I have no idea why teenage girls would be suddenly removed from certain roles at a Catholic high school in a Denver suburb. But now I'm wondering, like many others, because the school administrators removed an article about it from the school's low-circulation newspaper, suppressed publication of the newspaper itself, threatened and then removed a newspaper advisor from her post, and sent principal Matt Hauptly to go out in public and explain why this isn't technically censorship and to lecture curious reporters about proper journalism and to scream shut up SHUT UP SHUT UP. [Via Adam Steinbaugh]
The Denver Post obtained a mock-up of the Holy Family Lamp Post page that never saw its intended Christmas-edition print publication. The un-bylined article, bearing the headline "Where are the girls? Holy Family prohibits girls from serving at the altar," features an interview with Father Joseph McLagan, a priest new to the school who decided girls would no longer be allowed to serve at the altar during Mass.
And:
In a statement provided by the Archdiocese of Denver, Holy Family High Principal Matt Hauptly said the article "was implying" the school was breaking Title IX laws when altar serving is a religious and liturgical function within Catholic Mass that does not fall under federal gender-equity protection.
"Removing an article that falsely accused the school of breaking the law is not censorship," Hauptly said in the statement. "It is actually a lesson in the responsibility that comes with being a journalist."
On the contrary, Principal Streisand. The center of a venn diagram labeled "oddly sexist", "catholic priest" and "threatening administrators" is the sort of thing careers in journalism are made of.
