A Better Way to Teach Teenage Boys About the Virgin Mary

he Feast of the Immaculate Conception has been a regular source of angst for me as a teacher at an all-boys Jesuit high school. Aside from posing an arcane, if weighty, theological concept, the celebration of the Virgin Mary's sinless birth offers to me little by way of personal access or invitation. I can only imagine what 1,000 teenage boys make of it as they gather in respectful, compulsory attendance for Mass in a darkened auditorium. Where the energetic Mass of the Holy Spirit kicks off the school year with goblets of fire on the altar, and the Thanksgiving Mass calls students to be generous with stark images of global poverty, this holy day just feels like “church.”