HOPKINTON -- Neil Wallin is 17 years old. He has never had a girlfriend; he's pretty good at football, but an average bowler; he listens to Metallica. In the fall, he will enter Our Lady of Providence Seminary to become a priest.
Neil will take this step in a year that has seen scandal envelop the priesthood. Priests all over the country have been accused of sexual abuse; last week, a Rhode Island Superior Court judge ordered the Diocese of Providence to open its records of what it knew and what it did about priests accused of abuse.
In past months, some Catholics and non-Catholics have called for changes in the church and in the priesthood. Others have lost faith in the church as an institution. "Everybody's hurting with it," said Father Marcel Taillone, the Providence Diocese's vocational priest.
But Neil says he is entering the seminary for a simple reason: he feels that God is calling him to be a priest.
"It doesn't affect my vocation," he said of the scandals. "The faith remains the same, and what a priest should be remains the same."
THERE WERE no miracles or revelations in Neil Wallin's childhood, he says; he simply always knew he wanted to be a priest. As a child, it was the answer he gave when well-meaning adults asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up.
His father, Thomas Wallin, says he didn't quite take his son's aspiration seriously. "There's lots of little boys who want to become priests," he said.
Thomas put more stock in his son's math and science talents. He thought Neil would make a good chemist. "Once he discovers girls," he recalls thinking, "this whole 'priest' thing will be done with."
A calm, popular boy, Neil says he did discover girls -- although he's never dated one.
"The idea of having a girlfriend is to explore a relationship," he explained. "My relationship will be with God and the parish."
Neil graduated as salutatorian from Bishop Hendricken High School in June; he's spending this summer as a counselor at Camp Yawgoog, a Boy Scout camp in Rockville. In September, he'll start as a freshman at Providence College, living a celibate, spiritual life in the seminary while taking religion and philosophy classes.
He'll have eight years of school ahead of him -- four as an undergraduate and four in "Major Seminary," learning the rituals of the Catholic priesthood -- before becoming first a deacon and then, at last, a priest.
It's a long process, but Neil is confident that his dedication will not waver. God will see him through, he said.
When Neil talks about God, his eyes go deep and clear, like someone in love.
His feelings are hard for him to put into words. "I don't hear voices," he said, "but at the same time, I do. I don't feel anything, but at the same time, I do. I can't describe my relationship to God. . . . I think the best way to describe it is just this bitter-joy feeling."
Bitter, he said, because "God had to die for us to be redeemed, and how pathetic we are . . . "
Joy, because "We still have hope to be redeemed. To become what we are meant to be."
NEIL WILL BE the youngest student at Our Lady of Providence Seminary, one of only two entering the seminary out of this year's graduating high school class.
(Father Marcel Taillone, the diocese's priest in charge of vocations, wouldn't name the other student out of respect for his privacy.)
In the past 30 years, it's become less common for young men such as Neil to enter the seminary, and more common for older men -- graduate students, men at midlife -- to do so, Father Taillone said.
A few generations ago, however, Neil would not have been so unusual. According to data collected by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), a church-affiliated research center at Georgetown University, seminary enrollments have decreased significantly since 1968.
In that year, CARA recorded a total of 13,401 college-age students enrolled in seminary; this year, that number has shrunk to 1,594.
Seminary students still in high school have decreased even more sharply, from 15,823 in 1968 to 816 this year.
Father Taillone said that 30 years of cultural change have done more damage than a single year of scandal.
"Our culture is much more materialistic, much more secularized," he said. "Catholics don't live in the church, Catholics live in the world."
Some of the men who approach him haven't told anyone of their desire to become priests, he said. "Probably the biggest obstacle is people whom they love, people they respect, who for different reasons are not supportive or at least not enthusiastic in the beginning."
But he said that the current scandal hasn't shaken the faith of those who call his office.
"It's an obvious issue in people's minds, especially Catholics, especially priests and future priests," Father Taillone said. "But it's not crippling what is. The priesthood is because Jesus instituted it. That's our faith."
Father Taillone is also the chaplain at Bishop Hendricken High School, and he has known Neil for years, he said.
"Neil is the true example of that reality," Father Taillone said. ". . . All that turbulence is not in his life. He's very peaceful. And he's not uncommon for the people who are actually called."
NEIL HAS NEVER kept his aspirations secret. Albert Iannucci, 18, a childhood friend, said that most of Neil's friends know he wants to be a priest.
"He was proud about it," Albert said. "I think it's awesome, personally. I have a lot of respect for him. I know I wouldn't be able to do that."
Some boys tease Neil about how he'll never be with a woman, Albert said. But the teasing is mostly gentle, he added.
Neil's father said he was more concerned that Neil would be losing a lucrative chemistry career than about him giving up a family of his own.
"There's a certain small part of me that says, a kid of his intelligence could make big bucks someday," Thomas Wallin said. He's not worried about grandchildren, he added: "He's got a younger brother [Kyle, 16], so I still have hope."
But he said he and his wife, Sylvia, are proud of their eldest son.
"As a devout Catholic, I know that people going into the priesthood . . . are pretty scarce nowadays," Thomas said. "He's a genuine, sincere, honest individual, and he can only be a credit to it. That's what the church needs right now: for some young people to step up and do it to show other people that the church does go on."
As for Neil, he's looking forward to the fall.
The scandals of the past year have not challenged the certainty he feels about his own destiny, he said.
"There are bad people in every vocation," Neil said. "People are too idealistic. They want priests to be perfect.
"I know I want to be perfect," he added. "I just hope I'll be good."
