Adults serving as Altar Servers

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It is allowed, so I would do it if I were asked. That is highly unlikely, since we have plenty of young people stepping up to volunteer. (I know how to do it, because I volunteered to help train altar servers for quite a long time.)
I would not see a problem with restricting altar serving to males only, but I think that would be difficult for a priest to do in our parish. Not impossible, but I would expect a lot of fireworks, whether there “ought to be” fireworks or not.
The only time I have seen adult altar servers in our archdiocese has been at parishes and at Mass times where there were essentially no children in attendance. That is never a good sign.
 
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According to the General Instruction of the Roman Missal:

“The Ministry of the Instituted Acolyte and Lector

98 The acolyte is instituted for service at the altar and to assist the Priest and Deacon. …

100 In the absence of an instituted acolyte, there may be deputed lay ministers to serve at the altar and assist the Priest and the Deacon; ….”

Only adult men can become instituted acolytes.

One of the top ten reasons given for a decline in clerical child sexual abuse in Australia since the 1980s is “the almost total collapse of the altar-server system”. (Child Sexual Abuse in the
Catholic Church: An Interpretive Review of the Literature and Public Inquiry Reports Desmond Cahill and Peter Wilkinson, August 2017 at http://www.tjhcouncil.org.au/media/...ex-abuse-and-the-catholic-church-reaserch.pdf page 308). This report discusses figures on page 180: “Because there were many more boys abused (four boys to one girl), the risk factor for boys, especially altar boys, was very considerable for those attending Catholic primary schools and the boys’ secondary colleges.”

Data released by the Catholic Church in Australia shows 7% of priests working between 1950 and 2009 have been accused of child sex crimes (572 priests). This is a worse percentage than for the USA: 5.6% between 1950 and June 2015. (From Child sex abuse royal commission: Data reveals extent of Catholic allegations - ABC News ).
 
YourNameHere said:
…we need more people to serve. Either as Altar Servers, readers, Eucharistic Ministers, etc., etc…
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There is a very interesting phenomenon in my parish. Liturgical ministries have long been very cliquish and dominated by some terribly difficult (and often incompetent) people. For the most part it has been a closed guild. Very willing and talented people have been ignored/driven away for years because they were not part of the clique.

Word gets around after awhile and good/talented people stop volunteering.

Today it’s very hard to find anyone willing to take part in liturgical ministries at my parish. They simply don’t want to deal with the difficult people (who are slowly reposing by the way.) I also think that good people don’t want others to associate them with the difficults.

If our pastor ever “cleans house”, I think there would be a flood of new and good liturgical ministers.
 
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YourNameHere said:
Is there anything that says that adults, men or women, cannot serve as Alter Serves at Mass?
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The servers at my parish (all three of them) are adult males.

My uncle, who passed away at the age of 78, served at the altar at the same parish from the age of 12 until his death. At his funeral, five priests told me that my uncle taught them how to serve when they were learning.
Tis_Bearself said:
I have only seen one adult server who wears the alb…
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All of our servers currently wear the alb. We once had a husband and wife “team” who served together. They both wore the cassock and surplice…which I found to be kind of weird, but nobody seemed to care.
 
ChuckB said:
All of our servers currently wear the alb. We once had a husband and wife “team” who served together. They both wore the cassock and surplice…which I found to be kind of weird, but nobody seemed to care.
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That’s not right. The alb is a universal garment proper to all baptized Catholics. The cassock is clerical garb and the surplice is a clerical vestment – long on loan to altar boys and acolytes. That woman was effectively cross-dressing.

If you watch a Mass from the National Shrine, male servers wear the black and whites, while female servers wear albs.
 
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Phrancez said:
That’s not right. The alb is a universal garment proper to all baptized Catholics. The cassock is clerical garb and the surplice is a clerical vestment – long on loan to altar boys and acolytes.
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As I said, I thought it was kind of weird, but the decisions about who was to wear what were above my pay grade.
Phrancez said:
That woman was effectively cross-dressing.
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Cross-dressing? Just a bit over-the-top there, don’t ya think?
 
You’re right. It’s both tragic and highly toxic.

Sadly this has been going on for a very long time (decades) and there are some terrible complications. In some cases the difficult people are considerable financial benefactors of the parish. In other cases difficult people are close friends of such benefactors. In yet other cases, some of the most difficult are married to deacons.

A couple of years ago a major parish benefactor passed away. Almost immediately one of the most difficult of the difficults was told to stand down. I later learned that the major benefactor’s continued giving was predicated on the difficult person remaining in a leadership position within the liturgical ministry group. It’s a terrible situation.

On the other hand, another parish around here was really hurting. A new pastor arrived and he did clean house, including firing both parish deacons. That was an emergency situation though, as collections had dropped to dangerously low levels. Still, it took an able and courageous pastor and a very supportive bishop to “get ur done.”

That parish has truly been renewed.
 
Exactly, and in monasteries, the altar servers are also instituted acolytes for the most part. That is the case of the abbey I’m associated with (and that you’re familiar with!), and the oldest one is 85 years old!

Most abbeys, unless they run a school, don’t have a large pool of youth to pick altar servers from.

I know that the women’s monastery of the same congregation as mine though, use lay outsiders. The nuns themselves cannot be altar servers because of the papal enclosure which is only opened to allow the priest and deacon to give communion to the sisters. There is chaplain and permanent deacon (also a monk) that both live on the property, obviously outside the enclosure.
 
ChuckB said:
Cross-dressing? Just a bit over-the-top there, don’t ya think?
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No, not really. It might be in the case mentioned, that only cassocks/surplices were available, or that the couple really wasn’t aware of what was going on.

On the other hand years ago I was shopping for a new parish due to a temporary job transfer and I was introduced to the “Director of Liturgy” at a parish. She was dressed like a cardinal in choir. It was hideous, and yes, I suspect cross-dressing was part of that situation. I did not stick around to find out though.
 
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no shares not that I have researched at my parish adults serve during the week and young boys and girls serve during the weekend so I see no problem for adults in the parish if available I once was called in myself to serve my parish but once there was only one at my mass that I serve but now I am so thankful we have a seminarian from the mount st marys seminary of the west.
 
ChuckB said:
Cross-dressing? Just a bit over-the-top there, don’t ya think?
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Well, not knowingly, but the cassock and surplice are actually garb proper to males, just as dresses are proper to females, only the cassock and surplice are only proper to certain males, not all of them. There are parishes who allow girls to altar serve who don’t change from cassocks and surplices to albs for the altar servers, but that really isn’t right.

Our archdiocese has recently specified the cassock and surplice as being appropriate for male altar servers only, explaining the matter in this way:
“In the dioceses of the United States of America, altar servers may wear the alb and cincture or other suitable vesture or other appropriate and dignified clothing… Since the cassock and surplice is clerical attire, it should be reserved for seminarians, installed acolytes, masters of ceremonies and male altar servers.”
page 13, Archdiocesan Liturgical Handbook, Copyright © 2018 Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon.
https://d2wldr9tsuuj1b.cloudfront.net/12494/documents/2018/5/ALH 3 June 2018.pdf
 
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can young altar servers wear a stole at mass with a alter server pattern i was wondering because we technically fall under the category of lay clergy or is that violating church rules
 
7856 said:
can young altar servers wear a stole at mass with a alter server pattern i was wondering because we technically fall under the category of lay clergy or is that violating church rules
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No. Altar servers are not instituted acolytes, they are not clergy, and even instituted acolytes do NOT wear stoles!
 
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The Mass would be better without servers and without all the squabbles.
 
c1949 said:
The Mass would be better without servers and without all the squabbles.
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There are sometimes problems with servers not showing up when they’ve been scheduled, but for the most part altar serving is less prone to things I would call “squabbles” than other parish activities, whether involving the youth or the adults. More to the point, the altar servers typically report it has a profound and positive impact on their spiritual life and their appreciation of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. The priests say the Mass is enhanced by good altar serving, too. Perhaps most importantly, many of them say their vocations to the priesthood bloomed in the context of being an altar server themselves.
 
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YourNameHere said:
My idea was mainly to have some people on hand, in case of need.
Occasionally, we have some readers who attend a Mass and see that the scheduled person for whatever reason is not there. They are able to step in an give the readings for that Mass.
I would suggest that adult Altar Servers be there on a standby basis.
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You can suggest that, but I can almost guarantee that IF Father is ok with the idea, he will require the adult servers to complete the child abuse prevention training.

This is just one reason why many don’t like to mix the adults and kids… It’s just one more ministry where you want to make sure you have the correct youth protection policies being policed.

Plus, if you mix the kids and adults, the parish will need to buy adult albs.

To me, it would be just one more logistal headache that most parishes might wish to avoid.

God bless

EDIT: however, there is merit to what you are proposing, if you are suggesting a Altar Server guild at your parish, where you have adult MCs and the boys are mentored by the adults and learn from them. That would be totally, different from just adults filling in when an altar boy or girl is missing. See my post below for more info.
 
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