Your Excellency, The Altar Boy

I notice with increasing frequency among persons promoting heretical and/or heterodoxical opinions-- be they former Catholics who got "saved" from the Church or an actively dissendent Catholic-- the tendency to couch their blasphemy de jour under the umbrella qualification of, "now I was an altar boy growing up, so I know what I'm talking about..." Or, "my husband was an altar boy, mind you..." I suppose in a few years, once they have become of age, a number of the "altar girls" of the 80's and 90's will make similar claims.

Apparently these folks are under the impression that serving at Mass is on par with serving on the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Pray tell, is there a special knowledge infused in the pre-pubescent mind of a young server who managed to stay awake almost to the end of the first reading? What profound theological insights are stirred in the soul of a 12 year old who can't even tie the shoestrings of the black Air Jordans he decided were sufficient dress for serving at the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass?

As far as I can tell, the lone criteria for serving at Mass in most parishes is advancement to the 6th grade-- that and perhaps an aversion to personal grooming. Yet apparently, this distinguished position renders one a life-long theological expert on all matters of faith and morals. Come to think of it, St. Thomas Aquinas likely served at Mass as a boy and he wrote the Summa Theologica. Joseph Ratzinger served at Mass in his youth and he became Pope! Maybe there is something here...