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Political Padre: Raymundo Chávez Vázquez and Illegal Immigration

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As everyone knows, the U.S. Catholic Church is suffering from a severe shortage of homegrown priests, even as the Catholic population continues to grow. Few Americans — no matter how religious — are willing to commit to the celibate lifestyle the Church demands of its priests. Celibacy isn't a topic church officials relish discussing with reporters, but Father Raymundo doesn't mind. He admits that he struggles with sexuality, but believes that the Church's policy is the correct one.

"A priest's sexual and emotional life is kept under lock and key," he says. "We're spiritual eunuchs. It's a hard life because when you do something good, it seems like no one notices. One slipup, however, and everyone will find out." Father Raymundo says that he's learned to "sublimate, not repress" his sexuality with a two-hour long jog at the crack of dawn. "We priests have to attend to our bodies as well as our spirits," he says. One of the main sources of emotional comfort for a priest is his family, something that he must do without. "At least when you have the love of your family, it's like a warm blanket you can cling to," he says. "When you become a foreigner — as I am — that blanket is taken away."

For the Catholic Church, society's materialism — not the church doctrine of celibacy — is the main source of the decline in U.S.-born priests. According to Father Mike Sis, Director of Vocations for the Diocese of Austin, "Wealthy cultures are also materialistic and secular. Spiritual values are lower on people's scale of values." Countries that once exported priests — Sis cites Ireland as a prime example — now have to import them as they have grown richer.

Whatever the root cause, the result has been that the average age of a U.S. priest has been steadily climbing for decades. According to the National Federation of Priests' Councils, the average age of a priest has gone from 47 years in 1970 to 60 today. It will hit 65 within the next decade.

The Church has hit on a solution to the shortage: bring in young priests like Father Raymundo from the developing world. According to Father Sis, there are plenty of priests available — they just happen to be in places like Latin America, India and Nigeria. "They have a superabundance of priests and we have a shortage of priests," says Sis. "It's just a question of shifting personnel."

But shifting personnel also means shifting cultural paradigms, something that Sis saw firsthand in Bryan-College Station. Before he became Director of Vocations in 2005, Sis was a pastor at St. Mary's Church in College Station. When he started noticing a huge spike in immigration during the 1990s, he wanted to help. "We wanted to serve breakfast for day laborers," he says. "The work corner was about two blocks away from Santa Teresa, so we figured they were the logical church to ask. They didn't want to get involved. They didn't have any interest in participating."

Back then, Santa Teresa was a primarily Mexican-American parish that had developed its own Tex-Mex customs and traditions. It was a tightly knit community that looked out for itself, but didn't do much beyond the small Hispanic population of Bryan. Longtime church member Gloria Ramirez Quintero grew up in Bryan and remembers when she could recognize most of the people at the Sunday 10 o'clock mass. Now, she barely recognizes anyone at the church. "What happened to all of our people?" she asks. "About 90 percent of the people you talk to are from Mexico. It's kind of sad that we don't know anyone anymore."

Quintero's sentiment is echoed by many Tejanos, who suddenly see themselves as outsiders in a place that used to be a second home. Still, many are resolved to stay put. "They aren't going to run me off," Quintero says. "This is my church."
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Santa Teresa had humble beginnings in Bryan's westside barrio. A traveling priest named Father Frank Urbanovsky — known as "Padre Panchito" — worked out of a mobile tent attached to a truck throughout the 1930s, ministering to the Brazos Valley's first wave of Spanish-speaking migrant farmworkers. In 1940, church members finally built a permanent, wooden structure.

The children of this generation eventually found a place in the cultural fabric of the Brazos Valley. Some opened up Tex-Mex restaurants. Others worked as unskilled laborers at Texas A&M. Church member Eddie Rodriguez opened up a body shop on one of the town's main drags. He was baptized at Santa Teresa in the 1940s and help knock down an old building to make way for the new church just blocks from his business. Victoria Martinez grew up across the street from the church in a family of 17 brothers and sisters. She counts her family as "among the first Hispanic settlers" in the region. She now lives a comfortable life operating a bed-and-breakfast in College Station.

When a new sanctuary was dedicated in 1979, the church received a congratulatory letter in Spanish and English from Phil Gramm, who was then a newly elected Democratic congressman and former economics professor at A&M.

None of this success came easily. Armando Alonzo, a historian at Texas A&M who studies Mexican immigration to Texas, says that the first immigrants to the Brazos Valley in the 1920s worked as sharecroppers and were "treated like peons." Hispanic children went to segregated schools where they were punished for speaking Spanish. Hispanic workers at Texas A&M — custodians, food service and construction workers — needed a special "certification of identification" to be on campus. The certificate stated that "no householder, department, contractor or individual will employ any Negro or Mexican in any capacity whatsoever on the college campus unless they have this certificate."

As the second generation of Mexican immigrants improved its status, it also improved the church, erecting new buildings and buying up land in the old barrio. As these families became more Americanized, English became the predominant language of the church elders. Many of them now proudly boast of their deep roots in Brazos County.

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