A NYtimes piece from a few days ago about Vietnamese-American seminarians and priests
At a time when fewer American Catholics are expressing interest in the priesthood, Vietnamese-American men are an anomaly. They are now the second-largest minority ethnic group in seminaries, only slightly behind Hispanics, who account for a far larger percentage of the general population.
While church experts and priests say that some Catholics frown upon their sons' joining the priesthood and are even embarrassed by it in the wake of the sex abuse scandals among members of the clergy, Vietnamese Catholics continue to hold the priesthood in high regard. They say that the sex scandal marred individual clergymen but not the vocation itself.
Like many of his counterparts, Father Tran, a priest at St. Leo the Great Catholic Church in Fairfax, Va., came to the United States from Vietnam when he was young, in his case at age 17. Those of his generation, like the one before him, often describe the priesthood as the pinnacle of service and success, as many European Catholic immigrants did a century ago.
"If you go to a Vietnamese parish and ask people, would they prefer that their son be the president, a doctor or a priest, they would say, 'A priest,' " Father Tran said. "It is seen as a blessing from God for the family."
Asians and Pacific Islanders constitute about 1 percent of American Catholics, but they account for 12 percent of seminarians, or about 397 of 3,308 men; a vast majority of them are of Vietnamese heritage, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. In 1999, they were about 9 percent of seminarians, although the number of seminarians overall was only slightly less than it is now.
That such a small group of American Catholics is able to deliver so many new priests reveals the grip tradition, family and faith still have on many Vietnamese-Americans.
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