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While you are right, the drop in altar boys has been going on since altar girls were first allowed. I know a couple of boys who stopped serving once the girls served beside them.

I never could understand why the idea of altar girls flew... didn't this used to be the first step in the recruitment of boys for the priesthood?

As an aside, I have a friend who will not allow her son to be an altar boy. She is quite vehement about it and cites the scandal as her reason. Then I reminded her that she doesn't go to Mass anyway, so why would she have her son be an altar boy?

Then I reminded her that she doesn't go to Mass anyway, so why would she have her son be an altar boy?

You made me smile...it's been a tough day. V's wife.

I never could understand why the idea of altar girls flew... didn't this used to be the first step in the recruitment of boys for the priesthood?

Precisely. Satan's master stroke; sissify altar service in a seven year old boy's mind and he will grow up with the perception of the priesthood and the sacrifice of the Altar as something for sissies.

I had the misfortune to grow up in a parish were altar girls were well and truly entrenched when I was of age to begin serving at the altar (circa 1982.)

Had it not been for altar girls, I might have been an altar boy. I couldn't have articulated my feelings more coherently than 'cooties', but even then, I knew something was wrong about altar girls.

I regret little about my childhood, but to this day I regret not having served on the altar.