Altar call: why all Catholic boys and girls between the ages of 10 and 13 should be politely required to serve on the altar for one calendar year.

At the moment altar servers in parishes are male and female, between the ages of 9 and 15 (depending on parish custom and populace). They are volunteers for the corps, which in American Catholicism has been a legendarily colorful, motley, memorable, and delightful aspect of parish life.

I speak from experience: My service as an altar boy at Cure of Ars Parish, several hundred years ago when I was young, dipped me early in the mystery and miracle of the Mass, and has remained a rich resource of memory and story to me ever after.

The whole idea of altar servers is currently in public disarray, what with many altar boys having suffered abuse and rape from predatory priests. But to cancel the idea because it has sometimes gone so badly wrong would be a mistake. The idea remains fascinating, and the experience of serving as acolyte at Mass so potentially riveting and influential, that I propose this: Why not require a year of service on the altar for all parish children between, say, ages 10 and 13?

Those who wish to continue on the altar, seeking a sort of Eagle Scout rank among altar servers, can do so; those who wish to retire from the cassock and surplice, after a year of close witness to a scrap of bread being transformed into the Body of Christ, can do so with honors suitable to the occasion--a reception for the graduating class of altar servers, perhaps, with coffee cake and flimsy folding chairs, and muttered cheerful remarks from Father, who also reels off a few funny stories of mishaps and memories, and from the corps captains--adults who have been asked by the parish to oversee and protect the altar girls and boys of the community.

Such service by parish youth wouldn't be especially demanding; serving on the altar requires no heavy lifting.

It would be a wonderfully intimate education in the ancient theater and poetry and rhythm of the Mass, the central communal act of a practicing Catholic.

It would be a gentle lesson in personal discipline and public presentation for young people just on the cusp of major sensitivity about their personal persons and personas.

It would provide a lot more servers to parishes, which generally scrounge a bit for volunteers.

It would dip young Catholics into the regular practice of their faith at just the moment when young Catholics are generally thinking of running screaming in the other direction from the faith of their fathers and mothers--a natural enough inclination, given the need to begin to carve an independent character, but a blow to a church community desperately in need of maturing youth.

It might, God help us, spark a few young men and young women into pondering a life as a priest or nun or brother or deacon or monk or abbess.

It might actually cement or repair or be in some mysterious way beneficial to family love, the bonds of which get stretched and tested and splintered some as progeny approach the vast and mysterious country of Teenagerdom.

It might well improve the vocabulary skills of the young faithful, who would be able to spell such interesting words as pyx and thurible, and thus improve their Scholastic Aptitude Test abilities, the sharpening of which will be a focus of their lives in the years to come. (It would also make an interesting line on an admissions application to the college of their choice, no?)

It would instantly provide a thorough guide to the Mass for young men and women who perhaps were not paying absolutely stellar attention in their formative years as they slouched in the pew like long rubber creatures half-awake at best and not real thrilled about this sign of peace thing, let alone the idea of holding a stranger's hand while saying the Our Father, I mean, really.

There are any number of ways to actually conduct such an altar corps, and perhaps the design and implementation of the plan could be left to the parishes, which are endlessly creative and energetic machines at their best. Some parishes might structure the corps to be the natural next step after Confirmation. Some might make it the necessary year before Confirmation. Perhaps service in the corps releases its members from required attendance at religious education. Perhaps there is some form of modest pay scale attached or the lure of free tickets to the local Catholic university basketball season or other such rewards as donated by understanding parents and benefactors.

In short: Why not make a parish task that is now voluntary and sparse, gently required and populous? The only disadvantage of the plan that leaps to mind is the attrition rate of young men and young women who will snarl at the authoritarian stance of the Church Eternal as expressed in the requirement for a year of altar service, but those snarling youth are (a) the very youth for whom a more intimate look at Catholic life and practice would be a boon, and (b) the very youth who are not now volunteering for service on the altar.

What think?

By BRIAN DOYLE, the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland in Oregon. He is the author of Saints Passionate & Peculiar (St. Mary's Press, 2002) and Credo (St. Mary's Press, 1999).