The McCarrick Report, investigating sexual abuse by disgraced former Washington, D.C., cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, released this month by the Vatican, catalogs facts that cannot be ignored, denied or explained away. The harm inflicted by McCarrick over decades is a source of deep remorse and shame for the Catholic Church.

Before priesthood, I served as assistant attorney general for Pardons, Parole and Probation in North Dakota. I reviewed the files of every inmate in the corrections system, which included every kind of sex crime. Later I served as guardian ad litem for the juvenile court, representing the interests of children, including those who had been sexually abused. As a priest and canon lawyer, I have been deeply involved in cases of clerical sexual abuse of children and young people. I have had a lifelong commitment to the welfare and well-being of children and young adults — that they be protected from sexual predators especially. That life experience has informed my work as a canonist and now as a seminary official.

The greatest value of the McCarrick Report will be what we learn from it to ensure that nothing like this is able to happen again.

We know so much more than ever before about how to cultivate human maturity, psychological and emotional well-being, and the qualities necessary to be a well-integrated, virtuous person. We need to be guided by scientific data and well-articulated criteria in judging whether a man is suitable to be ordained a priest, given the tremendous responsibility to care for others and everything else this vocation entails.

There must be a willingness to exclude anyone who does not fulfill objective criteria of maturity, self-possession, self-control, self-discipline and goodwill toward all others; to exclude anyone who presents any identifiable risk of the capacity to do harm to others. A “pastoral heart” full of good intentions is not enough; there must be a demonstrated capacity to behave in every circumstance as a good pastor and to function as a mature, psychosexually healthy person.

Laypersons, and especially women, must be an integral part of seminary faculties with prominent roles in the formation and evaluation process. They bring an essential perspective to the closed clerical world with its inevitable blind spots that led to tragedies like the depredations of Theodore McCarrick.

“Many are called, but few are chosen” must be a constant reminder for all those who dare to pursue the Catholic priesthood.

Rev. Phillip J. Brown is president-rector of Saint Mary’s Seminary & University in Baltimore.