Adults serving as Altar Servers

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I have served Mass for the past 44 years, and continue to do so.
 
I train the altar servers in my parish; it takes about an hour to run through their duties.
 
We don’t because the pastor wants it to be a ministry for the children. But I have had to serve on a few occasions where no kids showed up.
 
I have seen adult servers at the OF. I regularly attend the EF and am sacristan and head server. There is another gentleman who often serves with me if none of the boys are available. And, before their family moved, we had a gentleman who would serve with his son. There is nothing wrong with adults serving in either form of the Mass.
 
I’ve been in at least one parish that would probably have had no servers otherwise! Due to the location, the congregation was largely college and graduate students. There were few families with kids, especially ones old enough to serve
 
The altar should be served by acolytes. Pope St Paul VI established acolytes as an ordinary lay ministry after Vatican II. However, I have never heard of them other than seminarians being instituted as acolytes as part of the process of becoming a priest. Therefore, everywhere we have altar servers rather than acolytes.

There is no reason why adults can not be altar servers. Although they were uncommon when I was an altar server (in the dim and distant past) we had one at our church who only carried the processional cross. The rest of us did all the other duties. I liked it on Sundays when he was off because the priests always substituted me as the cross bearer and I liked doing that.
 
We have both men and younger boys who act as servers at Masses. The usually serve during the week and the children on weekends or Sunday. Simply due to availability. There are times when there are no servers.
 
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