Higher Education

Four years after graduation, Carlos Suarez says he is set for life. After working an entry-level job in social work, he decided to take graduate courses at Boston College. He remembers partying a little too hard during his freshman year at Boston University, and he keeps in touch with his buddies and an ex-girlfriend from BU. He lives just outside the city, in Brighton.

Suarez has his career path charted, but he is not worried about finding a date. In fact, Suarez is celibate: He is enrolled at St. John's Diocesan Seminary where he is preparing to become a priest.

"If this is what God wants me to do, he's going to give me the strength to do this," he said of his celibacy -- and the lifelong commitments he is about to undertake.

At a university founded first as a Methodist seminary, where the legacy of alumnus Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. still looms large, the priesthood, the rabbinate and other religious callings are plausible post-graduation options for some.

"COMING HOME"

Despite widely publicized declines in clergy membership, students from BU, now a secular university, continue to prepare for religious vocations. Suarez, who majored in psychology and graduated from the College of Arts and Sciences in 2003, began to think about the priesthood when he was six years old. He said he did not seriously entertain the idea until college, when he served on the pastoral council for the Catholic Center and sang in choir.

Since 1965, "the number of priests has dropped from 58,000 to 47,000 and the number of seminarians has shrunk from 8,000 to 3,000," leaving ten percent of American parishes without a resident priest, Boston Archbishop Cardinal Seán O'Malley wrote in a Jan. 2005 letter in the Catholic newspaper, The Pilot.

During his freshman year, Suarez attended a retreat at the seminary he now attends.

"It was very much a feeling of coming home," he said.

That year, 28 young men were enrolled at the seminary. During the last year, Suarez said he was one of about 60 students.

Suarez said he thinks people are becoming more engaged with their faith and are more willing to answer God's calling. Strong campus ministries are encouraging this trend, he added.

"The church in Boston went through a lot and we're sort of coming out of that and I think it's a cleansing," he said, alluding to the sexual abuse scandal that shook the diocese in 2001.

As he became increasingly involved with the Catholic community at BU, Suarez began to discern his calling to the priesthood.

"I haven't heard voices. It's more of a sense, a sort of invitation, a sort of tugging feeling," he said.

After working as a social worker for two years after college, Suarez announced his decision to apply to seminary to his friends and family.

"What a lot of people don't get is that it's not a job. It's not like you're dying, it's just a different way of life," he said.

Suarez's mother was supportive, but his father, who had hoped Suarez would enter the family business, took a while longer to warm up to the idea.

"He didn't really understand at first where it was coming from," the seminarian said.

Suarez chose to attend St. John's Diocesan Seminary in Brighton because he wanted to be near Boston. Those who apply to seminary face the same paper work as graduate school applicants, in addition to a psychiatric evaluation and intensive interviews.

Suarez studies in a six-year program that requires courses in philosophy, catechism and theology.

Suarez wakes up before 7 a.m. prayers and he turns in by the seminary's midnight curfew. This schedule, and life with 20 other seminarians -- including another BU alumnus who is his next-door neighbor -- is a challenge, Suarez said. Still, he insists he is enjoying himself.

"Seminary is sort of a gift. You're taking this time to just study and pray," he said.

Despite the scandals that have affected the Boston diocese, Suarez said he could not think of a better time to enter seminary.

"The church needs good and holy priests."

Ultimately, Suarez attributes his decision to follow the path to the priesthood to God.

"You've got to be crazy to do it without God being in the picture somehow," he said.

AN ASPIRING RABBI

Adjacent to the Catholic Center, the Florence & Chafetz Hillel House also welcomes students to the religious life. Future rabbis, like Hinda Eisen, are preparing to serve their religion.

Some rabbinical schools have seen growing enrollment in recent years. At the reform Hebrew Union College in 1999 there were 204 students, and this year there are 247, according to college spokeswoman Rachel Litcofsky.

Eisen has planned to pursue the rabbinate and seek acceptance at the Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary since she was in seventh grade. When people first find out about her ambitions, many do not understand, she said.

"Most people are sort of hidden about their religiosity or don't embrace it so much, so when they find someone who does, they get really confused," Eisen said.

Eisen attracts additional attention because of her gender. Women rabbis started to be ordained in the 1970s in Reform and Conservative Judaism - although not Orthodox - organizations.

"A lot of my best friends here are Orthodox, so they wouldn't ever go that route, or until they met me they hadn't met any females who wanted to do that," she said. "Most of them are supportive. That's the direction my life was going when I met them."

In preparation for the rabbinate, Eisen is taking Judaic studies and Hebrew courses, attending lectures and speaking with rabbis. Eien is majoring in special education in the School of Education and hopes to serve that community.

RETURNING TO BU

When he graduated from BU 10 years ago, Avi Heller had no idea what he was going to do, but he definitely did not think he would become a rabbi.

Heller, now the director of education at Hillel, studied international relations and political science in the University Professors Program. He never took a Judaic studies course as an undergraduate. Heller organized learning groups at Hillel and led the Orthodox service, but said he did not realize his calling until he had been out of college for a year.

While working as an intern for the CEO of Hillel, Heller was often asked questions about Judaism and realized that he could not adequately answer them.

"I wanted to continue my Jewish education and I kept taking it further until it became a passion," he said.

Although Heller did not see his calling at the time, others did. Theology professor Kathy Darr and Rabbi Josef Polack, the executive director of Hillel, both suggested the rabbinate to him.

"I poo-pooed them," he said of his initial response.

Heller attended modern Orthodox Yeshiva University, but he found the environment unfriendly and spent two of his four years of rabbinical school in Israel. After graduation, Heller worked in Florida before returning to BU.

"It was not something I pursued, but it almost feels like it was meant to be," he said.

Along with Heller's rabbinic ordination, he received a master's degree in the Bible, and has since toyed with the idea of pursuing a doctorate.

Heller said that although BU Hillel doesn't try to get people to become rabbis, "for some people, being in this environment will create their life's dream of becoming a rabbi."

CALLING IN A COMMUNITY

Father Paul Helfrich, the Catholic chaplain at BU, said seven to 10 students each year consider the religious life.

Over the past two years, more students have decided to pursue religious vocations, Helfrich said. He attributes this to the development of programs that encourage the path, as well as to alumni like Suarez who have spoken at Mass.

Every month, a vocation discernment group meets at the Catholic Center to discuss religious life. About five men and five women attend, Helfrich said.

"The staff thought that this would be a good way to expose students to the reality of religious ordination, but there were also some students who had expressed interest," he said.

In the School of Theology, about 325 students are currently enrolled to pursue the master of divinity -- the standard degree for religious ordination -- and enrollment is on the rise, said the Rev. Imani-Sheila Newsome-Camara who is also STH assistant dean for student affairs, an African Methodist Episcopal minister and a 1988 graduate of program.

"The number for religious vocations in the United States is probably increasing to some degree," she said. "People are looking for meaning in their lives."

STH is a United Methodist seminary, but around half of the students are affiliated with other religious denominations, Newsome-Camara said.

There are two courses specifically for United Methodist students, but for other students, "you don't get a United Methodist education, you get a strong 21st century theological education," she said.

The master of divinity program requires three years of study in both practical applications of theology and academically religious areas. During the second year of the program, students are placed with a congregation or community agency.

Newsome-Camara works at St. Paul's AME Church in Cambridge and is pursuing a doctorate. She said she is one of a handful of students simultaneously pursuing doctorates in ministry and theological studies in seminary and serving their own churches.

Newsome-Camara said STH students benefit from being at a seminary within a large research university.

"You're not cut off and isolated in the way that you might be if you're in a free standing independent seminary," she said.

STH graduates are known for being especially adept at negotiating church and society demands, as a notable school alumnus did, Newsome-Camara said.

"They come with the tools to reconcile the secular and the sacred in conversations that move communities forward," she said. "That's what Martin Luther King was able to do."