'God or the Girl' Update.

Remember A&E's tv show God or the Girl? (Scroll to the end of the post.) No, me neither. I thought it was kind of lame...


Catholic News Service: Only 1 on ‘God or the Girl’ reality show chose seminary – or did he?


WASHINGTON (CNS) – Of the four men featured this spring on A&E's reality show "God or the Girl," three of them decided against entering the seminary to pursue a priestly vocation.

The fourth, Steve Horvath of Virginia, who has been on a student missionary assignment in Lincoln, Neb., said he would apply to a seminary. Then he got stuck on the application.

"The last parts that I ended up not completing were... 'What do you think a Catholic priest should be' and 'What is calling me to the Catholic priesthood?'" Horvath said in a July 27 telephone interview from Fairfax, Va.

"I needed some more subjective and personal reasons” than what he had been writing, he said. “In taking that to prayer, I really didn't feel that calling."

Horvath instead will spend a third year as a lay missionary at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln for the Fellowship of Catholic University Students.

The feedback to the show has been good, he added. "I got one e-mail from a lady who was dying of cancer out in Wyoming, saying that if she had a Catholic priest like me she would have converted," Horvath said.

As for the others profiled in "God or the Girl," Mike Lechniak of Pennsylvania had a girlfriend and a teaching offer. Joe Adair of Ohio, who had been in two religious orders' seminary programs and had been seen vacillating during the series, also decided against the seminary. So did Dan DeMatte of Ohio, who had broken up with his girlfriend to focus on discerning what vocation he had.

Interest in the reality series is being restoked with the availability of "God or the Girl" on DVD. The two-disc set contains the entire series as seen on A&E, plus a 30-minute feature with a fifth young man discerning his vocation which didn't make it to TV, plus deleted scenes and a 20-minute feature with a priest who explains the rituals and religious terminology seen in the series.

Maximus Group, producers of the DVD, have established a Web site, www.godorthegirl.com, with free downloadable study guides and promotional materials for vocation directors, youth directors and other parish leaders. A sticker on the shrink wrap covering the DVD quotes from a review of the series by Harry Forbes, director of the U.S. bishops' Office for Film & Broadcasting: "a surprisingly reverential treatment of a profound life passage."

Reflecting on having been on TV, Adair said, "You have to realize it's a little fact and a little fiction." Adair, who works at John Carroll University in Cleveland, added, "It's kind of like The Da Vinci Code."

Adair's mother, Palma, was seen in "God or the Girl" as pushing Joe toward a priestly vocation.

"I looked like a witch," she said in a telephone interview from her home in Burton, Ohio. However, she added, "the way it ended up was a little more fair than it started out to be."

Palma Adair was seen – and sometimes recognized – at the National Catholic Educational Association convention in Atlanta during Easter week. She and her husband own the Catholic Tour Co. and had an exhibit booth at the convention. The first two hours of "God or the Girl" debuted on A&E on Easter Sunday, followed by another two hours the next day. The concluding hour was shown April 23.

Because visitors to the booth approached her asking her how it all ended, Palma Adair said, "We just told people to watch it," so as not to break the confidentiality pledge signed with A&E.

Palma Adair said she once considered a religious vocation herself. "My own mother was upset when I told her I wanted to be in the Little Sisters of the Poor. I liked working with old people and I really wanted to do it. But my mother cried," she said.

"Maybe God wasn't calling me to this vocation," she added. "All we ever did in our family was plant the seeds for religious vocations, because we believe in it." But on the show, she said, "it looked like I was cracking the whip" on her son to be a priest.

One telling scene from the series showed Joe Adair looking at the menu in a diner, saying to no one in particular, "It takes me forever to make up my mind."

Palma Adair said his rector at Borromeo Seminary in Wickliffe, Ohio, "stopped by our table at NCEA and he saw that and he said, 'That's Joe.'"

Now that Joe Adair seems to have sworn off the idea of the seminary for good, people are "trying to fix him up with girls," Palma Adair said. "We had some friends (visit) last evening, and they know this girl, a chemical engineer; he could come over to the house and meet her. They're thinking 'Oh, he just wants to get married.'"

However, "I don't think Joe will go for that," his mother said. "I've already given him two phone numbers.... He doesn't pursue that. He doesn't go after them."