LIsa de Moraes on a new series coming from A & E, following 5 men considering priesthood

Notwithstanding the tight shot of the tight T-shirt on the well-endowed woman in the clips shown to critics, the docu-soap "God or the Girl" treated the four young men trying to decide whether to enter the priesthood with the utmost respect, said executive producer Darryl Silver of the project for A&E — the network of "Dog the Bounty Hunter," "Criss Angel Mindfreak," "Dallas SWAT" and "Rollergirls."

As filmmakers, they wanted to take advantage of the controversy in which the Catholic Church has mired itself, Mark Wolper, the reality series’ other exec producer, told The TV Column after the Q&A session at Winter TV Press Tour 2006. During the Q&A, he’d told the Reporters Who Cover Television that "we completely shifted 180 degrees as a result of what we learned from these gentlemen and how much respect grew in us for their decision, for them as men and for the struggle they were going through."

What they learned from these gentlemen, he told The TV Column, is that these guys could not be manipulated to do things, as participants on other reality series can.

Meanwhile, two new books take a look at priestly and male religious formation: from the perspective of the Carthusians, first, and then Sacred Heart Seminary in Milwaukee:

An Infinity of Little Hours (Public Affairs, Mar.) by Nancy Klein Maguire is set in the early 1960s and follows five young men who enter a Carthusian monastery—an order so austere that it had barely changed since its founding in 1084. "They make the Trappists look positively chatty," editorial director Clive Priddle told RBL. "This book is an extraordinary window into a lost era. Obviously it’s an intensely spiritual drama, but it’s also an incredible human story."

Fast-forward 40 years to 2001, when journalist Jonathan Englert decides to chronicle the journeys to the priesthood of five men at Milwaukee’s Sacred Heart Seminary, which specializes in "second career" priests. Their tale is told in The Collar (Houghton Mifflin, April). "This is the priesthood in the 21st century," said Eamon Dolan, v-p and editorial director of Houghton Mifflin’s trade division. "The author was almost literally a fly on the wall, so he gives a very frank yet sympathetic portrait of what these guys are going through."