The National Catholic Register — the flagship propaganda organ of the conciliar sect in the United States — reports on a new study from the University of Notre Dame’s McGrath Institute for Church Life, titled Do You Know Them to Be Worthy?, which demands “better preparation for celibacy, greater use of psychological resources and a focus on vocational quality over quantity” in the sect’s seminaries. The study, authored by a psychologist and a moral theology professor from St. Joseph’s Seminary in the Archdiocese of New York, advocates for stringent psychological screening, acceptance of medicated ADHD and autism candidates, and a “unified discernment” on ordaining men with same-sex attraction provided they are “firmly committed to celibacy.” This report exposes the total capitulation of the conciliar sect to naturalistic psychologism, the complete abandonment of supernatural criteria for the priesthood, and the institutionalization of the very evils that the true Church has always condemned as incompatible with the sacerdotal character.
The Naturalistic Reduction of the Priesthood to a Psychological Profile
The cited article reveals, with inadvertent clarity, that the conciliar sect no longer understands the priesthood as a sacramental character (character indelebilis) conferred by a valid sacrament of Holy Orders, but as a professional vocation requiring “psychosexual maturity” and “mental health.” The study’s co-author, Timothy Lock, a psychologist, states explicitly: “The lay people do not want priests who are addicted to pornography, masturbating every night, and hooking up with guys on Grindr… We want to grow in our relationship with the Lord and live a life of virtue.” Notice the purely horizontal, sociological framing: the “lay people” (the “People of God” of Vatican II’s ecclesiology) are the measure of the priesthood, not the sanctitas required by the Canon Episcopi and the Council of Trent (Sess. XXIII, can. 2: “Si quis dixerit… non esse in Novo Testamento sacerdotium visibile et externum… anathema sit”).
The study’s very title — Do You Know Them to Be Worthy? — parodies the question from the invalid 1968 Pontificale Romanum of “Pope” Paul VI (Montini), which replaced the traditional Rite of Ordination that explicitly invoked the Spiritus Sanctus and the potestas ordinis to offer the Sacrificium propitiatorium. The true Church, as defined by Pope Pius XII in Sacramentum Ordinis (1947), teaches that the matter and form of Holy Orders are the imposition of hands and the consecratory prayer specifying the potestas consecrandi and offerendi. The conciliar rite, by suppressing the explicit reference to the Sacrifice of the Mass and the power to forgive sins, renders the sacrament doubtful at best, invalid at worst — as Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre himself admitted when he declared the new rite “doubtful” yet continued to recognize its authors as legitimate popes, a contradiction that defines the pseudo-traditionalist trap.
Psychologism as a Substitute for Grace: The Modernist Error Condemned by St. Pius X
The report’s insistence on “psychological resources,” “initial psychological evaluation,” and the lament that “most of the psychologists preparing the evaluations are not Catholics” is the triumph of Modernist immanentism condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907) and Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1910). Proposition 25 of Lamentabili condemns: “Faith, as assent of the mind, is ultimately based on a sum of probabilities.” Proposition 26: “The dogmas of faith should be understood according to their practical function, i.e., as binding in action, rather than as principles of belief.” The conciliar sect has replaced the gratia sanctificans and the donum Spiritus Sancti with psychological “assessments of suitability” and “psychosexual maturity.”
Father Thomas Berg’s admission — “The longer one spends engaged in the work of priestly formation, the more likely we are to have to endure the excruciating experience of watching a man be ordained who, in one’s strong judgment, should not be” — is an indictment of the entire conciliar system. In the true Church, the vocatio divina is discerned through the signa vocationis: recta intentio, sanitas corporis et animae, scientia sufficiens, aetas canonica, legitimatus, liberta a irregularitatibus (Council of Trent, Sess. XXIII, c. 2; Corpus Iuris Canonici, c. 968-975). The “psychological evaluation” is a novelty unknown to the Ratio Fundamentalis Institutionis Sacerdotalis of Pius XI (1931) or the Exhortatio ad Clerum of Pius XII (1950). It is the fruit of the Land O’Lakes Statement (1967), where Notre Dame led the rebellion against Ex Corde Ecclesiae and embraced academic “autonomy” from the Magisterium.
The Sodomite Infiltration: “Unified Discernment” on Homosexuality
The most damning recommendation of the study is its call for bishops to “foster and actively engage in the necessary conversations that will move the Church toward a more unified discernment of how the Holy Spirit is guiding us on this question” — the question being the ordination of men with same-sex attraction. The article notes that 22% of “bishops” surveyed are “comfortable ordaining a man who is sexually attracted to males, provided he is firmly committed to celibacy.”
This is a direct, formal rebellion against Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Quas Primas (1925), which teaches that Christ’s Kingship demands “that all relations in the state be ordered on the basis of God’s commandments and Christian principles” — and against the 1961 Instruction Careful Selection and Training of Candidates for the States of Perfection and Sacred Orders (Sacred Congregation for Religious), which explicitly states: “Those who are affected by the perverse inclination to homosexuality or pederasty should be excluded from religious vows and ordination… such persons, in fact, find themselves in a situation which gravely hinders them from relating correctly to men and women… and from exercising the priestly ministry.” The conciliar sect’s “psychologists” now label this perennial doctrine “rigidity” and “lack of empathy.”
St. Peter Damian, Doctor of the Church, in Liber Gomorrhianus (c. 1051), written to Pope Leo IX, thundered: “Whoever does not avoid the company of such men, or does not condemn them with his voice, becomes a partaker of their guilt… The priesthood is defiled by the filth of sodomy.” The Council of Trent (Sess. XXIV, can. 9) anathematizes those who say “clerics… can contract marriage… let him be anathema.” The conciliar sect, by entertaining the ordination of active or “celibate” sodomites, places itself under this anathema. The “Holy Spirit” they invoke is the spiritus mundi of Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes, not the Spiritus Veritatis who “convincet mundum de peccato” (John 16:8).
Autism, ADHD, and the Lowering of Canonical Standards
The study’s recommendation that “being medicated for ADHD or OCD should not be considered an impediment to ordination” and that autism — acknowledged to involve “reduced empathy” and “cognitive and emotional rigidity” — requires “greater research and support” rather than exclusion, violates the ius divinum and ius canonicum requirements for the priesthood. Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code (cited in the provided Defense of Sedevacantism file) declares that an office becomes vacant “ipso facto et sine ulla declaratione… si clericus… publice a fide catholica defecerit.” While this canon addresses defection from the faith, the principle ipso facto applies to any canonical impediment that renders a man inhabilis for orders.
Canon 984 §1</baptism), Canon 986 (age), Canon 987 (confirmation), Canon 988 (no irregularity), Canon 989 (sanity), Canon 990 (freedom) — all require integritas of mind and body. The Corpus Iuris Canonici (c. 1025) demands “bona mens, sanus corpus, integra fides.” The deliberate admission of men with diagnosed neurodevelopmental disorders requiring medication — disorders that by the study’s own admission impair “empathy” and cause “rigidity” — is a crime against the munus pastorale. The priest must be alter Christus, capable of curare animas with the caritas Christi (2 Cor 5:14), not a patient managed by psychotropic drugs. This is the democratizatio sacerdotii condemned by Pope Pius XII in Menti Nostrae (1950): “The priesthood is not a profession… it is a vocation to holiness.”
The “Clergy Sex Abuse Crisis” as Fruit of the Conciliar Revolution
The article’s framing — John Cavadini’s forward situating the report “squarely in the context of the clergy sex abuse crisis” — exposes the conciliar sect’s refusal to acknowledge the causa proxima of the crisis: the Second Vatican Council and the new Mass. The “crisis” exploded after the introduction of the Novus Ordo Missae (1969), the new rite of ordination (1968), the relaxation of seminary discipline (1960s), and the infiltration of seminaries by homosexual networks (documented by Randy Engel, The Rite of Sodomy).
Pope Pius XI in Quas Primas warned: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed… the entire human society had to be shaken, because it lacked a stable and strong foundation.” The conciliar sect removed Christ the King from the liturgy (the Novus Ordo suppresses the Offertory prayers offering the Hostia immaculata for the peccata mea), from the seminary curriculum (replacing Thomistic philosophy with phenomenology and psychology), and from the very definition of the priesthood (replacing sacerdos alter Christus with presbyter presider). The “psychological screening” is a technocratic band-aid on a metaphysical amputation.
Notre Dame: The Epicenter of Modernist Subversion
The study emanates from the University of Notre Dame, the very institution that hosted the Land O’Lakes Conference (1967) where “Catholic” university presidents declared their “autonomy” from the Holy See. Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, CSC, Notre Dame’s president, was a chief architect of the Land O’Lakes Statement, which proclaimed: “The Catholic university must be autonomous… in the face of authority of whatever kind, lay or clerical, external to the academic community.” This is the Proposition 11 of the Syllabus of Errors (1864) condemned by Pope Pius IX: “The Church not only ought never to pass judgment on philosophy, but ought to tolerate the errors of philosophy, leaving it to correct itself.” Notre Dame’s “McGrath Institute for Church Life” is a direct fruit of this rebellion, producing studies that replace the Magisterium with “experts” and “psychologists.”
John Cavadini, the forward writer, is a known proponent of the hermeneutic of continuity — the Modernist device to make Vatican II appear compatible with Tradition. The study’s co-author, Fr. Thomas Berg, teaches at St. Joseph’s Seminary (Dunwoodie), the seminary of the Archdiocese of New York under “Cardinal” Dolan, a public supporter of the LGBT agenda and the Synod on Synodality. The other co-author, Timothy Lock, is a psychologist, not a theologian — the magister dixit of the new priesthood is the DSM-5, not the Summa Theologiae.
The Invalidity of the Conciliar “Ordination” Rite
The entire premise of the article — screening candidates for “ordination” — presupposes the validity of the 1968 Pontificale Romanum. Archbishop Pierre Martin Ngô Đình Thục (validly consecrated 1938) and Bishop Michel-Louis Guérard des Lauriers (consecrated by Thục, 1981) both held that the new rite is invalid due to defectus formae: the suppression of the explicit potestas offerendi et consecrandi and the replacement of the traditional Prex Consecratoria with a vague “prayer of ordination” that does not specify the sacerdotium ministeriale as distinct from the sacerdotium commune fidelium. Pope Pius XII in Sacramentum Ordinis defined the form as: “Da, quaesumus, omnipotens Pater, in hos famulos tuos Spiritum Sanctum… ut digni sint… offerre tibi dona et preces…” The 1968 rite omits this. Therefore, no “ordination” in the conciliar sect produces a priest. The “seminarians” are being formed for a simulacrum sacerdotii, a ministry of the Church of the New Advent, not the Sacerdotium Christi.
The Silence on the Supernatural: The Gravest Accusation
Nowhere in the article, the study, or the quoted “experts” is there mention of: the state of grace; the Sacrament of Penance as the via necessaria for the seminarian; the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass (the Traditional Latin Mass) as the fons et culmen of priestly formation; the Divine Office (Breviarium Romanum) as the oratio Ecclesiae; the Rosary and devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary as the arma spiritualia; the Four Last Things (Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell); the imitation of Christ Crucified; the vow of poverty, chastity, obedience as consilia evangelica.
This silence is the fides implicita of the conciliar sect’s apostasy. Pope St. Pius X in Pascendi identified the Modernist method: “They put forward the idea that the Church must be reconciled with modern civilization… they wish to transform the Church into a purely human society.” The study’s language — “psychosexual maturity,” “mental health professionals,” “degraded culture,” “clarion call to greatness” — is the language of the City of Man, not the City of God (St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, XIV.28).
Conclusion: Return to the Immutable Tradition
The Notre Dame study is not a “clarion call to greatness” but a declaration of bankruptcy. It proves that the conciliar sect has no supernatural criteria for the priesthood, only naturalistic metrics. It confirms that the Novus Ordo seminaries are fabricae haereticorum, producing not alter Christus but psychologically adjusted functionaries for a paramasonic structure occupying the Vatican.
The only remedy is the total rejection of the conciliar revolution and the return to the Tradition of the Ecclesia Catholica as it existed before 1958: the Traditional Latin Mass, the traditional Rite of Ordination, the Thomistic seminary curriculum, the Canon Law of 1917, the Syllabus of Errors, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, Quas Primas, and the Sede Vacante reality since the death of Pope Pius XII. As St. Robert Bellarmine teaches (cited in the Defense of Sedevacantism file): “A manifest heretic… by that very fact ceases to be Pope and head… a non-Christian in no way can be Pope.” The line of usurpers from John XXIII (Roncalli) to Leo XIV (Prevost) are manifesti haeretici by their adherence to Vatican II’s errors (Dignitatis Humanae, Nostra Aetate, Unitatis Redintegratio, Gaudium et Spes). Their “seminaries” are synagogae Satanas (Apoc 2:9).
“Quisquis enim non est Christianus, nullatenus potest esse Papa… manifestus haereticus non est Christianus… ergo manifestus haereticus non potest esse Papa.” (St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice, II.30). The conciliar sect’s “priests” are nulla ordinatione. The faithful must fugere these structures and cleave to the reliquiae of the true Church: validly ordained bishops and priests holding the Tradition entire.
Non praevalebunt. (Matt 16:18).
Source:
US Seminaries Need to Improve Screening and Support for Priesthood Candidates, Study Finds (ncregister.com)
Date: 17.07.2026