The Seminary Revealed

You can read between the lines here.  This is about the XYZ seminary--and Bp. X.  All you need to know is this:  the home-state of the priest-author.

...When officials from a Midwest diocese screened me for entry into the diocesan program, they spoke in code. The team, headed by an auxiliary bishop, wanted to know about my “view of women.” They knew – and I knew – the phrase is a dog whistle (as we say nowadays) for “ordination of women.” I didn’t take the bait. I responded that I would “work for the salvation of the souls of women every bit as hard as I would for men.”

The highly-sensitive-to-women’s-needs bishop said, “The committee would like to know your view of women’s ordination.” I knew the preferred response, but couldn’t say it: “The Church’s discipline does not permit the ordination of women today, but it may take place sometime in the future.” My actual response, to their dismay, demonstrated my theological inflexibility: “That wouldn’t be right, would it? What does the Church teach?”

The seminary admissions interview was similarly surreal....

Things have changed in XYZ since those very, very dark days, we pray.

...Evelyn Waugh once observed, “It is better to be narrow-minded than to have no mind, to hold limited and rigid principles than none at all. That is the danger which faces so many people today – to have no considered opinions on any subject, to put up with what is wasteful and harmful with the excuse that there is ‘good in everything’ – which in most cases means inability to distinguish between good and bad.”...

IIRC, St. Paul had some good things to say about 'rigidity,' too.  But St. Paul was not a Jesuit.