Archbishop Floats 'Unbeatable' Test for Seminary After Discovering a Massive Fraud Fooled the Church
A Catholic archbishop has come up with a foolproof test to determine if a person can meet the church’s requirements for seminary after it became known that more than one woman purportedly tried to pass herself off as a man in order to be admitted under false pretenses.
The solution, to Archbishop Jerome Listecki, is simple: just have prospective students submit a DNA test.
In a recent memo to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Listecki of Milwaukee suggested that seminaries and houses of formation might want to consider including DNA tests or physical exams as part of the admittance process after female students managed to falsely present themselves as male and were accepted to unnamed institutions.
“Recently, the Committee on Canonical Affairs and Church Governance was made aware of instances where it had been discovered that a woman living under a transgendered identity had been unknowingly admitted to the seminary or to a house of formation of an institute of consecrated life,” he wrote, according to the National Catholic Register.
The report noted that Listecki is the chairman of the body’s canonical affairs committee.
“In all instances, nothing in these individuals’ medical or psychological reports had signaled past treatments or pertinent surgeries,” he explained, noting that in one case, “the individual’s sacramental records had been fraudulently obtained to reflect her new identity.”
The archbishop did not specify whether these cases occurred in the United States or elsewhere in the world, but he did say that none of the women received Holy Orders.
Listecki wrote that the committed had urged him to issue the memo so that institutions could “exercise special vigilance as a new year of seminary formation begins.”
“Some members of the Committee on Canonical Affairs and Church Governance observed that a bishop could consider requiring a D.N.A. test or, at a minimum, certification from a medical expert of the bishop’s own choosing, to assure that an applicant is male,” he said.
Listecki, who is a doctor of canon law, also reiterated that according to Catholic doctrine, “only men who possess the requisite physical and psychological qualities” can be admitted to seminary by the diocesan bishop, who in turn “can require various means to establish moral certitude in this regard.”
In other words, requiring that seminary students submit a DNA sample or undergo a physical test to determine they are indeed men is entirely permissible to ensure that these institutions are adhering to church teachings.
Hey, what can you say? Modern problems require modern solutions. In this case, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the Catholic Church wanting to ensure that, as the world continues to try to distort the most fundamental characteristics of men and women, it can continue to adhere to God’s Word as it sees fit.
Here’s the thing: No matter how much compassion and kindness a Christian ought to display toward people who, for whatever reason, would like to live their life as a member of the opposite sex, it is a critical point of religious liberty for any church to be able to staunchly enforce religious code as it relates to gender, such as the sex of a person training to minister to the flock.
While there are several Christian denominations around the nation that have taken on women who identify as male or vice versa to lead congregations (to varying degrees of consistency with the broader doctrine of their denominations), the fact remains that millions of Christians still firmly believe what the Bible says about sex.
Genesis 1:27 tells us, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
The central assertion of gender theory — that gender can be different from sex — directly opposes the teachings of the Catholic Church and other denominations that treat Scripture as the Word of God.
All too often, secularists dismiss the devoutly faithful as “anti-science,” but the fact that our gender is woven into the very fabric of our being — our DNA — just underscores the fact that how God made us is undeniably who we are.
The secular world may see nothing wrong with accepting transgender individuals as the people they have decided they shall be, but the consistently biblical church can never honestly compromise this fundamental truth about what makes each one of God’s image-bearers either male or female.
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