^#smrgSAHAF New Men: Inside the Vaticanªs Elite School for American Priests -

A top-gun pilot, a high-living lawyer, a farm boy, a Vietnamese refugee--and a set of Harvard-educated twins. They would form an interesting group in any setting, but in this moving chronicle of a year at the Vatican's North American College in Rome, they are the "New Men." These beginning seminarians at the "West Point for priests" are at the heart of this candid book, in which a prizewinning journalist takes us inside the Roman Catholic church--and reveals the stories and the struggles of six men as they grapple with all the hopes and doubts that come with this new life.

From Library Journal Having followed the Vatican for the Associated Press for years, Murphy opens doors and brings insight to a subject frequently touched on only superficially. His care in undertaking his story and his effort to get at the truth bring him and the reader to a redefined view of Catholic clergy. The six American seminarians Murphy follows?chosen for the elite Pontifical North American College in Rome?come from a panorama of backgrounds: lawyer, former Air Force pilot, Vietnamese immigrant, farmer's son, and two twins from Massachusetts who graduated from Harvard and went separate ways. Their stories are riveting for Murphy, and it is their voices and feelings that he attempts to convey. The result is an intimate glimpse into what it means to be a priest today and what it takes to seek the priesthood. Readers are also treated to issues facing the church in the 1990s. Whatever one thinks of the priesthood, the complexity and clarity here compel one to keep reading. For all libraries.?Leroy Hommerding, Citrus Cty. Lib. Sys., Fla. Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Kirkus Reviews The North American College in Rome, an all-male bastion of Catholic seminarians from the US, provides the setting for this uncritically admiring narrative of evolving priestly vocations. Murphy a journalist with the Associated Press in Rome, follows the spiritual paths of six seminarians entering the North American College--the New Men of the title--as they unfold over the course of a year. The narrative, based on personal interviews with the students, sets the story of their lives against the looming but deliberately muted backdrop of Rome and the Vatican. The drama of the stories lies in the conflict they show between the calling of a parish priest and the opposing lures of secular achievement, romantic love, or--in the one intriguing case here of seemingly dual vocation--life in a Benedictine monastery. In their self-questioning, some of the students uncover for both themselves and the reader how fine the line can be between the purely self-willed and the purportedly God-given; but whether by authorial design or the students' own omission, their thoughts go oddly unillumined by the Catholic Church's rich intellectual heritage, which seems to play hardly any role in their spiritual lives. By contrast, a whole chapter is devoted to the college's yearly flag football game, and part of another to the grisly story of a school-prankish slaughter of chickens. Perhaps such stories, too tedious to tell about a college fraternity house, gain interest from their seminary context. But secular readers curious about the moral psychology of priestliness, and the vocation to goodness in the modern world, will do better to read the classic work of fiction on these topics: George Bernanos's The Diary of a Country Priest. Murphy wants to show the humanity and dignity of priestly calling; but the mood he favors, in so doing, of sentimental machismo--heartstrings loosened by a can of beer--will appeal to only a limited audience.