And she’s right. I linked the piece without much comment, but I was, like some of you, really stunned that the reporter was trolling blogs for reactions – of sort-of anonymous commenters on a blog – not even the blogger! It struck me as incredibly lazy reporting.
(Not that this is the first time it’s happened. I can’t remember exactly what the subject was, but last December I found an article in a paper somewhere that had been essentially lifted from one of my blog posts – I was attributed, and there were quotes around, well, my quotes, but I’d never been contacted by the reporter at all. It was odd.)
But Mollie goes after the entire article, as well, as being unbalanced and, let us say, lacking depth:
Well, I guess if the unbiased diocesan official rebuts a negative claim from a one-named blog commenter then we’ve provided all the balance we need. But we also throw in a patronizing comment about those poor people who are slow to accept change. Because we all know that they’re just fearful sexists who don’t like any progress or equality between the sexes. To drive the point home, the reporters quote a few more parents and female acolytes who praise progress and equality between the sexes in the church.
Wow and wow. I have absolutely no doubt that it was easy to find any number of parents who were elated that Suzie got to help out at the altar. I would imagine that most everyone I know — outside of my congregation and larger church body — would think this was a non-issue. They would say that it’s not even debatable whether churches should let girls serve as acolytes and lay readers. But didn’t Caryle Murphy and Michelle Boorstein have any curiosity why the Arlington diocese made this change or why the altar servers used to be exclusively male? There are serious Roman Catholic arguments for a male-only acolyte corps. They should have been mentioned and treated respectfully.
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