St Joseph, the Indispensable Man

I have been a bit hot and bothered of late about all thing faithyy and politicky and culturey and society... society-y, I guess.
But as someone, somewhere recently quoted from someone else, (Bernanos I think?) indignation never saved a soul.
Nor did it.
And I've also been thinking quite a bit about anger lately, and pace, my most recent confessor, your diagnosis was wrong, but your prescription was perfect.
You see, what I thought was (occasionally righteous,) anger did not really rise to to the grand level of anger -- it was mere indignation.
And like most sins or even unpleasant traits, it could be traced back directly to the grand-daddy of all sins, Pride. Why should this happen to ME? How could she say that to ME? Why must I put up with...?

DOESN'T THE UNIVERSE KNOW WHO I AM?

And the fact is, I am among the very most fortunate of human beings.

And I'm not just referring to the gratitude due for having enough to eat and healthcare, and being able to read, and living in a nation where I can vote, and all that that puts most first-worlders in, what? the top 1% of humanity for sheer good luck?
I'm talking about my family. My parents. My home. My friends, my siblings, yes -- but mostly, my parents.
I grew up with such a vision, such an example of how a life of authentic love looks - I don't think .00001% of humanity in all of history has enjoyed the like!
Anyway, after thinking about that, I have determined to try to live my life under the patronage of St Joseph. I have decided to lay my cares, regarding society. And culture. And politics. And, especially, the Faith --
I have decided to lay these cares at his feet and ask him to formulate how my prayers should be presented before the throne of the Lamb, and then, just, you know -- let me know what my prayers are.

I think a great many of the wounds of this weary world could be bound up and healed by a study of, and devotion to, St Joseph, and I don't mean just churchy faithy matters.
Saint Joseph is the Indispensable Man.

Now, I know Saxon White Kessinger's poem was about pride, and sought to convince the puffed-up that there's no such person as the "indispensable man," and I know, or at least think I recall, that there's a bio of Geo. Washington that opines as how, for this nation and its history, at least, our first president was indispensable.
But there IS such a person, and he was necessary to a far greater and more numerous people than the citizens of just our puny nation.

St Joseph is that Indispensable Man.
Think about it. God could have come to earth in any human form, but He chose to be helpless and humble, to enter history, time as we can understand it, as an infant, born in obscurity.
So He chose to have a human Mother.
But he was not begotten by a human, so a father was not needed for procreation.
Now, you might say that in those days, (as if other times were so different from ours...) a human father was needed for physical protection, fiscal support, etc.
But Mary had a father, she had an uncle who was a priest, a man of some stature -- an angel could have whispered to any male relative, it's okay, she's a good girl, help her take care of the kid that's on the way...

That's not how God arranged it.
God thought it was important for His human self to have a visible, that is, a human father.

Now -for whose benefit?
So often, God's signs are for someone other than to whom or on whom an event has occurred.
Miracles are for the faith of the onlookers, the loaves and fishes is not so much to fill the bellies of the crowd as to instruct the disciples in how they are to continue His work.

That little family in Bethlehem, and then Nazareth, Jesus Mary and Joseph, the Holy Family exists as a family to show the importance of the family; the Domestic Church is not just our first and most important school of the Faith, it is the very foundation of society, it is the building block of all culture.

We need to relearn this.
A society where human lives are begun in laboratories, where children are parented by committees, where the state decrees what one must and must not teach ones children, where men "become" women by wishing and declaring it so - a society like this needs to relearn the simple Truths that Joseph's mere existence teaches us.
We need St Joseph.
We need the model of fatherhood, yes, but we also need the model of manhood he gives us, he is the ideal for all men.
It is impossible not to think that our nation would not be a better place if thousands upon thousands of families were not left fatherless by mass incarcerations of young men from certain segments of society. It is difficult not to suppose that half a world away another nation would not be the demographic time bomb that it is, if its fathers had been able to rise up and say no to the murder of their unborn children and had protected the daughters born to them instead of throwing them away in hopes of a son next time. It is hard not to imagine that the most celebrated strumpet of our time would be a different person without coming from a broken home and being raised by a stepfather with delusions about sex and his own manhood.
And I am convinced that, had they grown up with more stability and with a proper understanding of how we are meant to love and care for each other, most of the generators of popular culture would not be hawking the filth and nihilism that they do.
Why St Joseph?
All men should look to him as a model of manhood, not just fathers, for all men are called upon to protect.

And perhaps, most especially, he is the model for the priesthood, for the celibate, for the man who offers his very life to the Church.
As Mary is the type of the Church, the Spotless Bride? St Joseph is the type of the priest, the man who should love Her and Her children as much as if they were begotten of his own flesh.

Saint Ioseph, Most Indispensable, pray for us!

"Because you know you how men hate bacon....."

(That subject line is from Matthew Archbold at Creative Minority Report.)

 The nation’s pork producers are in an uproar after the federal government abruptly removed bacon, pork chops, pork links, ham and all other pig products from the national menu for 206,000 federal inmates.
The ban started with the new fiscal year last week.
The Bureau of Prisons, which is responsible for running 122 federal penitentiaries and feeding their inmates three meals a day, said the decision was based on a survey of prisoners’ food preferences:
They just don’t like the taste of pork.
“Why keep pushing food that people don’t want to eat?” asked Edmond Ross, a spokesman for the prison bureau. “Pork has been the lowest-rated food by inmates for several years,” It also apparently got more expensive for the government to buy, although he did not provide specifics.
The National Pork Producers Council isn’t buying it. “I find it hard to believe that a survey would have found a majority of any population saying, ‘No thanks, I don’t want any bacon,'” said Dave Warner, a spokesman for the Washington-based trade association, which represents the nation’s hog farmers.....
“We’re going to find out how this came about and go from there,” Warner said. “We wouldn’t rule out any options to resolve this.” He said the association “is still formulating our strategy” to reverse the prison decision, which the industry first learned about Monday when the Fort Worth Star-Telegram called for comment......

“People are more health conscious these days,” he said. “Some people choose to be vegetarian or vegan. That’s their preference.” As of last week, the prison menu had added an “economically viable” turkey bacon substitute. Incarcerated pork lovers still have an option: The prison commissary, a convenience store that sells packaged pork rinds and precooked bacon. But they have to pay.
Observant Muslims and Jews are forbidden to eat pork, and the prison system has long made accommodations for them by providing alternatives to pork and halal and kosher foods. Ross declined to say whether there has been an increase in Muslim or Jewish inmates in recent years and whether that may have factored into the survey responses.

I don't want to think the federal government is being dishonest about the motives for this ruling, but as the cheapest person you know, I am very aware of what a frugal choice pork is, so I am, as a young friend of mine would say, "spectacle."
From Archbold -

The Obama administration which is forcing the Little Sisters of the Poor to provide abortifacient coverage has now banned all pork from the menus of federal prisons, a move which Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is cheering, according to CNS News.
Now, to be clear, the administration is reportedly claiming this isn't kowtowing to pressure because Muslims don't eat pork. They're saying inmates just don't like pork. Yeah, because you know you how men hate bacon.....
How ironic is this that the president who attacks the religious freedom of Christians at every turn is getting adulation from CAIR for accommodating their religion? So freedom of religion isn't an important enough principle to allow Christians not be forced to participate in same sex marriages. And freedom of religion isn't important enough to allow nuns not to be forced to provide abortifacient coverage. But pork is banned from prisons.

I can't help it, I like tenors....

Oh my, I am in love. 

I would feel that way even if he didn't look the way he does.

There is an older recording of  the title track which is... pretty awful. So I'm not utterly in thrall to Kaufmann's looks and acting, (which is stupendous,) I can be discriminating.

I would quibble with NPR's critic, Tom Huizenga, who says, "While he may not project the thrilling Italianate muscle of Franco Corelli in Puccini's biggest hit, Kaufmann's brawny, burnished tone is gorgeous."

That's exactly what I thought as I listened to the title track, omw, the best aspects of Corelli in his prime! (Without any of the, sorry, Franco, extravagant gulping.)

 

The Paper of Record

It should be obvious that all the kvetching I do about the New York Times is proof of all the reading I do in the New York Times, so that yes, I do depend on it a lot, it is of authentic vlaue to me.

That is not to deny that it can be advocacy journalism at its very worst. (Of course its funniest moments are when its writers are trying desperately to be both advocates/partisans and news providers/truth tellers and the two role are irreconcilably in conflict with each other and it is obvious to everyone but them.)

Anyway, am I the only one who boggled at its Op-ed page's offering a platform to a struggling worker alerting the Times readership to the oppression of the capitalists under whom she struggles?

Oh, wait I misspoke, she and her sisters are not under anyone, they're kinda on top of them, you know - because they are giving lap dances.

And I was also somewhat taken aback by the diction of the front page piece about the AirBnB user assaulted by his hostess who, I think they put it, was "born male" but "lives as a woman."

PC to the last, the Times insisted on using feminine pronouns for the rapist, despite his obviously having male genitalia, and said rapist's contention that his victim was cool with everything until buyer's remorse set in over their "consensual" sex, because, you know the victim was prejudiced against "women" with penes. (Yeah, I did it, I used those scare quotes...)

Oh, those transphobic travellers, they make things so difficult for the real victims.

(Has the Times in the past had sympathy for parents who don't think boys pretending to be girls using the girls' restroom is fair to actual girls? or for women complaining about men who dress as women using the women's locker rooms at gyms? Why, no. No, they haven't. Because, well, you know... "the real victims here.")

Pro-Choice? Changing the World, One Heart At a Time

This is the kind of good news we need.
Listen to Ruben Navarrette Jr at Daily Beast -

For the last 30 years, I’ve supported abortion rights. This year may be different.
The only thing I hate more than talking about abortion is writing about it. It’s no accident that, in 2,000 columns over a quarter-century, I have never—ever—written about abortion. I’ve avoided the topic like a root canal. 
But that is getting harder to do with the release of what are now five gruesome, albeit edited, undercover videos by The Center for Medical Progress depicting doctors and other top officials of Planned Parenthood discussing, and even laughing about, the harvesting of baby organs, as casually as some folks talk about the weather.
It’s jarring to see doctors acting as negotiators as they dicker over the price of a fetal liver, heart, or brain, and then talk about how they meticulously go to the trouble of not crushing the most valuable body parts. This practice is perfectly legal, and for some people, it is just a business. With millions of abortions each year in America, business is good.
Who could forget Dr. Mary Gatter, council president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Medical Directors, when, in Video #2, she tells undercover investigators that it isn’t about the money—before she zeroes in on dollars and cents? 
“Let me just figure out what others are getting, and if this is in the ballpark, then it’s fine,” Gatter said. “If it’s still low, then we can bump it up.” ...

I want a shower....
in the latest video, Abby Johnson, the former clinic director of that same Planned Parenthood office, said her branch made about $120,000 a month selling aborted fetus tissue and organs.
All for the sake of research, no doubt. Make that a long, hot shower with lots of soap.
The videos were produced by The Center For Medical Progress after a 3-year investigation into Planned Parenthood. While many Democrats—most notably, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest—claim that they haven’t seen the videos so they don’t have to comment, others on the Left admit to having seen them.
Hillary Clinton, who recently came to the defense of the organization as doing a lot of good in the field of women’s health, called them “disturbing.”...
I’m pro-choice. At least I thought I was until recently. These days, each time, I express concern, outrage, disgust, or horror over another video—which should come with warnings that they may produce nightmares—some supporter of the organization responds by attacking me and insisting that I was never really pro-choice to begin with. 
Defenders of Planned Parenthood are trying to deflect criticism away from the organization and onto those who produced the videos. In the minds of true believers, those are the real culprits—guilty of releasing illegally obtained and “heavily edited” videos with the intent of destroying a valuable organization that provides essential health services to millions of women. The organization has hired an expensive Washington, D.C.-based PR firm to do damage control, and the firm quickly tried to pressure television networks to stop airing the videos. ...
After all this, I still consider myself pro-choice, as I have for the last 30 years. I staked out this position during my freshmen year in college. Even then, I understood the abortion debate was a tug-of-war between competing rights—those of the mother versus those of an unborn baby. I sided with the mother. And I tried not to think about the baby.
All this was happening in the 1980s, which was a particularly tense time in the abortion debate. Americans were at each other’s throats. Protesters picketed the offices of abortion providers. Clinics were bombed or set on fire. Doctors who performed abortions were being threatened. The Moral Majority, Operation Rescue, and the Republican Party seemed an intolerant lot. I couldn’t imagine siding with them, so I lined up on the pro-choice side. 
I arrived there for a simple reason: Because I’m a man. Many will say that this is not a very good reason, but it is my reason. Lacking the ability to get pregnant, and thus spared what has been for women friends of mine the anguishing decision of whether to stay pregnant, I’ve remained on the sidelines and deferred to the other half of the population.
Over time, I made refinements—going along with waiting periods and parental notification laws at the state level, and coming out against the barbaric practice known as partial birth abortion. 

As I’ve only realized lately, to be a man, and to declare yourself pro-choice, is to proclaim your neutrality. And, as I’ve only recently been willing to admit, even to myself, that’s another name for “wimping out.”

I suspect more than a few men have thought of "pro-choice" as their only choice - wasn't it presumptuous, wasn't it paternalistic of them to have any opinion that in any way limited a woman's options, to inject themselves into a matter where women were the ones who would have to bear... well, everything? bear the pain, bear the consequences, bear the meroies, bear the guilt, bear the lost opportunities, yes, bear the child?
But neutrality in the face of evil is not going to cut it.
One at a time, people will open their minds, open their hearts - and they will not come down on the side of evil.
Because people are not evil, God di not make us that way. We are created for glory.

Being "Pastoral" and Being Fatherly

It's Fathers' Day, so, listening to Wagner, in honour of...

Frankly, needed to take a shower, a bit muddy from the rabbit hole down which I took a tumble.
Oh, Internet - the things you get me to do!

The Internet, God's gift to conspiracy theorists and extremists of all kinds.
And remember, the social fabric has fringe on all sides...

Sad to say, most of the muck from which I'm trying to extricate myself is written by my co-religionists.
You know, the right-wingers who think the Church is in thrall to the Democratic party, the left wingers who think She's in bed with the Republicans... a shameful way to think about your Mother, isn't it guys?
And a lot of the thought I was examining was NOT of recent vintage. La plus ca.... how do I make that little mark under the "c"? No matter.
In reading about hierarchical skulduggery, and backroom presbyteral politicking, I was struck, (not for the first time, since it has been a talking point for most of the commentary on Pope Francis and his appointments,) how people like to say, "we need men who are 'pastoral', not...."

Not what?
What is the opposite of pastoral? What do we think "pastoral" mean?

As a musician I was accustomed to hearing the word used approvingly as one of the "three judgments," in selecting and preparing music for liturgy - well, more than approvingly.
It is a most lop-sided stool,  we musicians are asked to sit upon, one leg is always favored, isn't it?

Yes, musical excellence; yes, liturgical appropriateness; but above all, pastoral sensitivity!

The which, far too often, boiled down to "give the people what they want!" (and just as important, don't give them what they don't...)

But anyone who's serious about the task, in other words, not an NPM adherent but an NMLPM adherent, were there such an animal, knows it is not a zero sum game.

It's not just with musicians - I think there's a tendency when "being pastoral" is proclaimed as the sine qua non of episcopal eligibility to forget that there's a lot more to shepherding than keeping the wolves at bay.

I'd wager any crook wielded by a shepherd worth his salt makes a helluva lot more contact with wool than with wolf.

But I don't know, do I? I've never met a shepherd, good or bad, (though I have had way more contact than was good for me with a particular sheep, or rather, with a "little lamb"  - smelly, noisy creatures who won't let an ingenue get on with her business!)

And I doubt I am alone in this. (In the non-acquaintance with shepherds, not in doing musical numbers with livestock.)

But most of us do have a pretty good acquaintance with a father, good or bad, and are better equipped to say what made him so, (mine was spectacularly good and I shall miss him every day until I die,) so I think that's a metaphor we in the first world could probably utilise more effectively in speaking of our bishops.

You wanna go play in traffic? Oh, okay, I don't care what ya do, it's all good.... gee, I love ya, kiddo!

Gosh, dang, I'm afraid we might hafta move, I drank up my paycheck, and there went the rent, but lemme give ya a big hug!

Sorry I forgot to teach you right from wrong, but we sure had some great times fishin', huh, Sport?

Isn't it romantic?

Apparently, people in the chattering classes are concerned that some descriptive nouns commonly applied to criminals are a form of romanticizing said miscreants.
Their objection is not really that we aren't speaking harshly enough about those criminals, but that we aren't speaking sweetly enough about other criminals.

Not that anyone cares, but I personally find the manly images conjured up by the words "biker", "thug", "hooligan", "outlaw," and "weasel"  all... equally romantic.

How Popular is Marriage?

A writer in the Non Catholic Rundown says that,

marriage has probably never been as popular as it is among the LGBT community.

and that,

Countless same-sex couples really do "feel like" getting married.

Are either of those statements true?
She does say "probably" in the first, but is it probable? and are the gay or lesbians who want to marry really "countless"? or even many?
I don't pretend to be able to make sense of statistics like these, but anecdotally it seems very unlikely.
And are the gay or lesbians who want to marry really "countless"? or even many?
Again, I don't see the evidence.
I have no idea if the cliches about women being the driving force in traditional marriage are correct or old (wannabe) wives' tales.
But there seems enough data to support the thesis that biologically male humans are driven to "want" numerous mates, and females are hard-wired to "want" the protection of monogamy.
With only men in the mix, promiscuity seems almost a given.
Strangely, from the stats referenced above, "while fewer women have entered into civil partnerships overall, there are more that have had a dissolution."
Go figure.
I haven't had a large circle of lesbian friends since college, so I have no opinion or guess on how much they clamor for marriage, but for many years fully 3/4 of my friends, colleagues, drinking buddies were gay men.
Three quarters, at least.
And these were several different social circles over the years, in a milieu that far from stigmatizing homosexuality, (or any kind of sexuality at all, for that matter,) celebrated it, and allowed everyone to be as open as they wished.
An tiny minority chose to be, or at least succeeded in being in "steady" relationships of even as long-lived as a year.
And of that minority, the vast majority were in open partnerships.
Now, a good deal of the impermanence may be blamed on the nomadic work situations and lifestyle, but girls who were living out of town for a run and involved with someone back in the city were, far more often than not, sexually faithful.

None of this is really relevant to whether same sex partnerships are moral, or ought to be legal, I'm just questioning whether the writer's contentions have any basis in fact.

We've all realized that even when "everyone knows" something, it's not necessarily true.
No matter how often you sing about it in a fundraiser.

Speaking of Manliness...

 

Go read about this at Hermeneutic of Continuity.

Mission

The Holy League, in a Spirit of Marian Chivalry, under the patronage of Our Lady of Guadalupe and Saint Joseph, seeks to provide opportunities for the faithful to unite in prayer, especially monthly Eucharistic Holy Hours, for purification from sin and predisposition to Supernatural Grace for the fuller exercise of the threefold offices of Priest, Prophet, and King received at Baptism. The particular prayer of the Holy League is the monthly Eucharistic Holy Hour.

The Holy League, in fidelity to its mission as a Roman Catholic solidarity movement:

• provides a Holy Hour format which incorporates: Eucharistic adoration, prayer, short spiritual reflections, the availability of the Sacrament of Confession, Benediction and fraternity;
• encourages consecration to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and the Purest Heart of Joseph;
• promotes the Precepts and Sacraments of the Church; especially through devotion to the Most Blessed Sacrament and the praying of the Most Holy Rosary;
• creates a unified front, made up of members of the Church Militant, for spiritual combat;
• strives to have a regular monthly Holy League Holy Hour available to men in every Roman Catholic parish.

When did "manly" become a dirty word?

This is one of the most scatter-shot, scatter-brained pieces I have ever read, even considering the source.

It's mostly about marriage, and why Jesus didn't say what He said.
(Honest.)
So, you know, thank God we have Cardinal Kasper to explain what Matthew the Evangelist got wrong.

After Jesus asks the disciples what Moses taught, they have the presence of mind to ask why Moses taught it: It is because of the "hardness" of the Israelites' hearts, Jesus says. We too should ask why Jesus answers as he does. Besides divorce, is hardness of heart an implicit target of Jesus' instruction here?

See? Jesus spoke out against divorce to protect the people marrying and divorcing from the Pharisees, because of the hardness of heart of the rest of us, the mean old religious types, who'd get all judgey on people.

But then it goes off on this truly bizarre tangent about the priesthood, linking to a video of young men comparing team sports to their vocation, the work, the sacrifice, the commonality of rules and goals as a point of reference even among strangers...

Would any of us really want our pastors looking at us like the seminarian does here? 

Since there are at least three seminarians in the video referenced, I'm not sure which one the NcR guy is mocking, but I think it's the one at the beginning, kind of in the shadow, wearing his clericals and holding a basketball under one arm, and yes, I'd be fine with a pastor looking at me like that.
I'd prefer people with whom I am interacting to look like this, e.g.:

 rather than like this:

or this:

or even this:



(Not that I don't enjoy the work of both Martin Short and Jim Parsons.)

When did some of us start wanting men, especially men in positions of authority, to be weak and soft so that we'd know they couldn't hurt us, (or our feelings) ?

Wouldn't we rather they be strong and hard but worthy of trust so that we'd know they wouldn't hurt us, but would fight for us if need be?

I know not all of us need the same thing, (thank God for St Paul trying to be all things to all men, setting an example,) and many want a shoulder to cry on rather than a size 11 to give us a good kick in the pants when we need it.
But I can't think I am the only one who is more interested in a pastor who is a teacher rather than an enabler.
Okay, and that was wrong, right there - the word "enabler" is getting all judgey.
You know, the way the NcR guy gets about some of us:

They want to prove they are strong enough to shoulder the demands of faith, and when they see other people getting away with what looks like moral laxity, it threatens the meaning and value of their own self-sacrificing rigors.

Oh, and one last thing, he gets that way about a priest whom he says is

a marvelous priest overflowing with warmth, sincerity and hospitality. He said just one thing that bewildered me so much, I didn't have the wherewithal to question it.
"Our next generation of priests," he said, "must be manly priests. We want real men. We want John Wayne in a clerical collar."...Why valorize machismo?

Machismo?
I'm not a big fan of Wayne's, but if you want to use a well-known actor's film persona in an article, you should know enough about that persona that you won't caricaturize the way you did the peronae of the seminarians you're maligning.
"Cause this is "John Wayne," too:

Altar Boys and Girls

USCatholic has an editorial by an all grown-up altargirl, accompanied by a survey.

It made me think about the subject a little more deeply than I usually do, (my thoughts on servers usually run to,  Maybe bubblegum pink mules were not the best footwear choice for an acolyte, or Couldn't that kid wait and pick his nose later? or Would it kill the servers to learn the basic responses? and to at least stand for the EP if they're not going to kneel?)

I ticked off a lot of "others" because the survey, like most surveys, is leading, and makes certain presumptions of the If you think X then you probably don't think Y variety.

So, agree? disagree? other?
I present some of my answers, (yeah,  I tapped that keyboard like they was payin' me by the word,) as a woman who went through here childhood and adolescence pretty sure I was going to be a Catholic priest when I grew up.

I suspect "allowing girl altar servers has hurt the number of vocations to the priesthood", but I don't know.
I do think women are innately more inclined to serve, (and I mean that generally, not just at the altar,) and males are all too willing to let females take up the slack in many areas.
Look at the make-up of other ministries in your parish.

I think males have a much harder time than do females of understanding the concept of the Servant/Leader which is so central to Jesus' mission, and I suspect service at the altar is one of the few ways boys learn the concept.

It is possible that [the author of the piece] doesn't understand the concept either, from the way she mocks the idea of girls serving in other capacities, "helping with the flowers, the linens, and the sacristy," and maybe "the washing and ironing too ," which she apparently feels are demeaning.

It is fortunate that Peter's mother-in-law, Martha, and the various Marys of the New Testament had a better grasp of what service means than the writers at USCatholic.

The reader is asked whether this is a statement with which they can agree:
"Parishes should just be happy that any kids want to become altar servers, regardless of their sex."

Idiotic.
Of course they should be happy.

They should be happy if a four year old wants to celebrate Mass, too, but that doesn't mean that they should let him.

Or if they agree with this one: Having girls as altar servers discourages boys from getting involved in the ministry. -

I don't know, I only suspect that it does.
Nobody is going to compile statistics, lest they contradict ones already held opinion.

(Kind of the way they fail to keep track of abortions and their aftermath in this country.)

And statistics that rely on self-reported reasons are not very useful in these matters.
Look at simple Mass attendance - who is going to answer, "because I'm too lazy to get up on Sunday," when asked why they don't attend?
A PC answer, such as a distaste for hypocrisy, or disagreement with "what the Church says," (without much effort made to find out what the Church actually teaches,) is face-saving,  it seems more thoughtful and responsible than "I like to get loaded Saturday nights".

Look at how many young Catholic men in this country say that mandatory celibacy is the main factor in keeping them from the priesthood, survey after survey - if this were true, the marriage rate would be rising, or at least holding steady, wouldn't it?

Because celibacy is the last thing we ask of married Catholics, so if the thought of never having sex were the actual reason for any downturn in ordinations, you'd be jumping at the chance to marry, right?

But who's going to say,  I just don't want to make a commitment, I want to keep my options open rather than taking on any encumbrance.

Why, that would make you sound shallow!

I think "opportunit[ies] to be involved in parish ministry" is one of the worst reasons for having servers of either sex.
There is a far too common attitude toward Liturgy among the laity, adult and children, that unless one is an EM, or a lay reader, or a choir member, or an usher, one has "nothing to do," at Mass, ignoring the fact that those in the pews who listen to the Word and receive Christ and worship the Triune God have "chosen the better part," and that those who serve are, when it gets down to it, sacrificing their freedom to do just, and choose the better part that by service.

The biggest danger of eliminating female altar servers is:

Huffy people deliberately absenting themselves from the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass because of elimination of female servers is not their personal preference, not "how they would have done it."

I know too many people who claim to be Catholic but don't go to Mass because of music/boredom/bad preaching/being ticked off with the priest.

Well listen up -
If there's something that you dislike more than you love receiving Communion so that you allow whatever that distaste is to keep you from partaking of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, then YOU DON'T REALLY BELIEVE IN THE REAL PRESENCE OF JESUS CHRIST IN THE EUCHARIST.

And if you don't believe in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, then YOU ARE NOT REALLY CATHOLIC.

If boys in your parish shied away from altar serving because they didn’t want to serve with girls, the parish’s response should be:
If, IF, anyone actually said that, I'd try to find what they meant.
I suspect any boys who did say that would have a variety of meanings - "I don't like girls" or "I have contempt for 'women's work'" seems to be [the USCatholic author's] assumption, since she also wrote, "Are those really the type of priests we want leading a parish? The best pastor is not likely the one who has had females cleared out of his path and been taught that if he doesn’t want to deal with women in his vocation and work, he doesn’t have to."

There is also shyness, and as boys get older, nervousness around members of the opposite sex.
It's a delicate age, and there is no question in my mind that possessors of XY chromosomes are the "weaker sex."

And finally, it seems to me that a "calling" of any sort is more easily discerned, and more keenly felt if one grasps the necessity of ones stepping up to the plate, rather than being given the impression that "oh, anyone can do it, there's no reason for me to put myself out, they don't need me."
I think that over the last 30 years, (and perhaps before that, I don't know,) there was a concerted effort on the part of a lot of people to give that impression to those priests whom we were already fortunate enough to have.

Restricting service at the altar to boys might just be necessary damage control after 40 years in the desert.