This will be a quick, but I hope that it will offer an interesting glimpse into one of the (many) facets of seminary life: deep conversations.  Last night, after the Holy Hour and Compline, I wandered into the pope room (named that because of the pictures of many popes adorning its walls), and spent the next hour talking about deep philosophical and theological questions/concepts with a few other guys.  We spent time on how Jesus and Mary have bodies in Heaven, which, isn't a physical place, how souls can suffer in purgatory (or, God forbid, hell), or "feel" bliss in Heaven, how other religious see heaven, how other religions are related to truth, the real focus of ecumenical (and interfaith) dialogue, how the indelible (lasting forever) mark on a the soul of the priest (who is Alter Christus) effects a priest's soul in Heaven, whether a priest in an apparition could dispense the Sacraments (as reported here, before the priest was found to be alive),  and whether apparitions are made up of physical matter (ie: Gabriel "takes on" a body before appearing to Mary) or whether it is more that they have the appearance of (but don't actually have) a body.  (If that wasn't a run-on sentence I don't know what is...)  

Obviously, we aren't theologians, so don't think that my/our terminology here is necessarily correct, that the questions are really even usable in the form that we were working with, or that our "answers" were totally logical or truthful (I didn't give them here for just that reason), but, the experience was quite fun, and I truly enjoyed trying to wrap my brain around some of the ideas that we were working with.

Seminarians are pretty weird sometimes, aren't they? - I love it!