The New York Times had a nice, though odd, story the other day on a 13-year-old boy who’s been dragging his dad to church. The father, Bob Sweeney, is a former Catholic monk who left the Xavierian order in the 1970s and later stopped attending church altogether.

“He probably just one day was watching a Mets game, said ‘I don’t want to go to church’ and just stopped going,” his son, Ryan, says.

Ryan, on the other hand, “is a big reader, enjoys fantasy literature and has seen theories suggesting the world may end in 2013 due to the configuration of magnetic forces. In that case, he said, it would be nice to be on good terms with God.”

The story is odd, though, in that I don’t really know what makes it newsworthy. It’s not a trend piece, nor is it a profile. And it’s in the Fashion & Style section. Online, it’s under “Religion & Belief.”

Picture by NY Times.