BishopAccountability.org
	Psychological Vetting of Would-Be Priests Exacerbates Decline Irish Church's Aim for Quality over Quantity Means Mother Teresa Would Have Been Rejected, Nun Admits Buzzle (United States) September 9, 2008 http://www.buzzle.com/articles/222294.html Ireland may be running out of priests and nuns but if a young Mother Teresa tried to join the Catholic clergy today she would be sent packing for being psychologically unsuitable. Nuns and priests from Ireland's dwindling religious orders have revealed that all new recruits are now psychologically vetted. The screening process is partly to prevent a repetition of the clerical abuse scandals that hit Irish Catholicism in the 1990s and dramatically reduced the church hierarchy's political power. Fr Kenneth Brady from the Passionist order based in Mount Argus, Dublin, admitted that the psychological testing had exacerbated the decline in men being accepted into the priesthood. "Four said they wanted to apply to join last year: when it came to the crunch, only two made a formal application; they met with the psychologist and were assessed. One was deferred and one was accepted. "There is no point in people coming to us expecting a sheltered life; the walls have come down a long time ago. They are going to meet the same kind of humanity as everywhere else, and they have to be ready for it." Even nuns belonging to the same order as the late Mother Teresa accept that their most famous member may not have stood up to the rigorous vetting procedures. Sister Kathleen Fitzgerald of the Loreto order based in Dublin's Rathfarnham district conceded that if a teenage Mother Teresa were to turn up today and offer herself as she did in the 1920s she would not be accepted. "Teresa was only 18 years old and referred to the order by a priest who was impressed by her religious temperament. Today, psychological profiling would weed her out." Malachi O'Doherty, whose book Empty Pulpits will be published this month, said that leading members of religious orders in Ireland admitted they now preferred quality to quantity in the priesthood. He said: "The Catholic church seems to be acknowledging that no one in their right minds would want to be a priest these days. And that is actually a sign of maturity on the part of the religious orders. It has to be in part to do with the scandals from the 1990s but also because the religious life is such a painful and lonely life, so only someone with a rugged sense of self-esteem could survive it." Fr Paschal Scallon, a Vincentian father, says in the book that there is "widespread low level depression among priests ... priests are grossly demoralized". He says: "I have come across circumstances where colleagues were told, under no circumstances are you to encourage my son to be a priest. "People are afraid that if their son went forward to be a priest he would be lonely beyond endurance. But the thing is, it takes several years to get ordained or to become professed in a religious community. It is a great deal more rigorous than the preparation for marriage is. You can get married at three months' notice." But Scallon wants the vetting to be even more rigorous, given that people are going through the years of training and ordination and then dropping out. "In the past boys were accepted for training in junior seminaries at 14. The junior seminary is a thing of the past. Even 18 is too young now. "In our own community if people want to come and join us we would be looking for them to be in their early to mid-20s but no older than 35," he says. Situations vacant · 160 Irish priests died last year but only nine priests were ordained · 228 Irish nuns died but only two Irish women joined holy orders · According to the Irish Catholic newspaper there are 4,752 priests serving in Ireland, with the number expected to fall to 1,500 by 2028 · The pedophile priest scandals began in 1994 when the government initially refused to extradite serial child abuser Fr Brendan Smyth to Northern Ireland. Resistance within the Irish establishment to handing over Smyth led to the collapse of Albert Reynolds' Fianna Fáil-labor government, with labor pulling out in protest at the Smyth scandal · The scandal was followed by similar revelations of priests abusing children in parishes across Ireland · About €1bn (£800m) has been paid out to the victims of clerical abuse to date. The whole cost has been shouldered by the Irish taxpayer rather than the church
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.