According to the Wikipedia summary of the John Jay College report on Catholic clergy sex abuse, "over a 50-year period, out of more than 100,000 priests deacons and religious order clergy, 4,392 (~4.4%) were accused of sexual abuse, 252 ([less than] 0.26%) were convicted and 100 ([less than] 0.1%) sentenced to prison." While Luke Reese was not accused of child sex abuse, and I'm not sure if there's an equivalent statistic for priests accused of non-sexual felonies, I would guess that this gives a general idea of how many Catholic priests are convicted of felonies -- a microscopic number and percentage, I'm sure.
If we assume there are currently about 60 priests in the OCSP, for one of them to be convicted of a felony puts the percentage at about 1.7%. This is about 20 times the historical number, and not only that, we might expect those electing to convert to Catholicism as fully catechized adults would represent an especially devout and committed group. Except we've come to recognize that there are a good many opportunists and fringe-denomination Protestants who've come to the end of careers otherwise. My own estimate is that of these, even if none commits an actual crime, several more in this group are fully capable of scandals or disastrous errors in judgment.
My regular correspondent and I agree that the judge in Indianapolis was speaking from evaluations in a pre-sentencing report by forensic psychologists trained to look for sociopathic tendencies, and indeed, following a felony conviction, fully entitled to find them after the fact. But could anyone have forestalled the problem by ringing alarm bells or waving red flags beforehand?
I heard from a visitor close to the situation at Holy Rosary who said that in his view, there was always something off about Luke Reese, including what appeared to be a sense that ordinary standards of conduct didn't apply to him. OK -- but of course, he was speaking after the fact. I don't get along with every last priest I've met either. Is that enough to raise questions about their priesthood? Even if he tried to raise this with the pastor at Holy Rosary or the vicar for clergy, I doubt if he'd have been taken seriously, and it could well have hurt him to do it.
But I think there were other red flags. Reese was first ordained in one of the fringe "continuing" denominations, and he hopped from one to another before becoming Catholic. I've heard suggestions there could have been issues that led to his earlier jurisdiction-hopping, and I doubt if much effort was spent in tracking those down. But much more to the point, he didn't have an MDiv, and despite spending four years as a day student at the St Meinrad seminary, he didn't get one.
And Pastoral Provision formation, I've recently discovered, normally takes just two years. If Reese took four years, that should have been an issue in itself. By the same token, the recent case of Philip Mayer, who was in a Pastoral Provision formation program but doesn't seem to have made satisfactory progress after six years, should be a matter of concern. Even if he likely won't beat his wife in front of the altar, his many posts on social media should have been more closely reviewed with an eye to his stability and judgment.
The problem I see with the OCSP is not just a willingness, but indeed an eagerness to ordain highly marginal candidates. In fact, if it was visible under Msgr Steenson, it seems to have accelerated under Bp Lopes. One issue is a concern I've begun to have over whether Fr Perkins is qualified to serve as either a vocation director or a vicar for clergy, but he's in his position because Bp Lopes wants him there. What's going on is happening because Bp Lopes is OK with it.
This is a continuing problem. I suspect there are diocesan bishops in both the US and Canada who are aware of it, and I suspect it will be addressed.
