Do you have a priest with a non-American accent? We’ve had several in our little parish over the years. That’s not surprising, even in our very white, very homogeneous region, because according to a recent study, about a quarter of seminarians in the United States are foreign-born.
When Catholics hear a thick accent coming from the pulpit, they tend to respond in one of two extremes: either with a cranky dismissal, with undertones of “Why don’t these people go back where they came from?” or else with a warm, self-congratulatory welcome of ethnic diversity — which lasts until the own-back-patterns discover this new priest doesn’t omit the bracketed section for shorter reading.
But I heard a new take the other day, a rather bracing one for native-born Americans like me.
Father Ryan Hildebrand wrote on X: “‘I can’t understand my foreign priest’s accent!’ Instead of belittling you for not sending your sons to seminary (like I normally would), I’ll give you a helpful tip: Go to YouTube. Pull up BBC [his country of origin]. Watch it for a few minutes each day. That’ll help.”
He’s right, it would! It really is the kind of thing you can get better at with practice.
I loved the advice itself; and I loved the implication that a priest’s hard-to-understand accent is a problem for the listener to solve, and not only for the priest or the pastor or someone else. It’s certainly not something we should be mad about, because a foreign accent is the sign that someone has been brave and persevering, and willing to do hard things to serve God and us. But it’s also not something we should be passively, contentedly tolerant of, without trying to make the situation better. It’s something we should work on, from our end.
The Word — every word, but especially the Word of God — is meant to be heard and understood, and we should do what we can to help that happen.
How many problems in the world actually have a simple, at least partial solution, but it never occurs to us to discover it, because we don’t consider the problem ours to solve? Probably about as many problems as we drive ourselves crazy trying to solve, even though they’re not our responsibility or not under our control.
Sometimes the best way to help the Word be understood is to get out of the way.
Here is another scenario … Read the rest of my latest for Our Sunday Visitor.
Image: Christus met sterren in de hand (1899) Odilon Redon, public domain (creative commons)
Our parish has a new foreign born priest (bless him – he’s really nice!), and what they started doing was handing out a copy of his sermon before Mass, so you can follow along as you get used to his accent. I understand about 75% of what he says, and it’s mostly the cadence – where he pauses or emphasizes words – that can trip me up. In time, I’ll understand it all. They did the same at times with our American born priest who had speech issues (turns out early Parkinson’s – God bless his soul), or the deacon would read the sermon from the paper for him. It was really helpful because he always had some new idea or perspective on familiar reading, and this way the parishioners could appreciate it more.
I disagree with you about how most Catholics receive foreign born priests. I really don’t think most people care one way or the other. After all, aren’t we really only talking about the homily? If Catholics do show an interest in a priest’s nationality, in my experience it’s likely to form a connection – e.g. “Where are you from in Poland? My grandma was from X” or “You’re from Cambodia? I work with a Cambodian guy from St. Peter’s in Olney. Do you know him?”
In her own way, my mother is currently experiencing the foreign tongued priest. After living her whole life in NYC and its first ring burbs, my mother is a recent arrival to Philadelphia. Our pastor was born and raised in the Kensington section of Philadelphia and in addition to being a bit of a mumbler has the thickest Philadelphia accent you ever did hear. My mother can make out about every third word he says. Since our Gospel is usually read by a deacon, I assure her she’s not missing much in his longwinded sermons or his after Mass (but before the recessional hymn) Iggles and Phils talk. Sadly, there’s no BBC Kensingtonian Philadelphia for her to watch.