Why it's important for Boy Scouts and altar boys to be boys

[Xanthippe_Voorhees]

Yes, you are right about that. The altar society had a job to do and they did it. Even when Mass was not in progress I recall that people would not enter the altar area unless they had a specific job to do, not even the altar servers.

Respect was different then. I worked for a manager who’d been on the job for nearly 50 years. (late 50’s to 2000’s) He said in the 60’s people would ask for help. By the 80’s they had to put alarms on the stock room doors because, despite the signs, people would regularly barge in, trying to help themselves to something they could not find. (even if they walked past the XYZ to do so !!!) By the time I worked we had to go to a counter-service model because people would get their own XYZ at our store and then complain “we” gave them the wrong one…despite the fact that we did not help them get the XYZ in the first place.

The respect for “sacred” and “forbidden” areas being “tampered” with is/was not a Church problem alone.

 

[edwest211]

There was a time where “expensive” didn’t matter and people helped each other, and volunteered their time. My mother did some garden work for some neighbors and even a little basic carpentry to earn a little extra. As a family, we learned to do without, not on essentials, but the extras. A friend of mine went to the same school I did. His family would have a special, inexpensive treat on Friday after dinner. Living within your means has always been true. Neighbors helped my dad fix his car and even loan him some tools - for nothing.

 

[FirstFiveEighth]

Good Grief.

Boy scouts decision to let cub scouts (who were never boy scouts, to begin with) enter into a family program is not the tear-down of all boy ventures. Boy Scouts …the actual org for 11-18yo is going to remain all-boy troops.

All they did was insulate themselves from the “boys” with vaginas demanding that they be accommodated. With “girls” with penis’ allowed to joining Girl Scouts, it was only a matter of time before they were forced to allow that kind of nonsense by a ruling of the supreme court. By doing this, most people haven’t noticed that they preserved their language of “natural born” boys only.

I have to say, you are flat out wrong here. Firstly, this had nothing to do with a transgender legal issue. They already caved on that one. The Supreme Court also upheld the Boy Scouts’ right to discriminate against sexual orientation and gender identity. They already caved on that too.

The BSA’s decision was to open up cub scouts to girls next fiscal year (oct 2018) to either sex-segregated dens or mixed dens. Within another 2yrs they plan to open the actual “boy scouts” to girls. They claim this will also be sex-segregated, but lets be real. It is going to be co-ed, and BSA knows it is going to be coed, but just like all their other brilliant decisions over the last 5yrs, they are too scared to say it out loud to their current members and risk losing them. Case in point, the BSA sent out a survey to BSA affiliated individuals that was supposedly just to gage what current members thought about allowing girls to join the scouts and in what capacity, whether it should be coed, just for cubs, etc, and made it clear there was no decision being made or no timeline. Aside from the questions being biased (Do you think girls should be cub scouts- yes or maybe?) it was all clearly a farce because they then dropped this major decision about 4 weeks after sending out the survey. It was a decision they already came to and tried to paper over by “gaging interest”. Anyways.

 

[FirstFiveEighth]

Boy Scout Troops are run by volunteers, almost exclusively parents. In order to have a sex-segregated scout troop for girls, you need a couple moms to volunteer. The more girls interested, the more moms needed. Again though, lets be real. Most likely this girl boy scout troop is going to be led by a dad. Or, if it is only dads interested in running the troop, there will also need to be a certain ratio of moms present for legal reasons. And most likely these girls are doing boy scouts because their dad was a boy scout or, more likely, their brother(s) are boy scouts. So how many girls are going to belong to this all-girl boyscout troop? For example, my troop was ~50-75 boys. 5? 10? 15? 50? And of these girls, how many will have brothers in the boy- boy scout troop? Which parent is going to be the girl boy scout troop scoutmaster and which is going to be the boy boyscout troop scoutmaster? Or is the dad going to be pulling split duty? I predict that the numbers for the girl boy scout troops are going to be relatively small, it will be mostly run by dads, and the family most likely has at least one boy doing boy scouts. The reality is that it is a whole lot of hassle to run two parallel, sex segregated troops and they will almost invariably merge. And once you merge, you can never un-merge, or else you are sexist.

The Boy Scouts has made the decision to just be the “Scouts”, but is too scared to say it.

 

[Gertabelle]

Yes, the BSA has caved. We saw the writing on the wall when my son had just crossed over into Boy Scouts after five years of Cub Scouts – they just wanted to be start being like everyone else. My son lost interest in Scouting a couple years ago, so this doesn’t affect us personally now.

What I see, however, as the mother of a teenage son is how much our society pushes against boys just being boys. My son loves technology, and we’ve signed him up for a summer technology “camps” a few times.

The groups running these tech day camps offer two sets of courses – one coed, the other is girls only.



There’s no boys only course, so why is there a girls only course? And what sort of message does this send to girls about their ability to engage with technology, that they might need to be isolated from the group to learn it?

Seriously, society today would have us raise our children to pretend gender doesn’t exist, except when it does, but we won’t explain those rules because we haven’t finished making them up. But don’t worry, they’ll be completely necessary and rational.

 

[Cruciferi]

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Houston, we have a problem.

 

[Rau]

There’s no boys only course, so why is there a girls only course? And what sort of message does this send to girls about their ability to engage with technology, that they might need to be isolated from the group to learn it?

I’m guessing the thinking behind a “girls-only” offering is that some girls with an interest (perhaps nascent) may feel a little uneasy about getting into a typically male pursuit. So they’re being offered a girls-only experience. And while it might seem to imply a “message” suggesting some deficiency in (some) girls, that’s somewhat offset by the good of encouraging girls who may feel reticent. I don’t think the case is strong to have the girls-only, or not to have it.

 

[Xanthippe_Voorhees]

Gertabelle:

There’s no boys only course, so why is there a girls only course? And what sort of message does this send to girls about their ability to engage with technology, that they might need to be isolated from the group to learn it?

I’m guessing the thinking behind a “girls-only” offering is that some girls with an interest (perhaps nascent) may feel a little uneasy about getting into a typically male pursuit. So they’re being offered a girls-only experience. And while it might seem to imply a “message” suggesting some deficiency in (some) girls, that’s somewhat offset by the good of encouraging girls who may feel reticent. I don’t think the case is strong to have the girls-only, or not to have it.

Not sure if it’s the same for young kids, but in college, in order to boost enrolment of females in CS degrees they opened special sections in which it was basically invite only and only invited females and occasionally allowed timid men with no experience. Competition was forbidden in these sections and any reference to previous technology knowledge was as well.

In these intro tech courses, 80% of the women chose to become CS majors compared to 5-20% of women who took the mixed gender classes. Because male interest was higher in CS, there were often male-only classes. No matter male or mixed males still entered CS major at an 80% rate. When the dean brought this to a conference, it appeared that these kind of results were nearly universal.

Perhaps the camp is simply trying to duplicate what has held true across higher education. Not the best idea…because the whole problem with the frosh classes is the men having knowledge while the women don’t–and that knowledge was gained in these sort of high school experiances.

 

[phil19034]

As someone who used to work for the Boy Scouts in the 1990s, I saw this coming (in retrospect)

The #1 issue I have with this change is that a name change did not accompany this announcement.

The Boy Scouts of America should have been renamed to something like “Scouting of America” before or congruent with this announcement.

The fact that it didn’t happen is disturbing.

I also don’t like the fact that they did not poll scouts and scouters first either.

And the next major issue is that this will introduce a ton of new problems at Scout Summer Camps, which do not have the infrastructure to support a co-ed environment.

 

[commenter]

Boy Scout Troops are run by volunteers, almost exclusively parents. In order to have a sex-segregated scout troop for girls, you need a couple moms to volunteer. The more girls interested, the more moms needed. Again though, lets be real. Most likely this girl boy scout troop is going to be led by a dad. Or, if it is only dads interested in running the troop, there will also need to be a certain ratio of moms present for legal reasons. And most likely these girls are doing boy scouts because their dad was a boy scout or, more likely, their brother(s) are boy scouts. So how many girls are going to belong to this all-girl boyscout troop? For example, my troop was ~50-75 boys. 5? 10? 15? 50? And of these girls, how many will have brothers in the boy- boy scout troop? Which parent is going to be the girl boy scout troop scoutmaster and which is going to be the boy boyscout troop scoutmaster? Or is the dad going to be pulling split duty? I predict that the numbers for the girl boy scout troops are going to be relatively small, it will be mostly run by dads, and the family most likely has at least one boy doing boy scouts. The reality is that it is a whole lot of hassle to run two parallel, sex segregated troops and they will almost invariably merge. And once you merge, you can never un-merge, or else you are sexist.

The Boy Scouts has made the decision to just be the “Scouts”, but is too scared to say it.

This is how social changes are usually implemented; gradually, little here-little there, sort of under the radar. Then you wake up and find something important has been lost. No one person makes this decision, but circumstances are arranged so one outcome is inevitable, and bad parameters are incrementally phased in. So nobody is held responsible for philosophically changing course, but, hey, we only have one set of equipment, can’t have enough adults for 2 separate sets of leaders, that girls unit is not viable on its own, so merger is the practical step now.

 

[on_the_hill]

Of course–if we talk about the BSA and girls, we have to revive the ol’ argument that girls shouldn’t be altar servers.



And we support it by saying that the shortage of priests is caused by girl altar servers, and say that altar serving was how boys discerned the priesthood, and now that girls are present the boys aren’t allowed to think about being priests . . . .wait. . .that’s not accurate. It’s true that girls are present, but there’s no rule against boys being allowed to think about the priesthood while altar serving.

I mean–there’s no rule about it, is there? Or maybe the boys are afraid to be altar servers if there are girls there because they’ll get cooties?

THAT must be the reason! It’s totally based on formal Logic:
A) Girls give boys cooties.
B) Girls are altar servers.
C) Boys won’t be altar servers because girls are also altar servers.
Therefore,
D) No one wants to be a priest.

I was an altar boy and went to a Catholic school while I was an altar boy. No priest ever, not a single time, mentored us toward the priesthood. We’d arrive in the sacristy about 15 minutes before Mass and get set up. The priest would arrive about ten minutes before Mass and get set up. He might make small talk. Usually they barely talked to us at all.

We’d do Mass. Then we’d bolt out of the church and the priest would bolt back to the rectory. No one waited for the epilogue. So this whole idea that altar boys learned to be priests from priests is, in my anecdotal experience, far fetched. Although I do believe it occurred in some instances.

Moreover, the parish where I now live has sent at least four young men to the seminary in less than 20 years–all the while we had girl altar servers.

 

[JimG]

While the author of the article does give a few sentences to the connection between altar serving and priesthood, this does not seem to be her main argument. “When some of my daughters asked why they can’t be altar servers like their brothers,” she writes, “I explained to them not only the deeper reasons, but also some of the more practical things. It’s especially important in this day and age, I believe, for boys to have spaces where they are learning from men, with other boys, what it means to be male.”

It seems to me that she just thinks that there should be some spaces and some activities which are exclusively male, and some which are exclusively female.

 

[FrDavid96]

…
The #1 issue I have with this change is that a name change did not accompany this announcement.

The Boy Scouts of America should have been renamed to something like “Scouting of America” before or congruent with this announcement.

The fact that it didn’t happen is disturbing.

I am willing to bet that it will be renamed; probably in the next 3 years or so.

I also don’t like the fact that they did not poll scouts and scouters first either.

Would that have made any difference? I highly doubt it.

And the next major issue is that this will introduce a ton of new problems at Scout Summer Camps, which do not have the infrastructure to support a co-ed environment.

Most assuredly it will. Those who made the decision don’t care one bit.

 

[Duesenberg]

The article is correct. It’s tiresome for people to use the excuse “if girls didn’t serve, we would have no altar servers.” What out and out rubbish. All it takes is a bit more effort.

I have to say if I was the pastor of my parish I would walk across the street to the Catholic middle school and talk to the boy’s PE coach. I’d want a list of 7th grade Catholic boys who were smart team players. I’d recruit them to be altar boys once I created a “Knights (and pages) of the Altar” society. I’d recruit a few 7th graders each year. After awhile boys would come looking to join.

In a few years there would be a team of servers that the whole parish could be proud of – except for the sexists of course that would be upset that no females were serving anymore.

 

[Hereiam]

Female alter servers is unhealthy?