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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:

• The Week magazine: "A Shortage of Priests" (Nov. 18, 2005)
• The Cincinnatti Enquirer: "Special Report: The Changing Church" (May 2, 2004)
• Beliefnet.com: "The New Pope's First Crisis"
• Boston College Magazine: "Facts and Figures: The State of the Priesthood" (Summer 2005)
  

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."

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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:  

• 2002 NPPA TV winners
  

• 2003 NPPA TV Winners
  

• 2004 NPPA TV Winners 

• 2005 NPPA TV Winners 

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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.

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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."

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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.
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