Good for Fr. Joseph Illo!

Boys Only to Serve at Star of the Sea

Thank God for courageous priests, manly priests in fact, who are willing to take on the culture in order to do something good. Fr. Illo of Star of the Sea parish in San Francisco recently decided to phase out girl altar boys at his parish with the permission of Archbishop Cordileone. The usual suspects are on the attack. In this report note that the TV crew didn't interview one person who agreed with father's decision. Is that because there were none? Hardly! I suspect Fr. Illo will see an upsurge in parish attendance as orthodox Catholics see an alternative. ChurchMilitantTV began a GoFundMe donation page for the parish which has already collected over $32,000 since it was posted two days ago.

Want to give a donation to support Fr. Illo and his parish? Go here.

Want to know more about Fr. Illo? Visit his blog here. And please pray for him. It isn't easy to be targeted by the secular world. And God bless Archbishop Cordileone. In my diocese (Arlington) the bishop wanted altar girls. His efforts failed when the Vatican said priests couldn't be forced to use altar girls.

 And we have our own Fr. Illo here, Fr. Michael Taylor, who phased out altar girls in 2011 at Corpus Christi mission parish in South Riding. That also became a cause célèbre when Jennifer Zickel, a mom of a girl altar boy, took it to the press. I wish I had thought of starting a fund raiser for Fr. Taylor's parish. Here's what I wrote about the event at the time.

We are blessed in my diocese that many parishes retain the perennial practice of boys serving at the altar. God bless those dear priests with the courage to resist the spirit of the age.