There’s been a lot of conversation and positive remarks about the upcoming God or the Girl program on A & E, a "reality" show which follows four potential seminarians as they discern.
Matt Abbot writes that despite the goofy title, he liked it.
The series, which airs on Easter Sunday, follows four twenty-somethings, Mike, Steve, Joe, and Dan. The men don’t know each other and live in different parts of the United States. They also come from different backgrounds and have very different lives, although all appear to have grown up in Catholic families — long recognized by the Church as the seedbed of vocations, including clerical and religious.
Perhaps the most refreshing thing about the five-part series is the normalcy. And, although the producers themselves are not Catholic, they are able to tell the stories of these four without imposing an outside agenda or editing for ratings. In fact, this could be the first mainstream media production that shows people praying outside an abortion clinic as sincere and normal, not misplaced inmates of a mental institution.
Dan lives in a sort of Catholic fraternity at Ohio State campus. They call themselves a brotherhood. They even go to strip clubs…to pray outside. While it may sound odd from some perspectives, the show invites you into their perspective where prayer and living one’s faith is normal because it’s so sincere and honest. It’s about God, not about them.
Catholic News Service runs a positive story
However, in today’s NRO, Fr. David Nuss, vocations director for the diocese of Toledo vigorously disagrees. (If I’m not mistaken, he’s the first priest I’ve read to comment on this program)
Having viewed four of the five episodes — mostly as an act of Lenten penance — the only surprise was the absence of toll-free numbers to call and vote one of the men off the cast. Certainly the show is a thing of miniscule importance — no doubt it would take something uncommonly malicious to impress the sort of person likely to be watching, and God or the Girl rises to no such heights. Still, perhaps it would be worthwhile to offer a more accurate account of how a vocation to the priesthood is discerned.
The desire for a man to be a priest is necessary but insufficient. It is the Church who calls the man to priestly life and ministry, and will only do so after a long time of careful, critical, and prayerful evaluation and assessment. The Church deserves nothing less than the best, and priestly candidate assessment is serious business. Massive failures in this assessment and in seminary spiritual formation during the 1960s and 1970s initiated the criminal and depraved molestation of children by malfeasant priests.
The Catholic Church, of course, does not sponsor reality-type pageants for eligible male contestants wishing to become priests (though, if God or the Girl‘s credits are any indication, the documentary-makers inexplicably got a little help from some friends at the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops, several dioceses, and a couple of Catholic institutions). What really happens is that every suitable candidate for the seminary undergoes extensive scrutiny over an extended period of time — in all cases many months, in some even years. Ultimately the candidate’s spiritual, intellectual, physical, and affective maturity are determined from a battery of interviews, recommendations, required documentation, and expert analysis that is accumulated over a period of time. Expediency does not drive the evaluation process, nor are cheap gimmicks employed to test a candidate’s mettle. The process is not one for reality television.
While this might make for poor television drama, it makes for good priests. It increases the likelihood of attaining the most impressive candidates for the seminary — that is to say, those men who are fervent in prayer, generous in service and deeply rooted in the authentic teachings and beliefs of the Church. The evaluation process aims at eliciting a complete portrait of the man who has expressed an interest in the priesthood. Who the man says he is must coalesce with who he really is. Real integrity trumps silly liability. Only after a bishop accepts a man as a seminarian is the man even permitted to apply for acceptance to a seminary — the place for priestly formation, training, and development. Seminary officials administer their own rigorous examination of each applicant to ensure that the man indeed has intentions, disciplines, and beliefs that are part and parcel of becoming a good priest.
So, Fr. Nuff’s objection is that the program presents a distorted view of vocational discernment – it’s not just "I hear a call" – it’s "I sense a call, I bring it to the Church, and the Church helps me discern."
I have two screener tapes of episodes from the series which I’ve not had time to watch yet. I’ll try to get to it today, but there’s something else that’s calling me first.
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