Congratulations, John!

Loyola House's own second-year novice John Petit was officially sworn in as a member of the Michigan Bar today by Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Daniel Patrick O'Brien. I and several of my cohorts had the pleasure and privilege of attending John's swearing in, which we all found appropriately moving. As a recipient of undergraduate and law degrees from UDM, Judge O'Brien declared himself very pleased to assist in admitting a Jesuit novice to practice law in Michigan. John, who practiced law in Ohio for ten years before entering the novitiate, will soon start doing a few hours a week of pro bono work for the UDM Mobile Law Office. I'm sure he'll do Loyola House and the Society of Jesus proud.

In other news, the secundi had our first Social Ethics class this evening at SS. Cyril and Methodius Seminary. At Notre Dame Law School I took an excellent class on Catholic Social Thought that covered much of the same material as the class I'm now taking at SSCMS; the NDLS class, it's worth noting, was taught by Professor Vincent Rougeau, a contributor to the always interesting Mirror of Justice weblog exploring the intersection of CST and secular legal theory. If the syllabus I received tonight is any indication, the SSCMS class takes a very different approach, and I'm looking forward not only to renewing my acquaintance with the Church's social teaching but also to the opportunity to examine the topic through a different set of lenses and in a rather different context. I'm sure I'll have more to say about this as the semester progresses, but for now it should be enough to say I'm glad to be in the classroom again.

In totally unrelated news, I had lunch today at the Telway, a venerable local greasy spoon at the corner of John R and 11 Mile Road in Madison Heights. As far as I can tell, the Telway has no website of its own, but you can read contrasting perspectives on the place in this warm and fuzzy human interest column from the Freep and this much darker piece from the Metro Times. The Freep's Sylvia Rector paints the Telway in "Main Street U.S.A" colors, while the Metro Times' Dan DeMaggio takes a "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" approach. Reading both of the articles (and I recommend you do), it's hard to believe the two writers are talking about the same restaurant. For my own part, I enjoyed my visit to the Telway. The menu may be limited and the food may be simple, but the quality was good and the price was right. Any restaurant where you can get a fairly decent cheeseburger, fries and cup of coffee for all of $2.32 is well worth returning to, especially on a Jesuit novice's budget. AMDG.