Dear Mr. FTC Commissioner..........
please don’t let people put their church on the do-not-call list.
The chairman of the Federal Trade Commission said he hopes to eliminate 80 percent of unwanted telemarketing calls under his agency's plan to set up a national do-not-call registry.

This had already crossed my mind on Monday night when I was calling altar servers to schedule them for Christmas Eve/Christmas Day. These assignments must be done on an individual arrangement basis because, I fear, few parents would go along with a randomly assigned schedule.

We have servers for the two Masses that everyone wants to attend (4:00 in the Church and Midnight) There aren’t a lot of people out there willing to sacrifice their pre-planned ‘vision’ of Christmas and go to the Gym or go another time.

I agree with those who think Mass in the gym is the pits. But when I was assigned 4:00 pm in the gym as a lector, I decided to offer it up. (And tough it out - the boys don’t do well in seats that aren’t bolted to the ground. And it still smells like a gym, which makes the average person feel inclined to get up and run around.....) In my smugness, I figure we attend Mass in the Church at least 52 Sundays a year. We remember what it looks like. We’ll make do. But I couldn’t believe the reaction I got from one mother when I asked if her child could serve in the gym while she was a EEM in the Church. “We spend Christmas together.......” Sorry, I was asking if your daughter could do a service for the parish about 100 yards away from Church, not ship out to Siberia.

There’s other crap, too......I hear the parents yell in the background, “not in the gym,” “tell them we have other plans,” “we’re going to Jamaica - Aruba - Florida - Colorado - you name it.” The mother/busybody in me wants desperately to remind these little darlings to go to Mass wherever it is that they have other plans. But I’m not paid to nag. I’m paid to politely line up the altar servers. So I bite my tongue and offer it up.

While I’m feeling smug, I must add that my good sport attitude was rewarded with a call from the lector coordinator, who asked if I would give up the gym and go to the Church at 6:00 instead, because someone wanted to read in the gym at 4:00. My pleasure.