Girls Are Taking Over the Altar

CHICAGO SUN TIMES, June 21—At St. Ita's Church there are 17 girls and 14 boys in the altar server program.

The church is hardly unique. “Parishes across the Chicago area say the number of female servers has swelled in recent years,” said staff reporter Robert Herguth. “And in many churches, girls now outnumber boys, who historically had a lock on the job.”

“I'd say there are certainly more girls than several years ago,” acknowledged Auxiliary Bishop Edwin Conway.

While statistics are not kept for the entire archdiocese, “a sampling of local churches shows many today are lopsided toward girls,” said Herguth of a trend that began to develop soon after the Vatican gave permission for female servers in 1994.

Mary Kraychy, leader of the national Coalition in Support of Ecclesia Dei, which promotes the celebration of the traditional Latin Mass, told the paper that girls on the altar may keep some boys away, which in turn could hurt vocations to the priesthood.

Sister Joan Chittister's Neb. Visit Draws Fire

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, June 20—The visit of a feminist nun to Schuyler, Neb., “has drawn the ire of a top-ranking official of the Lincoln Diocese, even though Schuyler … is in the Omaha Archdiocese,” reported AP.

Msgr. Timothy Thorburn, chancellor of the Lincoln Diocese, protested the appearance by Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister, a dissenter on many Church teachings, at a retreat center run by a community of Benedictine monks, said the wire service. Chittister spoke on “patriarchal structures within Church and society, and a spirituality for the new millennium,”

While Omaha Archbishop Elden Curtiss “agreed to Chittister's visit if she refrained from criticizing the Church,” according to the AP, Lincoln's Msgr. Thorburn said he will do all he can to discourage young men from seeking a religious vocation with the Schuyler Benedictines and to prevent advertising of the retreat center in the Lincoln diocese.

According to the wire service, Msgr. Thorburn regretted his past support of the Schuyler Benedictines, and added he was speaking only for himself and not for the Lincoln Diocese or its bishop, Fabian Bruskewitz.

Dr. Laura Takes on PBS Kids' Show

THE JEWISH WORLD REVIEW, June 7—It's Elementary, a film by two lesbian women airing currently on PBS, has provoked a critical review by radio talk show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger in the Jewish publication. The film is shown in schools and teacher training programs throughout the country in order to promote understanding of the lesbian lifestyle.

“The point of It's Elementary,” said Schlessinger, “is to indoctrinate children with the belief that homosexuality is normal — not a deviant or morally wrong behavior, nor a personal or societal problem — but rather a totally benign and acceptable variation of heterosexuality, and its equivalent in every way.”

Schlessinger, a psychologist, said that It's Elementary stereotypes Christians as torturers and murderers of homosexuals, as one young student in the film says, and she asks: “If the producers are fighting stereotyping and prejudice, how did [they] justify leaving this child's mistaken characterization of Christians uncorrected in the film? Might this not make Christian children feel bad, or stimulate hate and violence toward Christians?”