I recently attended a seminary advisory board meeting, where I was asked to discuss my experience conducting psychological evaluations of seminary applicants. After my brief overview, a bishop bluntly stated, “Back in my day, the psychological evaluations were a joke. We all sat around joking about them. They are certainly not a joke now.”

The bishop’s sentiment is in line with national trends across seminaries. Seminaries routinely use comprehensive psychological evaluations as an important gatekeeping tool. The evaluation is one contributing factor to what the National Catholic Register has dubbed a “seminary renaissance” in the United States.

Having been involved in seminary formation as a clinical psychologist for the past 13 years, I cannot disagree. Seminaries that I work with are more serious about the human formation of seminarians and value the psychological evaluation as an integral part of admissions. That does not mean that seminaries should rest on their laurels. After all, the early Renaissance produced talented artists like Lorenzo Ghiberti, but the movement didn’t reach its full glory until Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel a century later. 

Over the past few years, I have been studying the usefulness of psychological evaluations in seminary admissions. I interviewed seminary rectors, vocation directors, evaluating psychologists, in-house counselors and seminarians — 32 people in total. I wanted to gain a 360-degree perspective. My prevailing question to each person was, “What makes these evaluations useful?” I learned a lot through their answers. 

Psychological evaluations are expensive, costing about $2,000-$5,000 per candidate, not including any indirect costs such as travel and lodging. These costs are typically borne by dioceses and religious communities. Using some napkin math, if about 1,000 men apply to the seminary each year, then the Catholic Church assumes an estimated yearly cost of $2-$4.5 million. That’s a lot of money. 

Here is the good news: Almost everyone I interviewed thought the benefits of the evaluation outweighed the costs, with one rector saying, “It’s like the moment of truth when I get the report. Do I really know the man? You can’t admit a man without the evaluation. It is hard to estimate the value.” 

I was amazed by what I learned from the evaluating psychologists — all faithful Catholics, highly competent professionals, and members of the Catholic Psychotherapy Association — who approached their work with deep commitment to the candidate and the Church. Some told me they would charge twice as much for comparable evaluations outside the Church, and even though they were often losing money, they pressed on out of a sincere desire to serve. Many poured 20 or more hours into each report. 

Everyone in the study agreed that evaluations are useful to identify “red flags” in candidates. These were described as any psychological concern that would prevent a candidate from being successful in seminary formation. 

Some examples included pornography consumption and family-of-origin wounds. The seminarians said some of the more amusing statements like, “They want to know if I’m crazy or if I’m a sociopath. I’m not, but I understand that they need to know.” In 2015, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) published an important document entitled “Guidelines for the Use of Psychology in Seminary Admissions.” The guidelines provide a road map for psychologists, vocation directors and rectors for the evaluation. 

The USCCB guidelines do not use the term “red flags” but include a similar concept. The bishops laid out a list of “contraindications” to an authentic vocation to the priesthood, such as addictions, untreated psychological disorders, and any kind of criminal behavior. The problem that I identified in my data analysis is that there was little consensus about what constitutes a red flag. In addition, there was low congruence between the red flags discussed in my study and the contraindications listed in the USCCB guidelines. In other words, we need to get on the same page. 

The USCCB guidelines and the new Program of Priestly Formation (PPF) also recognize that every candidate is not perfect and has natural areas of growth. The PPF refers to this as the principle of gradualism. 

Gradualism is very consistent with modern psychological theory and the science of human development. In short, young adults still have a lot of growing, learning and maturing to do. That growing and maturing is gradual; it does not happen overnight. There is wisdom to seminary formation lasting six to eight years. 

It stands to reason that a psychological evaluation is helpful in identifying problems. The evaluation is a gatekeeping tool, and the Church has experienced the unfortunate consequences of psychologically unhealthy priests who slipped through the cracks. However, the value of the evaluation is limited if it is only used to identify red flags and does not account for gradualism. 

To maximize the value and the impact, the evaluation needs to be a tool for growth. This requires a commitment from all stakeholders. The evaluating psychologist needs to include recommendations that can be used in formation. The vocation director needs to reinforce those recommendations with the applicant. The rector needs to ensure the recommendations are implemented in the seminarian’s individualized formation plan. The seminarian needs to be open to the growth areas and take responsibility for progress with the formation goals. 

Unfortunately, my research found that it is challenging to gain the needed commitment from all stakeholders. All too often, the evaluation report was simply filed away and never revisited. Several of the seminarians were dismayed that they never received any feedback about the evaluation. Vocation directors described poorly written reports that did not have recommendations. Thus, if we want evaluations to be truly effective, we need a better commitment by all stakeholders to using the evaluation as a tool for growth.

We all want more good, young priests — but not every man is called to enter seminary. Psychological evaluations play a vital role in making those difficult, but necessary, discernments.