I have been singing the praises of my new parish ever since I moved to the small Wisconsin town where I live. Here people respond and sing with conviction during the liturgies. They participate as lectors, altar servers and Eucharistic ministers. Our pastor comes from India. He loves his vocation, projects warmth, and is great with kids. He’s everything you want in a parish priest—except I can’t understand a word he says.

I’m not alone. Today around a quarter of Catholic diocesan priests were born outside the U.S., and about 30% of priests ordained in America last year were foreign-born. Some of my friends complain that priests from Africa and India seem to be taking over American parishes. While recognizing they’re lucky even to have a priest, they still bemoan the deeply accented, sometimes incomprehensible English they’re subjected to.

Why the discontent? It’s more than a language issue. Not long ago, priests from the U.S. were the world’s missionaries. Adventurers from Biloxi, Boston and Boise set forth and spread the Gospel in places like Nigeria, Nicaragua and Papua New Guinea. They would return home and preach about poverty, illiteracy and disease. We could alleviate these problems, they’d tell us, with money and prayer. The missionaries inspired financial generosity, prayer and vocations to religious life. They made us proud.

And help we did. I still remember the Association of the Holy Childhood, a foreign mission organization. It sponsored a program in which students could adopt a “pagan baby,” whereby a donor could name the child and receive a certificate. In 1950 a pagan orphan “adoption” cost $5—around $50 today. My sisters and I “bought” several by saving our allowances and doing chores. We named each John, after our father, who only had daughters. The program instilled in us the importance of helping those less fortunate and spreading the good news in the process.

Now grown up, those pagan babies have cellphones, careers, Twitter accounts and many trappings of modern life. Some have become priests and nuns after learning English as the language of commerce in their native lands. Many see opportunities for ministry in the U.S. Some come as political refugees; others find salaries are higher here, enabling them to send money home to support their families. Still others find that life in the U.S. is just more comfortable. Most see the U.S. as spiritually needy—so privileged that its people no longer crave sacramental care.