(London Guardian) -- I recall standing in my grandmother’s kitchen with her yellow Bakelite phone to my ear, waiting on hold for a talkback radio program. I was eight years old, and my family was in another room listening to the Catholic Bishop of Toledo take questions from callers on the local AM station.
Finally it was my turn. “Bishop Donovan,” I said, “I’m in third grade. The priest at our school has come to our class to ask for boys to volunteer to be altar servers. Why can’t girls volunteer too?”
Poor Bishop Donovan. He mumbled something about church tradition and the importance of serving at mass as a first step towards priesthood – where, again, one obviously had to be male – and moved on to the next caller.
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