A new survey tied to Notre Dame’s McGrath Institute is stirring up a hard conversation inside the Catholic Church, because it suggests a sizable slice of U.S. bishops are willing to ordain men with deep-seated same-sex attraction if those men promise celibacy. That finding has triggered criticism, concern, and fresh debate over whether church leaders are staying aligned with long-standing Catholic teaching on seminary formation and priestly life.
The survey, first released in 2025 and later highlighted in a report titled Do You Know Them to be Worthy? Twelve Proposals for Bishops, Rectors, Seminary Formation Teams, and Mental Health Professionals in Assessing the Suitability of Men for Holy Orders, was put together by Rev. Thomas V. Berg and Timothy G. Lock. Its results showed that 22% of the U.S. bishops surveyed said they were comfortable ordaining a man who experiences deep-seated same-sex attraction if he is firmly committed to celibacy, and 10% strongly agreed with that view.
That number matters because bishops are supposed to be among the main gatekeepers for priestly formation, and the survey suggests they may be more open than other evaluators. According to the report, bishops were more willing than vocation directors, spiritual directors, rectors, and seminary mental health professionals to support ordination in those cases, even though the majority still did not favor it.
Berg and Lock said the split inside the Church is more than a small disagreement. They warned that people involved in formation have sometimes faced pressure to advance candidates even when they had serious reservations, which raises the stakes far beyond a simple policy debate. When the people charged with judging readiness are not on the same page, the whole process gets shaky fast.
The survey findings also sit in tension with the Vatican’s 2005 instruction, which said men with deep-seated homosexual tendencies should not be admitted to seminaries or ordained to the priesthood. That document also described the homosexual inclination as “objectively disordered” and “incompatible with the priesthood,” language that leaves little room for ambiguity.
Fr. James Martin quickly seized on the survey and the recommendations that came with it, using the moment to argue again for admitting homosexual men to the priesthood. In a commentary for Outreach, the ministry he founded, Martin objected to the idea that homosexuality must be “overcome” before ordination and pushed back against what he sees as an unfairly negative view of gay men in formation.
Martin argued that it is one thing to overcome temptation or lust, but another to treat sexuality itself as something to be conquered. He also said the authors’ approach reflects “a view of homosexuality as an immense barrier to living a healthy life as a priest,” and he presented his own experience with celibate gay priests as evidence that they can serve faithfully.
He went further with an anecdote about a seminarian in Rome, who allegedly said that half of his fellow seminarians were gay and that none of them would admit it to a spiritual director or rector. Martin used that story to suggest that the issue is being hidden rather than honestly confronted, though the claim stands in contrast to the more conservative profile of priests ordained in recent years.
The broader picture here is uncomfortable for church leaders who want to insist that doctrine still means something while also appearing open-minded in practice. If bishops are split this sharply on priestly suitability, then seminary formation is going to keep getting pulled in two different directions, with one side stressing fidelity to church teaching and the other trying to soften it in the name of pastoral care.
That tension has become especially visible because the debate is no longer abstract. It is about who gets admitted, who gets formed, and who is trusted to carry out the Church’s mission at the altar and in the confessional. When the people making those calls do not agree on what the standard should be, the disagreement stops being academic and starts shaping the future of the priesthood itself.
