WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post
March 21, 2019
As the Catholic Church quakes through one sexual abuse scandal after another, Pope Francis recently announced a policy he wants to implement on a worldwide scale: No man should become a priest without a psychological evaluation proving he is suited to a life of chastity.
In the United States, most men seeking to enter a Catholic seminary undergo psychological testing, often a battery of questions that probes their deepest secrets and can last for days.
As Francis elevates the visibility of this type of testing, it raises the question of just how this profiling works and whether any psychologist can truly determine a young man is cut out for a lifelong vow to abstain from sex or is likely to commit sexual crimes. As it stands, there is no single agreed-upon method for conducting these assessments of priests. There is also no reliable way of measuring the tests’ effectiveness at weeding out problem priests.
“Standard psychological testing, it’s not very good in ferreting out sexual difficulties among the general population,” said Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, a Catholic University professor who formerly led St. Luke Institute, a mental health facility for priests. “There isn’t much. We’ve been working hard to figure out what to do, how do we better understand sexuality.”
Outside the church, some scientists think the quest to identify future problem priests through psychology is a fool’s errand – especially when it comes to preventing pedophiles from entering the priesthood.
“From a scientific point of view, it’s useless,” said James Cantor, a Toronto researcher who is a leading expert on pedophilia. “There does not exist a pen-and-pencil test [to diagnose pedophilia]. Just asking someone isn’t going to help.”
But the idea of psychological testing for priests dates back decades; Rossetti said he went through a battery of tests when he entered the seminary in 1979. Other religious denominations routinely ask their clergy candidates to undergo psychological evaluations as well.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.