Home - Guide to Religion and Mythology Resources - UMUC Subject Resources at University of Maryland University College. Catholic priests to face psychological screening | World news. New Catholic priests are to be psychologically screened as the Vatican increases its efforts to be more selective after a series of sex abuse scandals. The church has issued selection guidelines to help leaders remove priesthood candidates with "psychopathic disturbances". Monsignor Jean-Louis Brugues said the guidelines "became ever more urgent because of the sexual scandals". Psychological testing was used in some seminaries as far back as the 1960s, well before the sexual abuse scandals exploded in public, he said. The church has paid out hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years to victims of abuse. "In all too many cases, psychological defects, sometimes of a pathological kind, reveal themselves only after ordination to the priesthood," the guidelines say.
"Detecting defects earlier would help avoid many tragic experiences. " The guidelines state that problems like "confused or not yet well defined" sexual identity must be considered and addressed. Catholic church: Decline in priest numbers exacerbated by psychological vetting | World news. 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. Efforts Rising to Ordain Women as Roman Catholic Priests. Alta Jacko is the mother of eight children. She is also an ordained priest in the Roman Catholic Church. Jacko, 81, who earned her master's degree in pastoral studies from Loyola University, a Jesuit Catholic school, says being a priest is what she was called to do. Officially, of course, the Catholic Church's Canon Law 1024 says that only baptized men can receive holy orders. But there is a movement against the no-women rule; it began eight years ago when a cluster of renegade male clerics (including a European bishop whose identity the female priests won't reveal in order not to risk his excommunication) ordained the first women.
Now, in Jacko's hometown of Chicago, three women have entered the priesthood. Like many other priests, Jacko trained in various parishes before becoming ordained. Unlike many other priests, however, she was not always easily received by her elders. Yet Bossie assisted Jacko anyway. It is a question that more and more members of the flock are asking. Facing Decline, an Effort to Market the Priesthood. Catholic Culture : Dictionary : LAICIZATION. A modern dictionary of Catholic terms, both common and obscure. Find accurate definitions of words and phrases. 0Google + 0Delicious The act of reducing an ecclesiastical person or thing to a lay status.
All items in this dictionary are from Fr. Recent Catholic Commentary Top Catholic News Most Important Stories of the Last 30 Days Copyright © 2014 Trinity Communications. Catholic Church faces new crisis — Ireland is running out of priests -Times Online. Pope says condoms sometimes permissible to stop AIDS. Pope approves use of condoms in fight against Aids. Not enough Catholic priests? End celibacy, ordain women.
October 27, 2010|By Dan Rodricks Assuming that the number of Catholic priests in the Baltimore archdiocese continues to decline, and that Mel Gibson Catholicism prevails to preserve celibacy and keep women from ordination, then, by all means, leaders of the senior see of the United States should go after the disgruntled Anglicans. Rather than taking Catholic priests from Latin America, Africa and Asia to serve here, Anglo recruitment could be the church's best hope for picking up a few new clergy whose primary language is English. Sunday, members of Mount Calvary Episcopal Church, an "orthodox Anglo-Catholic" congregation near Maryland General Hospital, voted in the undercroft to break ties with the Episcopal Church and request permission to go Roman Catholic.
It's doubtful they'll be turned away. Of course, ordained Catholic priests — or the small number of seminarians — don't and won't have that freedom. The Rev. Dan Rodricks' column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays.