To Be or Not to Be a Priest.

That's the question that several young men profiled in today's Chicago Tribune are grappling with. The Tribune's impressively thoughtful and fair-minded article examines a semester in the lives of a few undergraduate seminarians at St. Joseph College Seminary, a diocesan institution affiliated with Loyola University Chicago. Far from being spiritual supermen or pious caricatures, the seminarians the article focuses on are shown to be normal guys trying to figure out what they're going to do with their lives; in that regard, they're a lot like their contemporaries outside the seminary. At the same time, the men at St. Joseph College Seminary can also be regarded as exceptionally brave, inasmuch as choosing to accept a call to priesthood or religious life today is especially difficult for college-age youth today. One way or another, the article offers an interesting look at the life of college seminarians and is well worth reading. (If site registration prevents you from doing so, see if this helps; if it doesn't, let me know.)

In other news, I'm back in Chicago for a spell; tomorrow morning my fellow novices and I head to Omaha on the first leg of our epic journey to Denver. Though few, my days here have been filled with activity. Last night I saw Batman Begins, which was much better than I expected - the plot offers some neat twists and turns, and the performances are generally very good. This afternoon I visited the Art Institute of Chicago for the first time, and was suitably impressed. This evening, the novices of Loyola House (sans Ben Krause, already in his hometown of Omaha) reassembled here in Chicago after having been scattered for a week for province days and home visits. We enjoyed dinner and a tour at our brother novice Eric Styles' home parish, St. Benedict the African (East), in the Englewood section of Chicago. The parishioners and staff who greeted us at St. Benedict the African were very welcoming, and they are blessed to have a very beautiful church (the photos on the website don't do it justice). Some day I'd like to attend Sunday Mass there, but in light of the intense novitiate travel schedule it may be a while before I have the chance. Odds are my next update will be posted from Denver; in the meantime, I'll be enjoying the rest of this brief stay in Chicago and getting to know a big chunk of the Midwest on the road to the Mile-High City. A bientôt, AMDG.