It has NOTHING to do with charity when it's a question of verifying your priest's education and ordination. That is called PRUDENCE and DUE DILIGENCE. You don't mess around with the Sacraments. How would you like to find out all your confessions were invalid? All those "communions" were just you worshiping bread, because the man you "hired" to be your priest turned out to be invalidly ordained?

Or how would you like to have 14th and 15th century problems (read your Church History) because your priest's formation/education was not worth a pound of rat dung? Why do you think the Protestant Revolt happened? I'll give you a hint: it wasn't ALL their fault. Priests were setting a horrible example with widespread ignorance, immorality, concubinage, and error quite commonplace. It was right after the Black Death, so there was a real priest shortage and a desperate need for priests. Many were tempted to ordain unqualified, untested, and untrained priests, for reasons of expediency. Sound familiar?

Priests were selling indulgences. Yes, they were. Actually selling tickets to heaven. They were NOT teaching the correct Catholic doctrine on indulgences; they were inadequately trained, and were horribly ignorant about dogmas of the Faith. This scandalized many who were then inclined to give ear to the protestant revolutionaries. After all, they were correct about the Catholic priests and selling indulgences. See how bad scandal is? See how bad ordaining unfit men to the priesthood is?

That is why it is GOOD to demand to see a priest's credentials (seminary formation, who ordained him, when -- docuмents and proof). A priest is a PUBLIC MAN. His seminary formation and ordination are PUBLIC BUSINESS, not "the priest's own private business". You aren't butting in or imposing when you ask for evidence about his ordination. That is why ordination ceremonies are always public. They are matters of public record, and affect the public more than anyone else.

It's not just about knowledge either. It's about FORMATION. During a seminary formation, the candidate is exercised in various spiritual duties on a regular basis. He is tested and tried, and some candidates leave because they can't handle the discipline, celibacy, prayer life, studies, obedience, etc.

Sure, living through 6 years of regular life (daily Rosary, Mass, and spiritual duties including daily prayer, meditation, divine office, etc.) is no GUARANTEE of future success, but it's a good and necessary start!

And apparently the Church agrees with me, because the Church, and the Council of Trent (whence comes our precious Tridentine adjective) declared that henceforth, all priests WILL be trained in "seminaries".

So any modern-day Catholic, Trad, who dispenses with this requirement, is not very Tridentine, even if they claim to love the Tridentine Mass.

One of the few things I agreed with Fr. Cekada about: A Tridentine Mass needs a Tridentine Priest. You can't cling to Trent when it comes to the Mass of all Times, but totally dispense with Trent when it comes to its decrees on the formation of priests. Trent was very clear: no more apprenticing to a bishop, informal training. That was a disaster, especially when so many good clerics died in the Black Death and there was a severe priest shortage. The temptation is too great to ordain men early, etc.

In the sedevacantist community, Carissima, formally trained priests (by the standards of the pre-conciliar past) are an unattainable luxury

The catacombs certainly justifies dispensing seminarians from pre-Vatican II standards (having to know Aramaic, Greek, Hebrew, etc.)
I don't doubt that our minds have devolved somewhat since the 1900s, due to laxity during the critical formative years of childhood, less reliance on our brains/memories, etc.

Spanking kids to make them learn was a fixture of education from ancient times through the 1900s. But who does that today, even among Trads?

Dispensing with "high intellectualism" is one thing -- but the priest must know *practical subjects* like moral theology, Canon Law, Scripture, Liturgy, and Latin. There are some requirements that *can't* be dispensed with. The SSPX has done a great job paring down seminary training to these practical essentials. That includes testing the prospective priest's virtue and training him in virtue for SOME length of time. Getting him used to a higher spiritual life (more spiritual duties) than the average layman, for starters.

It is indispensable to at least START NEW PRIESTS OUT with new habits of virtue. This takes time, and can't be dispensed with. Any more than Catholics can dispense with ordained priests altogether. And God knows that.

You need at least a few years to catch the problem ones -- the low hanging fruit as it were -- the men who can't handle the life, the celibacy, the separation from the world, the 24/7 "Church stuff", the studies. As I said, it's no guarantee of future results, but it's a start. At least weed out the flagrantly unfit!

At the risk of inflaming the sedevacantist passions, I note that the crisis of qualifications is most acute within that persuasion. One man, who while living alone had apprenticed himself to a busy and itinerant pastor, spoke to an audience at his Mass centre of his time in "the seminary." Another went from Protestant to "priest" in just a couple of years and after a vernacular ordination. Others have received priestly orders without any guidance, formal or informal, because a man with episcopal character thought their interest in the priesthood qualified them for orders. And currently Daniel Dolan houses two "seminarians." The few seminaries run by sedevacantists fall short of pre-conciliar standards. Important strictures of canon law and instructions from the S. C. for Seminaries seem to have been ignored. No one teaching canon law, philosophy, or theology has a doctorate from a university or faculty approved by the Holy See, and none seems to have had a course in pedagogy. Furthermore, teachers of Sacred Scripture have no formal training in Hebrew, Aramaic, or New Testament Greek. Lastly, there are errors in the Latin of ordination certificates, and some are written in the vernacular. As the young people say, it's a hot mess.

I know who you are referring to.. The man who went from "Protestant to priest in two years".

You need to stop this calumny.  The man converted from Protestantism at the age of eighteen and was ordained at 39.  I don't know what kind of math has 39-18 = TWO!