Making a Priest in the ‘Fifties: Memoir of a Nervous Seminarian Review

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Making a Priest in the ‘Fifties: Memoir of a Nervous Seminarian ReviewI wanted to like this book. O'Brien is obviously a very nice guy and pretty funny too. Maybe that's part of the problem. He's too intent on being funny all the time. The seminary profs he describe become little more than caricatures and everything he does, whether it's in the sem or off-campus or during summer breaks, is milked for its humor. There is nary a serious thought or profound idea anywhere in this book. And one would think that a serious step like deciding to be a priest would require some serious consideration. With O'Brien it's more like, "Well, why not be a priest? I've already got sixteen years of uninterrupted Catholic education. A few years at the seminary should be a snap." He doesn't say that, but that's the impression the reader gets. Everything seems to come easily for O'Brien and everything is a joke and there is absolutely nothing profound to be found in this whole book. If you've ever read J.F. Powers' Morte d'Urban, well, maybe that's where O'Brien got his inspiration. The priest as clown, curmudgeon or wheeler and dealer. Nothing very spiritual in Powers' Father Urban, and certainly not in O'Brien either. I only spent a single year in the seminary, at the age of fourteen, and I think maybe even at that age I took it more seriously than O'Brien ever did. If you want a more serious, and more considered look at a failed vocation, read John Cornwell's Seminary Boy. Now that is a good book. Making a Priest... is nothing more than a "light entertainment."Making a Priest in the ‘Fifties: Memoir of a Nervous Seminarian OverviewCurrents of change were stirring in the late fifties, both in the Catholic Church and in American culture. But St. Mary's Seminary and University, Baltimore, operated in the "old way," according to rules laid down in 1869. This humorous but candid memoir follows its clueless author through the four years of theological study, spiritual formation and pastoral training preparing him, sorta, for ordination to the Roman Catholic priesthood in l961. The book has no axes to grind, but doesn't avoid issues both then and now, including some speculation about sex and celibacy, about hierarchy, about clerical ambition (his own!) which should make the memoir relevant to contemporary readers—you!

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