“Shrinking” vocations: the McGrath report on seminary reform, pt. 2

By Eamonn Clark, STL ( bio - articles - email ) | Aug 06, 2026

(Part 1)

Perhaps the most breathtaking content of the McGrath Report is found in Proposal 5:

Given that the candidate has the obligation to disclose himself to the Church and that the Church has the right to know the man, a goal of seminary counseling/psychotherapy and spiritual direction ought to be to help the seminarian bring into the external forum those personal issues known in the internal forum which bear on his own formation and on a judgment pertaining to his suitability for Orders.

The “internal forum/external forum” distinction is necessary to explain in brief. The contents of the internal forum in seminary formation are essentially those things which belong in the sacrament of confession and in the context of spiritual direction as such. These are privileged encounters which do not admit of exposure: the sacramental internal forum absolutely speaking, and the non-sacramental internal forum under only the most serious exceptions. The normative document for seminaries in the USA, Program of Priestly Formation, explains the content and significance of the internal forum as follows:

The primary relationship in the internal forum is that between a seminarian and his spiritual director. The purpose of the “internal forum” is to protect the manifestation of conscience of the seminarian and to provide him the space to share about his interior life with the moral freedom that is necessary for genuine growth and discernment. These discussions generally include, but are not limited to, movements in prayer, vocational discernment, growth in interior freedom, and struggles and growth in preparation for the promises of prayer, obedience, and celibacy. While the manifestation of conscience and sacramental confession are never part of the external forum, over time the seminarian will grow comfortable discussing appropriate interior matters related to his vocation with formators in the external forum. A solid relationship of trust with his formators in both fora will benefit the seminarian as he receives guidance from all formators. This relationship will allow major decisions to be reached following regular discussions throughout the formation process, so that the seminarian will not be surprised by decisions reached by those responsible for his formation, and vice versa. It must be clear that the material of spiritual direction and confession are not to be shared by spiritual directors with external forum personnel. (PPF 94-95)

The PPF is clear about the value of the internal forum as such. It allows privileged conversation to take place free from the threat of the judgment of formators—those who vote on whether the seminarian advances in the program of formation. Things discussed in this context could include poorly-articulated thoughts, fleeting temptations, and badly understood fears about one’s future ministry and life which would be fodder for misunderstanding and resulting severe treatment in the external forum. This is due not only to fallen human nature and group psychology, but also to the reality that men do not customarily speak about themselves so openly in the external forum. This means that if a seminarian is speaking about anything and everything which he brings up in the safety of spiritual direction, he is going to stick out, with the worst disclosures naturally rising to the top.

The PPF continues:

Disclosures that a seminarian makes in the course of spiritual direction belong to the internal forum. Consequently, the spiritual director is held to the strictest confidentiality concerning information received in spiritual direction. He may neither reveal it nor use it. Although the civil legal requirements might vary from state to state, the only possible exception to this standard of confidentiality would be the case of grave, immediate, or mortal danger involving the directee or another person. If what is revealed in spiritual direction coincides with the celebration of the Sacrament of Penance (in other words, what is revealed is revealed ad ordinem absolutionis)—that is, the exchange takes place not only in the nonsacramental internal forum but also in the sacramental internal forum—then the absolute canonical strictures of the seal of confession hold, and no information may be revealed or used. (PPF, 111)

The McGrath Report treats the psychologist as a scientific version of a spiritual director. That the psychologist likely has little to no theological training is one part of the problem.

Another part of the problem is that the psychologist sticks out in a formation program in a way that a spiritual director does not. Seminaries have priests who speak about spiritual things. This intuitively makes sense, and there are centuries of precedent to draw from. The same is not true of ongoing psychological assessment, hence seminarians perceive a greater risk in interacting with the psychologist.

Despite explicitly rejecting the notion that psychological assessments belong to the internal forum, the McGrath Report describes various models of confidentiality which largely track the spiritual direction paradigm as described in the PPF.

Overall, what this proposal is saying is that the internal forum in general is only for the weak. It is training wheels. Real men speak about everything on their mind with the entire formation team.

I could hardly imagine a better way to ruin the value of the internal forum than to imply that you are doing something wrong by actually using it. Seminaries that pursue the sort of psychological assessment paradigm which the McGrath Report describes as requiring signed release forms from seminarians (the third model described in the report) are likely subverting their own formation process in many cases. The psychologist-seminarian relationship becomes the same as any other relationship with an external formator in the seminary, just with a different topic of conversation. The human weakness of the seminarian does not disappear simply because he has been in formation for a whole three years—just as the human weakness of formators does not disappear upon receiving an assignment to a seminary.

There is a clear tension between the risk of seminarians “keeping secrets” and the risk of devaluing the internal forum in favor of the external forum. However, by making it an explicit goal not only of psychological evaluation but also of spiritual direction for the seminarian to self-immolate in the external forum is a step too far, in my opinion. It introduces a looming pressure on all conversations in the internal forum regarding anything which is potentially a “formation problem.” The goal of the entire seminary program is to make the seminarian more virtuous—why can’t we leave it at that and trust him to do the rest?

I note in passing the McGrath Report’s treatment of serious psychological issues. Suddenly it seems that major psychological dysfunction may not be that problematic after all. Why? Especially concerning is the somewhat casual downplaying of Autism Spectrum Disorder insofar as it concerns reduced empathy and struggling with social cues. Isn’t one of the most important things about a priest in parish ministry that he excels at empathy and social cues? Why does the report not emphasize this and suggest that candidates who are even slightly deficient in these respects be recommended for special ministries where their abnormal psychology is rendered less problematic or could even be helpful, such as in teaching or administrative tasks or tribunal work?

The final recommendations regard sexual behavior:

When men enter first Configuration, they should have already been sexually continent for a sustained period of time of at least several months without a lapse; similarly, prior to being called to the diaconate, seminarians should have been living in continence for a longer period, typically twelve months or more, without lapsing.

The report seems rather clearly to be referring to the sin of self-abuse and connected phenomena—though it is frankly bizarre why there is not crystal clarity on what is excluded from the definition of a “lapse” in the four pages of commentary that follow the proposal. There is much to sift through in those four pages, but I will limit my observations to the following.

First, it is in some sense pathetic that we must have such a conversation to begin with. No doubt many young men are earnest and sincere in their desire to pursue Holy Orders to serve the Church. But if they are addicted to pornography and need a twelve-step program to get out of this habit so that they can begin to focus on their studies, their prayer, their personal habits, and their pastoral experiences, they need to be excluded from the seminary formation program altogether. In the Praxis Confessarii, St. Alphonsus Liguori warned confessors to refuse absolution to seminarians who “lapsed” until they resolved to leave, if they were close to ordination, unless the penitent displayed some kind of extraordinary sorrow or purpose of amendment, since he who does not yet possess extraordinary goodness rather than merely being in the state of grace is not fit matter for Holy Orders. This is a signal for how seriously this issue should be taken—and this recommendation, founded upon a Divine precept and operating in the sacramental internal forum—seems to be much better than pressuring the man to reveal his conscience to the external forum.

Second, the report primarily if not exclusively considers self-abuse from a psychological dimension rather than from a spiritual or moral dimension. This is helpful to note for the following proposal, regarding same-sex attraction:

We urge bishops to foster and actively engage in the necessary conversations—theologically and pastorally—regarding the admission to Orders of candidates who experience same-sex attraction (SSA).

The fatigue and frustration over this issue is broad and deep. While the report is quietly exasperated that almost a quarter of bishops polled (22%) said they were fine ordaining a man known to experience persistent SSA, the following proposal casts this discomfort in a new light, wherein the report admits that it does not know how to define “deep-seated” vs. “transitory” SSA. It then attempts to define the distinction:

[If] the duration of the same-sex attractions persists for longer than five years (unless there is evidence to suggest that the issue is beginning to resolve), the diagnosis changes from transitory to deep-seated, no matter how superficial the SSA may appear. Following this new definition, when any candidate discloses that he experiences SSA, a memo should be added to his file indicating that he disclosed his experience of SSA on that particular date. This date stamp will allow vocation directors, rectors, and bishops to follow the seminarian over time and provide him with the appropriate means to work toward overcoming his SSA if it is indeed transitory.

I suppose the idea is that spending a lot of time living in close quarters with young, single men who may have their own psycho-sexual problems will help the man figure it out. And if he doesn’t fix himself in four and a half years, that’s no problem, but if it’s more than five years, it’s a real problem—unless it might resolve itself soon...

The habit of self-abuse and the habit of homosexual activity are psychologically very different but morally quite similar, as species of unnatural vice, with similar spiritual effects. While mere temptations are not sins, there is no question that men experiencing habitual inclinations to unnatural vice—solitary or otherwise—are not safe bets.

The McGrath Report puts a shocking amount of pressure on the seminarian to “self-disclose.” Perhaps the better emphasis would be on initial gatekeeping efforts for entry into formation programs. This effort would take advantage of the fresh applicant’s sincerity and willingness to discuss his problems openly, alleviate the extra burdens on formation teams of running an in-house psychological counseling center, prevent further complicating “the game,” avoid leading men on, and not give the impression to aghast lay onlookers that seminaries are really twelve-step programs to get candidates for the priesthood to cancel their OnlyFans subscriptions.