A profile of St. John Vianney in Minnesota

Imagine this scene: It’s 6 a.m. on a wintry day. More than 100 young men wipe the sleep from their eyes and gather in a dark chapel, heads bowed, for an hour of silent prayer.

An Irish monastery, circa 1450 A.D.? No, it’s a typical morning at St. John Vianney Seminary in St. Paul, a four-year college program for men considering the Catholic priesthood.

You’d think the recent bad press about clergy sexual abuse would have slowed the stream of potential priests to a trickle. But SJV, located at the University of St. Thomas, has an entering class of 49 — the largest in 20 years. In fact, SJV has more college seminarians than any other Catholic seminary in the country. Young men flock here from 24 Catholic dioceses, from Alaska to Kentucky. To become priests, they must continue their studies at a graduate seminary after completing SJV’s program.

Has SJV drawn so many young men by loosening its traditional requirements? Quite the opposite.

"We have absolute fidelity to the teachings of the Catholic Church," according to the Rev. William Baer, the seminary’s rector-president.

It’s in "our approach to the moral life, the way we celebrate mass and our affection for the pope and the Virgin Mary," he said. "Our appeal is that we offer a vision of life the men can’t find in the larger culture."

There’s no room at SJV for what some call "the beige church" — the "whatever turns you on" spirituality that became popular in the 1970s and ’80s. In Baer’s view, the recent clergy abuse scandals had their roots, in part, in the freewheeling seminaries of those years.

"Today’s young men won’t give their entire lives for a cynical, watered-down life of church work," he says. "Either the priesthood is essential for the salvation of the world, or they’re going to go somewhere else to make a lot more money and have a lot more fun."