Would someone please get it through the mainstream media’s heads that having once been a Catholic altar boy has no significance to anything else that person does later in life? It imparts no special honors, signifies no special sanctity, and implies no special training. In a story about former New Jersey governor Jim Greevey abandoning his faith to attend an Episcopal church, after having come out as gay, New York Newsday prints the following headline: Former Catholic altar boy attends Episcopal services
So what? You may as well say “Former Newsday paper boy subscribes to the Times.” Yes, I suppose there is some news value in a story about the formerly Catholic former governor jumping the fence (in more ways than one) to run in a more amenable pasture. It’s the stupid, irrelevant reference that grates. Sheesh, the guy was openly pro-abortion in office, so it’s not exactly news he wasn’t “right” with the Church to begin with.
Is it supposed to make us say, “Whoa, if even altar boys are abandoning their faith the Church is in big trouble.” It makes you wonder if any of the editors or reporters were themselves altar boys. If they weren’t, they should find someone on staff who was who can then fill them in on reality.
Oh and someone should also tell them that “altar boy” is politically incorrect now. Everyone knows it’s “altar server” because we have girls up there now. (I’m being sarcastic and tongue-in-cheek, so don’t get your knickers in a twist.)
Newsday = Anti-Catholic.
Any dig they can take, no matter how stupid or trivial, they’ll take.
Dom, I’m sure you remember, but for your readers who don’t, this goes back to Andrew Cunanan, the gay murderer of gay fashion designer Gianni Versace. Cunanan got the “altar boy” label. I emailed the Catholic League, and the rest is history and it repeats.
Oh, it goes back much further than that. The “altar boy” formulation has been used for decades, often of mafiosi gunned down in a plate of pasta (or doing the gunning).
In the Baltimore Catechism #3 (not #1 or #2) there is a specific statement that a boy should consider that he probably has a vocation to the priesthood if he enjoys serving Mass. It also specifically states that God probably won’t speak to him in any more “mystical” way. Some flavor of this is probably at the heart of the “he was an altar boy” journalism. FWIW
Well, the Church is in really big trouble. Girl altar boys are just one manifestation of that trouble.
Perhaps it comes from the Christmas Carol, “Little Altar Boy”. The boy in the carol is presented as “holy.”