The Ad Altare Dei Award

[Cartoonist]

Poor pitiful me. Not only did I flunk out of altar boy school, but I never advanced beyond a cub scout. The glory of heaven could have been mine if I only had applied myself.

[empedocles]

1. As a cub scout, I remember seeing an illustration path for boy scout travels

towards eagle scout with wonderment.

[Dropped out as a tenderfoot on a quite unpleasant, military like, camping expedition].

[3Hotdogs]

2. Sorry, you're in trouble now.

I'd suggest getting your ass measured for an asbestos suit.

[rurallib]

3. Never joined the scouts for various reasons but

I was notorious on the altar for about 5 years and have lots of stories

[Act_of_Reparation]

4. I got that award when I was in the scouts.

I was also an altar boy.

And I somehow managed to avoid molestation in both organizations, while others in my immediate social circle did not.

[NeoGreen]

5. There is a whole slew of these awards for various denominations...

...
https://www.scouting.org/awards/religious-awards/



But it should be noted that these are not awards given by the BSA (Scouting), but by the particular religious organization AND that the chart/image above is incomplete since it does not include the UU awards.

It should also be noted that the official rules of Scouting (in the US) do not define 'god' or what is the 'practice of religion':

BSA Guide to Advancement - BSA Publication 33088 (2015), Page 39

5.0.5.0 Religious Principles
The Boy Scouts of America does not define what constitutes belief in God or practice of religion. Neither does the BSA require membership in a religious organization or association for membership in the movement. If a Scout does not belong to a religious organization or association, then his parent(s) or guardian(s) will be considered responsible for his religious training.

So, while a young scout may be labeled as an 'atheist' by some (let's say for example) busy-body catholic, if the scout's parent says that their religion is 'to do good' (paraphrasing Paine) and the world or humanity is their 'god', then by their own rules the BSA has to accept that. Busy-bodies be damned.

I explained all this to my son's scoutmaster and he was very receptive, especially after I provided a few quotes from BP himself:

“We are not a (social) club or a Sunday school class, but a school of the woods.”
Sir Robert Baden-Powell

“The religion of a man is not the creed he professes but his life - what he acts upon and knows of life and his duty in it. A bad man who believes in a creed is no more religious than the good man who does not.”
Sir Robert Baden-Powell

[Cartoonist]

6. Too bad religion can't leave it at that

They have to spoil it.

[NeoGreen]

7. Yep...

...I did my best to combat those busy-bodies, who would try to force their particular religious indoctrination(s) into our scouting program, while my son was a Boy Scout.

Fortunately, our unit was chartered by a local fire department, so I could always make the 'we don't want to implicitly discriminate against any denomination by embracing any one particular religious element" and thus should keep it to "just scouting" or the observation that the FD is a public entity and can't discriminate, so we shouldn't either.

There was one adult leader who kept suggesting that we should switch our charter to a church (I always noted, with humor, that he only ever mentioned the benefits of chartering with his church) and he inspired me to look up the specific BSA rules on this subject.

[guillaumeb]

8. Introibo ad altare Dei.

I was an acolyte. But our teacher graded on a curve.

Even though most of the Masses were in French, the High Mass was in Latin.