Douglas Todd: The promise and pitfalls of foreign-trained clergy in Canada

2021/06/21 Leave a comment

Interesting read:

It didn’t take too long for Father John Alex Pinto to realize he didn’t have nearly the authority in Canada as he did in his homeland of India.

In Pinto’s old city of Mangalore, the 4,500 loyal Catholic families who belonged to his mega-parish looked up to him as a powerful community and religious leader.

After Pinto moved to Canada 15 years ago, the Indian priest not only had to improve his English and get used to winter, but had to realize that Roman Catholics in Canada were less devotional than in India, were highly educated and much more “independent.”

Now serving as a priest in downtown Vancouver after time in Calgary, Pinto is one of more than 60 foreign-trained priests in the 200-clergy Catholic archdiocese of Vancouver.

Most of the imported priests in the Catholic church, Canada’s largest denomination with 14 million adherents, are from the Philippines and India, with others from Africa, parts of East Asia, the U.S. and Europe, says Rev. Gary Franken, the archdiocese’s vicar general. They’re needed to make up a priest shortage as the church welcomes an influx of Catholic immigrants, mostly from Asia.

Foreign-trained priests in Catholicism, however, are just the tip of the phenomenon. Thousands of clergy in a variety of Canada’s faiths received their religious preparation outside the country.

While the proportion of Catholic clergy in Canada who are foreign-trained range as high as one third in some dioceses, that is low compared to the ratio with Sikh, Muslim, Eastern Orthodox, Hindu and Jewish clergy in Canada.

Among Canada’s minority religious groups, a solid majority of imams, rabbis, priests, granthis and pastors are born outside the country, where they also receive their religious training.

There are many reasons why religious organizations in Canada rely heavily on foreign-trained clergy.

Outside Canada’s Catholic and large mainline Protestant and evangelical denominations, many leaders of faith groups say they do not have enough adherents to justify creating their own theological colleges in Canada.

It can also be enriching and reassuring for immigrants to attend a place of worship in Canada led by someone from one’s ancestral homeland. Angus Reid Institute polls show faith communities can ease immigrants’ transition to this new land.

And many congregations, according to scholars, believe there is status in having their clergy educated in places like the Punjab, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or Iran — where they are typically steeped in a religious tradition that penetrates every aspect of the nation’s life and norms.

But foreign-trained priests also run into challenges, including adapting to Canadian culture, where secularism dominates and freedom and equality, particularly for women, are premier social values. Practically, language barriers can also be difficult.

While Pinto, 62, intends to stay in Canada for the rest of his life, most foreign-trained clergy, including in the Catholic church, come here for only a short time.

“On loan,” as Franken says.

Harjit Singh Gill, who is involved in gurdwaras in Surrey, says most Punjabi-trained priests who work in Canada come for less than a year. They are appreciated by older Sikhs, he says, but tend not to appeal to younger ones.

The situation is similar, but slightly different, for most of the rabbis who serve Canada’s 350,000 Jews. Almost all are trained abroad, usually in the U.S. or Israel. That is true even for those born in Canada, like Vancouver-born rabbi and writer Yosef Wosk.

Now retired from the rabbinate, Wosk studied formally in New York City and Jerusalem. “Many, perhaps most, Canadian congregations hire rabbis from the U.S.,” Wosk said, “with not enough Canadian-born individuals available to fill all positions.”

Abdie Kazemipur, a University of Calgary sociologist and the chair in ethnic studies, says the issue of foreign-trained clergy is a “very important” and sometimes sensitive one within religions, rarely discussed in wider society or studied by academics.

There are no theological schools for imams in Canada, Kazemipur said, even though the country has a Muslim population of more than 1.2 million, centred largely in its major cities.

Although every imam must know Arabic, since it is the language of the Qur’an and the religion, Kazemipur says many Muslims outside the Middle East aren’t fluent in the language.

Foreign-trained imams are respected in mosques, said Kazemipur, but in secularized Canada adherents sometimes struggle with how to respond to imams who often expect Canada to be like the Muslim-majority country they are from.

‘In India society is totally different’

“In India, society is totally different. It was a multicultural shock to come Canada,” says Pinto, who serves the West End parish of Guardian Angels in Vancouver.

“There is more of a fear of God in India. In India, the priest is like a leader on all sorts of issues. People listen to him on everything. But in Canada the priest is not as much an authority.”

Since many of the parish members Pinto served in India lived in villages and were not highly educated, he acknowledges he initially expected in Canada to be seen as the person in command. But he soon realized that didn’t work.

“I was so impressed by the Canadian parishioners’ in-depth knowledge of religion. They don’t necessarily fear God; there is more of a relationship,” Pinto said.

All in all, Pinto said he has loved the transition to Canada, appreciates his congregation’s friendly tolerance of his lack of administrative skills, and thinks the Canadian Catholic church would not survive without foreign-trained priests.

Andrew Bennett, Canada’s former ambassador for religious freedom, says that while most Sikh, Muslim, Jewish and Eastern Orthodox clergy are trained outside the country, there are ways to ease the cultural disconnect that can be experienced.

As a deacon in the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, Bennett supports occasional efforts by small denominations like his to invite would-be clergy from other countries to spend a year in Canada before they start leading a congregation — to help them immerse in the culture.

Gill, an orthodox Sikh, said virtually every priest who serves the large Sikh populations in Metro Vancouver, Greater Toronto, Calgary and Edmonton is trained in seminaries in the Punjab region of northern India. And most only work in Canada on six-month visas. Many are not paid much.

Like Bennett, who is director of Cardus think-tank, Gill shared concerns that Canada’s Immigration Department lacks expertise to regulate the cross-border movement of foreign-trained clergy, including assessing applicants’ qualifications.

Since Gill was raised in the Punjab, he says he’s fortunate to be able to understand the India-trained spiritual leaders when they routinely speak the language of the homeland, while often toiling in English.

“It means,” Gill said, “they’re good for my generation, but they’re not good for my kids.”

Many Canadian-born Sikhs, Gill said, are not fluent in Punjabi, which contributes to them drifting away from the faith — a trend confirmed by the Angus Reid Institute, which found immigrants are more devoted to their religion than their second- and third-generation offspring.

Gill believes Sikhism and other minority religions would hold on to more followers if they had more Canadian-born priests trained in Canada.

Foreign-trained clergy face steep learning curve

Kazemipur, author of The Muslim Question in Canada: A Story of Segmented Integration, says many foreign-trained imams who travel to serve in Canada don’t realize that Muslims in North America, being a minority, live dramatically different lives from those in Muslim-majority countries, where Islam pervades every aspect of life, including laws.

“The imams are often not very good at grasping that,” Kazemipur said. “They would come to Canada as if it didn’t matter which country they go to.”

All foreign-trained imams are fluent in Arabic, in which they often lead prayers and services, but many struggle in English, which can contribute to “a cultural sense of alienation in the Muslim community.”

There are two major conversations about foreign-trained clergy, said Kazemipur.

One is what he calls the “outside conversation,” in which non-Muslims focus on the potential politicization or radicalization of Muslims. The other is the more refined “conversation within,” which focuses on adapting Islam to democratic societies that orient to free expression and sexual liberation.

It is largely the internal conversation that’s reflected in a new book by Ed Husain, an Arab scholar who quietly toured many of the 2,000 mosques serving Britain’s three million Muslims. While his book, Among the Mosques, applauds the way many Muslims have integrated into British society, Husain also found some Muslim communities distancing themselves from British culture while advocating strict versions of the faith, including religious literalism, gender separation and negative attitudes to gays and lesbians.

Kazemipur does not support attempts by politicians in countries like France, who are responding to such self-segregation by what he calls “over-regulating” mosques and religious training.

But he says clergy born and religiously educated in places like Turkey or Iran have to find ways to respond effectively to Canadian adherents facing issues that don’t exist in their native land. “If they end up in Denmark, Germany or the U.S., many would just give the same kind of sermon.”

For instance, Kazemipur said, some clergy trained in socially conservative nations are not equipped to instruct teenage Muslims about how to respond when exposed to sex education and gender-diversity programs in public schools.

A foreign-trained imam might also teach that Canadian Muslims should avoid taking out a loan that requires paying interest, since that’s forbidden in traditional Islam. “But that would basically mean Muslims in Canada can’t get a mortgage,” Kazemipur said, “or a car loan or put their money in the bank.”

Pinto has run into similar cross-cultural experiences in the Catholic realm. Until he came to Canada, particularly Vancouver’s West End, he had never ministered to Catholic parishioners who are openly gay and lesbian.

Despite the inevitable cultural challenges that occur when Canadian religious organizations import spiritual leaders, Franken, of the Catholic archdiocese, is not alone in concluding: “Ultimately, foreign-trained priests have been a gift.”

Source: Douglas Todd: The promise and pitfalls of foreign-trained clergy in Canada

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , , , , ,

Critics say more action needed from Alberta government on immigration issues in wake of public opinion survey

2020/04/18 Leave a comment

Reflects the overall more conservative rural base and while the difference with other provinces is significant, there is less polarization than portrayed in the article. The UCP government, like most provincial governments, is generally pro-immigration:

Almost half of Albertans feel that there is too much immigration, a major increase over the national average. But advocates say the Alberta government has not done enough to curve that discrimination.

According to the Canadian Public Opinion on Immigration survey conducted in 2019 by the Environics Institute, 42 per cent of Albertans feel there is too much immigration. This is nine per cent more than the national average, with British Columbia at 30 per cent and Saskatchewan at 34 per cent.

The survey was based on telephone interviews conducted via landline and cell phones with 2,008 Canadians between Oct. 7 and Oct. 20, 2019. The results are accurate to within plus or minus 2.2 percentage points in 19 out of 20 samples.

These results don’t come as a surprise, as Alberta has made headlines for its anti-newcomer sentiments.

In 2016, an article from the National Post reported that a Calgary school was vandalized with anti-Syrian and anti-Trudeau graffiti. These messages included “real Canadians hate Syrians” and “burn all mosques.”

A similar story happened later in 2016 when a Calgary man spray-painted anti-Syrian graffiti to a Calgary LRT station because he was “mad at ISIS.” According to the CBC, the man later apologized in court and stated he had “changed his views.”

Two years later, a video of a woman shouting at a group of men in a Lethbridge Denny’s was uploaded to Facebook. The video shows the women yelling things such as, “Go back to your own f–ing country. We don’t need you here,” and “You’re not Canadian.”

The group of men she was yelling at were of Afghan background.

That anti-immigrant sentiment continues to this day. Dina Farman – an immigrant who moved to Alberta in 2006 – says she still faces discrimination.

“I worked in retail. I know how some people don’t like immigrants,” she says. “And even with me actually, I have black hair and [an accent], and some people give you that look like you’re not welcomed or something.”

One group that has been accused of making newcomers feel unwelcome is the Yellow Vests, a movement that has members in Calgary. The group was inspired by the “gilet jaunes” protests that began in France in 2018 as a result of high gas prices and the rising cost of living there. The movement there has been linked with outbursts of racism and anti-semitism.

But, in Canada, the Yellow Vests Facebook page says the group was created to “protest the CARBON TAX, Build That Pipeline and Stand Against the Treason of our country’s politicians who have the audacity to sell out OUR country’s sovereignty over to the Globalist UN and their Tyrannical policies.”

This movement is also known for opposing the presence of some newcomers in Canada and have been associated with racist and xenophobic behaviour and comments. In Calgary, members advocate for an end to what they describe as illegal migration while supporting immigration of “people who share our democratic values.”

One member of Yellow Vests Calgary — who wished not to be identified to prevent media scrutiny — says that for her, migration and immigration are different. Migrants and refugees have created some negative experiences for her, while the immigrants who “are willing to integrate are a joy.”

“I would consider immigration to be something that’s embedded, that we are choosing people that are going to help us economically, that are going to contribute and integrate and that they’re going to become Canadian. That’s a good thing for this country.”

“But then you have a large faction of people that come, that aren’t integrating and they’re clinging to a nation for which they’ve kind of turned away from but haven’t really [given up],” she says.

“If there’s an idea that they’re bringing with them [from] wherever they’ve come from, and it doesn’t fit with the morals and values of the country that you’ve chosen to come to, then that’s the challenges you face as an immigrant.”

Abdie Kazemipur, a professor at the University of Calgary who studied the socio-economic experiences of immigrants in Canada, says this is a very common argument. However, he says every time there is a pressure by mainstream institutions or populations to force immigrants to adopt their mainstream values, it actually backlashes.

“Even if immigrants [integrating] into the mainstream values and cultures is the desired outcome, the way to achieve that is by opening the society to them and giving them their space and allowing them to have interactions,” he says

Meanwhile, some governments in Canada are trying to reduce discrimination against refugees and immigrants.

In Manitoba, that led to the creation of their Advisory Council on Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism in 2015.

Their council is similar to Saskatchewan’s multicultural council, which was founded in 1975 to raise awareness of the benefits of cultural diversity and the dangers of racism.

More recently, the United Nations Refugee Agency created the campaign #WithRefugees in order to invite cities and local authorities all over the world who are working to promote inclusion, support refugees and bring communities together to sign a statement of solidarity.

While 16 cities across Canada have signed onto this campaign to show support, no cities in Alberta signed on.

But, at a provincial level, Alberta has taken some action. In 2018, the government released a long-delayed report on anti-racism activities. At the time, Global News published an article in which Greg Clark, the now-former MLA for Calgary-Elbow, said “it just fell off the radar and we’ve heard nothing about it. So obviously there is action needed.”

After that release, the Anti-Racism Advisory Council was created as the first government organization to fight the increase of racism in Alberta. A $2 million anti-racism community grant was also introduced to do the same thing.

However, since the UCP government has come into power, there has been no update found on the Anti-Racism Advisory Council’s webpage.

The UCP government has also eliminated the Alberta Human Rights Commission’s human rights education and multiculturalism fund as of November 2019 under the recent budget cuts. This $1-million grant has helped fund anti-racism and anti-discrimination in Alberta since 1988.

Additionally, the $2-million anti-racism community grant was replaced with the multiculturalism, indigenous and inclusion grant program with a budget of $1.5 million under the UCP government. In other words, less money is now being used to address a lot more problems – just one of which would be anti-immigrant sentiment.

Sam Nammoura, the co-founder of the Calgary Immigrant Support Society, says the government of Alberta can be doing more to bring awareness towards the discrimination of immigrants.

“Instead of making a one-week event to create awareness, it should be addressed constantly,” he says.

Kazemipur, who wrote his PhD thesis on the economic experiences of immigrants and ethnic minorities in Canada, also says the Government of Alberta is taking too minimal of an approach.

“They can actually try to encourage the population to develop better views and better experiences of immigrants and minorities,” he says.

“After this happens and after this population blends into one larger population, then this distinction between immigrant and non-immigrant becomes basically meaningless. So all these negative feelings towards immigrants will disappear as a result.”

Kazemipur thinks that the best way to encourage this solution would be through educational programs that bring people together.

“Educational programs are definitely a starting point to emphasize the cultural competence and to expose people to different lives despite different cultural orientations and the values that are embedded in any of these alternative lifestyles,” he says.

“I think there could be more education in order to move people from their own comfort zones so that they can engage with people from other cultural backgrounds.”

Nada Bodagh, who moved to Canada from Iraq in 2009, agrees.

“People just don’t understand yet because they need answers to their questions,” she says. [Immigrants need to] feel they are involved so they are not isolated because the worst feeling when they are new here is feeling lonely and isolated.”

Kazemipur says that the government needs to make improvements to strengthen the bond between the population.

“The provincial government could be more proactive and could make this a priority knowing that without [social interaction] in the population, the economic plans and political plans wouldn’t succeed,”

“I think there’s a lot more work that needs to be done,” says Nammoura.

To better understand the work that is being done by the Alberta government, the Calgary Journal attempted to contact Leela Aheer, the minister of culture, multiculturalism and status of women for an interview involving the lack of programs in place that create inclusiveness for immigrants and refugees.

Instead, we received a statement from the press secretary, Danielle Murray.

“Our government is working to build a province where all people feel safe, welcome and valued. We are working with the Alberta Anti-Racism Advisory Council to determine how they can support our work to address racial and multicultural barriers in Alberta,” the statement read.

We did not receive any further response after a second request for an interview with Aheer.

Source: Critics say more action needed from Alberta government on immigration issues in wake of public opinion survey

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,