Amazon is, therefore, not a new problem. The viri probati solution is new. It argues that the local population is, for whatever reason, unable to provide priestly vocations and that missionary vocations are not to be had. By default, therefore, a relaxation of priestly celibacy is in order.

The viri probati proposal, therefore, is not advanced as a good in itself, but, rather, as a concession to a sustained missionary failure. This constitutes two failures, actually: a failure of evangelization, in that the local Catholic population seems incapable of producing priestly vocations, and a failure of the surrounding countries to provide missionary priests to serve the people.

The latter problem is acute. Latin America, even 500 years after the arrival of the early missionaries, still does not produce priestly vocations in the numbers that have been seen in Europe and North America. Hence, it has few missionary priests to send even in its own lands, to say nothing of going abroad. The Church in Brazil, for example, most proximate to the Amazon, has nothing compared to the clerical strength of numbers that permitted Irish, French and Spanish missionary priests to come to the New World, or even current priests from India and Nigeria who serve abroad.

Modifications of priestly celibacy in the Latin rite have come largely in response to the desire for Christian unity and out of respect for the Eastern tradition of married deacons and priests. A modification in response to pastoral failure within the Latin rite would be a new step."