adult altar servers

[99sm]

I have read the recent post regarding girls being allowed to serve as altar servers at the discretion of the Bishop and presiding priest. If you answer the following questions please cite your source so we can avoid opinions and hearsay. Thank you. May adults serve as altar servers? If so can adult women do so or just men?

Thank you.

 

[Matthew_Holford]

I have read the recent post regarding girls being allowed to serve as altar servers at the discretion of the Bishop and presiding priest. If you answer the following questions please cite your source so we can avoid opinions and hearsay. Thank you. May adults serve as altar servers? If so can adult women do so or just men?

Thank you.

I will begin with saying that I cannot cite a source. All I am going to say is that I don’t think that the Church has an upper age limit on altar servers. Technically, altar servers are deputising for acolytes and they have to be adults. As to the gender of adult altar servers I would suspect the rules are the same: females at the discretion of the diocesan bishop/parish priest/priest celebrant.

To add to the above I have seen adult males serving at weekday Masses (obviously altar ‘boys’ are going to be at school). I would also expect that in convents of female religious it is the female religious who serve.

I think it would be very difficult to find sources for what I’ve said.

 

[VetA]

I have read the recent post regarding girls being allowed to serve as altar servers at the discretion of the Bishop and presiding priest. If you answer the following questions please cite your source so we can avoid opinions and hearsay. Thank you. May adults serve as altar servers? If so can adult women do so or just men?

Thank you.

they can, i do. actually, all of the servers at the TLM i go are men, no young boys. adult women are ok too apparently, at my Novus Ordo parish there are at least 2 i know of.

 

[Phemie]

I have read the recent post regarding girls being allowed to serve as altar servers at the discretion of the Bishop and presiding priest. If you answer the following questions please cite your source so we can avoid opinions and hearsay. Thank you. May adults serve as altar servers? If so can adult women do so or just men?

Thank you.

Redemptionis Sacramentum:

1. It is altogether laudable to maintain the noble custom by which boys or youths, customarily termed servers, provide service of the altar after the manner of acolytes, and receive catechesis regarding their function in accordance with their power of comprehension.[119] Nor should it be forgotten that a great number of sacred ministers over the course of the centuries have come from among boys such as these.[120] Associations for them, including also the participation and assistance of their parents, should be established or promoted, and in such a way greater pastoral care will be provided for the ministers. Whenever such associations are international in nature, it pertains to the competence of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments to establish them or to approve and revise their statutes.[121] Girls or women may also be admitted to this service of the altar, at the discretion of the diocesan Bishop and in observance of the established norms.

This is based on

Can. 230 §1. Lay men who possess the age and qualifications established by decree of the conference of bishops can be admitted on a stable basis through the prescribed liturgical rite to the ministries of lector and acolyte.
Nevertheless, the conferral of these ministries does not grant them the right to obtain support or remuneration from the Church.
§2. Lay persons can fulfill the function of lector in liturgical actions by temporary designation. All lay persons can also perform the functions of commentator or cantor, or other functions, according to the norm of law.
§3. When the need of the Church warrants it and ministers are lacking, lay persons, even if they are not lectors or acolytes, can also supply certain of their duties, namely, to exercise the ministry of the word, to preside offer liturgical prayers, to confer baptism, and to distribute Holy Communion, according to the prescripts of the law.

Where the ministry was limited to men the word ‘men’ was used in this Canon; where it was open to both sexes the word ‘persons’ was used. It was clarified in 1992 and again in 2001.

The bishop may permit them but priests don’t have to allow them in their parishes.

adoremus.org/CDW-AltarServers.html

 

[Barbkw]

We have adult female and adult male Eucharistic ministers and Liturgy readers. In total, between 8-10 lay people for each Mass.

The youngest person I’ve seen participate was probably 19.

A family, with young children bring up the gifts (bread,wine and collection) and normally they also are the people who hand out the collection baskets.

 

[GwenL]

We have adult male and female altar servers for our OF Masses.

For our 7:00 a.m. daily Mass, if we didn’t have female altar servers, we would not have altar servers. We are continually trying to recruit men to serve at the altar, especially young men. We just “lost” one such to go to a religious order and their seminary (what a joyous loss!). We have two seminarians that spend summer here with family, and they always are given precendence to serve at daily Mass (or read, or do whatever else they want).

The older men just don’t seem interested, even if they are at daily Mass each day.

For weekend Masses, we have a mixture of adult men, women, boys, and girls.

For our EF Mass (a new startup for us), we have of course only boys and men.

 

[Julian0404]

I serve the 5pm Mass as often as I can go, and there is a regular adult woman, late 60’s early 70’s who set up the alter and if no one shows up to serve, she does.

 

[99sm]

Thank you for your responses. I appreciate it!

 

[rick43235]

May adults serve as altar servers? If so can adult women do so or just men?

I don’t know if adults “may” serve as altar servers, but I know that they “do.”

My uncle began serving as a young boy. He is now in his 70’s and is still serving. In the same church. On Sunday, when there is more than one server, his wife often serves at the same mass.

 

[Luger]

Both male and female adults may serve the OF Mass. While there is no prohibition against it, and my parish would typically be the type to encourage it, there are no adult female servers that I am aware of.

Some of the priestess wannabe’s served Mass for a very short time years ago. I’m not entirely sure why but they stopped. I suspect it was fairly negative peer pressure as pastors certainly wouldn’t intervene on something like that…

 

[Joe_Kelley]

At our weekday masses there are a group of “Older Boys” who serve. I never did regularly because I was in too many other things and they had enough regulars. Now I have had to drop off the regular schedules. There are too many mornings I feel too sick to go. As a result I have not served for several years and am out of practice.

However twice in the last few months none of the older boys showed up. The women in charge of the altar etc asked me to serve. I don’t think that there is any policy against their serving [we have mostly altar girls for Sunday masses.] The women preferred that I serve. They got it setup and straightened out afterward, but wanted a man to fill the role for the mass. I warned the priests that I was inexperienced, but we got through it pretty well.

Chesterton once said: “If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.” I can do a lot of things badly when there is no one around to do it better. So I still get to do a number of things around the Church.

 

[VetA]

I don’t know if adults “may” serve as altar servers, but I know that they “do.”

My uncle began serving as a young boy. He is now in his 70’s and is still serving. In the same church. On Sunday, when there is more than one server, his wife often serves at the same mass.

seminarians are acolytes; acolytes=altar servers (by a different name); seminarians=at least 18 years old=men.