Dangerous Lives of Altar Boy Jokes

A bunch of people who don’t like the Catholic Church have been smugging themselves silly over one of those images modeled on demotivational posters. You’re probably familiar with the genre if you’re on Facebook. People like to use these things to score political points while keeping the “What, it was only a joke” card up their sleeves if they get in real trouble.

This demotivational message is more heavy-handed than most, as the Facebook page from which it originates makes clear. I know this because a friend who is a mocker of religion commended it to me. It came along with the message, “The people who run the Catholic Church are utterly and staggeringly full of shit. LIKE and SHARE to raise awareness!” Thought I’d do my part:

Ha ha ha ha. That’s so funny! Way to stick it to the hypocritical, uptight, sexist, patriarchal, heteronormative sex worker of Babylon guys! High fives all around! Any Catholic who doesn’t laugh along with you clearly has no sense of humor!

Except, there’s one little problem, for those of us who actually go to church regularly. They’re really not called “altar boys” anymore except in an informal sense. The preferred term is “altar server,” and they tend to look a lot like, well, this:

So, clearly, the Catholic Church will be changing its position. I mean, any day now. Right?