99-Year-Old Serves as "Altar Boy" at Catholic Churches in Columbus, Ohio

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Awesome. An his sister served until she was 95 but had to give up due to health problems!

Inspiring.
:bowdown:
 
Hex/septuagenarians have been serving as altar boy and girl at my church for the longest time. My poor church has virtually no kids around. The Anglo-Saxon community is not having babies or something.

During the Mexican or Vietnamese Mass, there’s plenty of kids helping out with the servicel. I am from rural Georgia.
 
MugenOne said:
Hex/septuagenarians have been serving as altar boy and girl at my church for the longest time. My poor church has virtually no kids around. The Anglo-Saxon community is not having babies or something.

During the Mexican or Vietnamese Mass, there’s plenty of kids helping out with the servicel. I am from rural Georgia.
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You summed it up well. The English Masses just don’t seem to attract the younger crowds anymore. And when you do the math and find half of the U.S. Catholic population is Hispanic, your main focus is to get more Spanish priests into the U.S. parishes. Even the Protestant ministries are realizing this and creating more Hispanic communities. Vietnamese communities seem to be growing as well.
 
While I certainly want children to go to Mass and participate in Mass, I’m also glad to see older people serving with some regularity in any capacity, but especially as altar servers. So many people see going to church and participating in church as a kid’s thing. You go for a while because Mommy wants you to and once you get confirmed, it’s like graduating and you move on to bigger, better, more grown-up things. Altar serving, cantoring, etc. should not be seen as things young people do because they live in a rural area and they’ve nothing better to do. People of all ages should see church service as life-long.
 
Good on him 👍

I served weekday Masses at our parish for our previous pastor (who had bad feet and knees), when the deacon was absent. I also served a couple times for the new pastor, who could do everything himself, but appreciated the help. I even went through the training a couple years ago. But – now we have two more deacon candidates who are due to be ordained in December, and there just isn’t any call for altar geezers any more. I’ve asked that my name be removed from the list of available servers, if they aren’t going to use adults at all 😦
 
I think it is improper to use the term altar “boy” these days, since it has long been the case that many, if not most, of the people who perform this role are no longer even boys.

Altar server seems to be the less archaic terms to use.
 
DaveBj said:
I still prefer . . .

😃
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If I make it to 99 and am still alive and kicking enough to be up there elbowing the little ten year old altar brats out of my way, I would consider myself to be one lucky altar geezer for sure.😃
 
There was this reporter who asked a 100-yr old guy on his birthday to what did he attribute his longetivity to. He replied, “No women, no fats, exercise, and an occasional laugh.” The reporter answered back, “But I know someone who did these things and died at 50.” The elder repled, “But he didn’t do them long enough.” 🙂
 
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