The San Jose Mercury News has a fascinating story on the people who are becoming Catholic priests these days:
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, or CARA, at Georgetown University.
And while exact
numbers by ethnicity are not available, church officials say Vietnamese
and Filipinos make up 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," (Orange County,
Calif. Bishop Mai Thanh) Luong said, "if they're Catholic, they will
say a priest. In our culture, we think highly of priests; it's very
deeply rooted."
In November 2001, the National Catholic Reporter covered a similar story: "Untold Story: New pastoral on Asian- and Pacific-Americans sheds light on overlooked Catholics."
The shortage of priests in the Catholic Church has been covered before:
Beliefnet has some
statistics about the Catholic priest population on its Web site, tracking the population from 1970 to 2000.
In
2000, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops released a "Study of the
Impact of Fewer Priests in the Pastoral Ministry." You can read a
report of it
here, and the
executive summary here.
Catholic
University of America sociologist Dean Hoge presented a paper called
"The Current State of the Priesthood: Sociological Research" in June
2005 at Boston University. You can find the text of his report
here.
Hoge's most recent research fueled a project entitled "International
Priests: New Ministers in the Catholic Church in the United States."
Click here for a partial report from the study.
For
information about one organization's efforts to help international
priests acculturate themselves in the United States, you might want to
browse St. John's University's
Vincentian Center for Church and Society's Web site. In 2005, the group organized its fifth annual "
Acculturation Seminar for International Priests."
NPPA TV Winners
For the fourth year in a row, The Poynter Institute is hosting the
National Press Photographers Association's National
Best of Photojournalism Awards. Thanks to the work of our multimedia specialist
Larry Larsen, we are
posting the winners on Poynter.org.
We will stream the winning entries as they are chosen. The judges are
huddled in darkened rooms here at Poynter, sorting through hundreds of
tapes.
These winning entries make great teaching material for professors, newsrooms and pizza nights among journo friends.
On
Friday, we will announce the NPPA stations of the year, photographer of
the year and editor of the year, and we will show you their winning
entries right here online.
While you are awaiting all of
this year's announcements, here are dozens of great stories that you
can watch from previous years:
The Real Effect of Megan's Law
The Gannett New Jersey Newspapers are taking a deep look this week at what Megan's Law really means in that state:
- Where are sex offenders allowed to live?
- Where are the holes in reporting laws?
- How can you track offenders living near you?
Today, the report goes inside a treatment facility for sex offenders.
The Web site Klaaskids.org has information about Megan's Law in all 50 states, and links to the state felony and criminal history information Web sites.
Using the Neighbor's Wi-Fi
The New York Times tells the story of how people are taking a free ride on their neighbors' Wi-Fi systems.
Piggybacking, the usually unauthorized tapping into someone else's
wireless Internet connection, is no longer the exclusive domain of
pilfering computer geeks or shady hackers cruising for unguarded
networks. Ordinarily upstanding people are tapping in. As they do, new
sets of Internet behaviors are creeping into America's popular culture.
"I don't think it's stealing," said Edwin Caroso, a 21-year-old student at Miami Dade College, echoing an often-heard sentiment.
"I always find people out there who aren't protecting their
connection, so I just feel free to go ahead and use it," Mr. Caroso
said. He added that he tapped into a stranger's network mainly for Web
surfing, keeping up with e-mail, text chatting with friends in foreign
countries and doing homework.
Many who piggyback say the practice does not feel like theft because
it does not seem to take anything away from anyone. One occasional
piggybacker recently compared it to "reading the newspaper over
someone's shoulder."
Piggybacking, makers of wireless routers say, is increasingly an issue for people who live in densely populated areas like New York City or Chicago, or for anyone clustered in apartment buildings in which Wi-Fi
radio waves, with an average range of about 200 feet, can easily bleed
through walls, floors and ceilings. Large hotels that offer the service
have become bubbling brooks of free access that spill out into nearby
homes and restaurants.
The story includes this telling passage, which makes you wonder what you would find in your town:
Humphrey Cheung, the editor of a technology Web site, TomsHardware.com,
measured how plentiful open wireless networks have become. In April
2004, he and some colleagues flew two single-engine airplanes over
metropolitan Los Angeles with two wireless laptops.
The project logged more than 4,500 wireless networks, with only
about 30 percent of them encrypted to lock out outsiders, Mr. Cheung
said.
"Most people just plug the thing in," he said of those who buy
wireless routers. "Ninety percent of the time it works. You stop at
that point and don't bother to turn on its security."
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of
ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web
sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information
comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link
will be provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but
depends upon the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited.
Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.
