Cardinal Raymond Burke: ‘Feminized’ church and altar girls caused priest shortage

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Sarcelle said:
I have seen this phenomenon no matter the church I go to. Now this is just personal experience but I have seen women outnumber the men in Evangelical churches, Greek Orthodox churches and yes, Catholic churches. I have also seen older people outnumber the younger ones.

The general churchgoing population is usually older and female.

I highly doubt that disallowing altar girls will solve this problem.
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I agree that won’t solve the problem since the real problem is with men. From what I’ve heard about pre-Vatican II, the men would stand in the back and step outside for a smoke so I don’t think the Latin Mass is the answer. I think this Saturday Evening Post cover summarizes the situation very well. Some things don’t seem to change.

Men simply need to get involved, even if it is difficult or embarrasing. I mentioned to my wife this morning that I wouldn’t be willing to help in my parish without her since it is all older ladies. They were grateful to have me around though to do some heavy lifting so I am very glad that I helped. It’s also worth noting that my wife was the youngest helping out (she is 30) and she isn’t even Christian let alone Catholic! Where are the young Catholic women to help out?

I do notice more men (and young people in general) at inner city parishes/churches that have a more vibrant community. There’s groups for men, young people, gay people, parents who have lost children, charitable ministries, etc. My local parish doesn’t really offer much of anything at all.

http://imgc.allpostersimages.com/im...g-saturday-evening-post-cover-may-16-1959.jpg
 
Ridgerunner said:
. . . Is that all just silliness? Well, to post-modern Americans, I guess it is. To today’s increasingly cynical and jaded youth it might seem so. But things like that did, and I suspect would now, really have an affect on young boys. Add to that the “Romanness” of the Latin prayers and the almost military precision of the movements (It was a LOT more than just holding cruets) and it did have an attraction. (We actually knew about ancient Romans back then.) Was that attraction peculiar to boys? Many today would debate it, but if we judge by the near absence of boys from the altar now and the near slovenliness and uselessness of the servers now, can one really say its opposite would not?
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Your post reminded me of a conversation I had with my sister in law some years ago. Somehow we were talking about altar servers. I mentioned that, when two altar servers approach the altar holding the cruets, they must then turn around to go back to the credence table, and that there are four possible ways to do it, only one of them correct—at least according to the way I was trained. They can both turn right, both turn left, turn toward each other, or turn away from each other, when turning around to go back. The correct way is to turn toward each other, like interlocking gears. The next day we were attending Mass together, and she watched the servers intently. After they had brought the cruets and gone back to the credence table, she nudged me and whispered “they did it right!”
 
J_Peterson said:
From what I’ve heard about pre-Vatican II, the men would stand in the back and step outside for a smoke so I don’t think the Latin Mass is the answer.
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Nuns ran the show before pre-Vatican II for the most part, if you include schools and all that.

You will not find the same situation today with the Latin Mass. It’s generally men who are determined to make it work, and many drive a distance to get there. Check out Chicago where the Latin Mass has resurrected some of the older parishes.
 
J_Peterson said:
I agree that won’t solve the problem since the real problem is with men. From what I’ve heard about pre-Vatican II, the men would stand in the back and step outside for a smoke so I don’t think the Latin Mass is the answer. I think this Saturday Evening Post cover summarizes the situation very well. Some things don’t seem to change.

Men simply need to get involved, even if it is difficult or embarrasing. I mentioned to my wife this morning that I wouldn’t be willing to help in my parish without her since it is all older ladies. They were grateful to have me around though to do some heavy lifting so I am very glad that I helped. It’s also worth noting that my wife was the youngest helping out (she is 30) and she isn’t even Christian let alone Catholic! Where are the young Catholic women to help out?

I do notice more men (and young people in general) at inner city parishes/churches that have a more vibrant community. There’s groups for men, young people, gay people, parents who have lost children, charitable ministries, etc. My local parish doesn’t really offer much of anything at all.

http://imgc.allpostersimages.com/im...g-saturday-evening-post-cover-may-16-1959.jpg
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The male non-involvement (like smoking outside) might have been true in some places, and I don’t doubt it was. Where I grew up, there was none of that.

Some of the non-invovlement is, I think, due to modern conditions; conditions that are probably different in certain areas. I have a brother who lives in a large metro area suburb. He and his wife know a few people in their parish and a few in the neighborhood, but it’s very limited, and they’re not the same people. Geographical communities are not “communities” in the way they once were, though there are exceptions. A lot of that depends on mobility. My wife and I have two parishes for historical reasons. One of them is in a geographical “community” that’s pretty mobile, with lots of white collar people. People come and go from it and oftentimes one doesn’t know who came before they’re gone again. There is not much “community” to a parish like that, and efforts to create one are probably doomed to failure.

Our other one is more rural than not, and people there have been there for generations. People there are ranchers or people who work off the ranch but also ranch. There is massively more of a “community” to that and a lot more parish involvement as well.
The differences are striking. Nobody has to try to create a “parish community” there because the community is already one in other ways.

Most Catholics now are solidly middle class, urban and are members of the most mobile parts of society. I am not sure what the answer to low parish involvement is in those situations.

But I will add that a lot of Catholics have become influenced by the societal mores. Perhaps it’s inevitable that, as people become more prosperous, they are more involved in their own economic matters and less in their neighbors or fellow parishioners. After all, people go off on trips oftentimes when they have the time and resources to do it. They don’t hang around the neighborhood or the parish church. But I’m not sure prosperity is all of it. Middle class people today are in a bind that it would take considerable effort to escape. If you want your kid to go to a good school, you have to upscale where you live unless you send them to private school. So the demands on your finances and time are greater. There is the mythology, then, about “parental involvement” in schools, requiring “caring” parents to spend a lot of their time messing around with school projects. And, of course, to afford it all, one’s dedication to occupation requires more.

Finally, the church in America really doesn’t do much more than deliver lightweight teaching about “caring and sharing”. What does that mean in concrete terms? Nobody knows. “Life as moral challenge” really isn’t part of the message.
 
Sarcelle said:
I have also seen older people outnumber the younger ones.

The general churchgoing population is usually older and female.
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Except maybe in the Hispanic community where they’re much younger. In the last Spanish Mass I attended there were about 90%+ women. I may have been more comfortable wearing a paper bag over my head.
 
SWolf said:
I would recommend reading the full interview if you haven’t already. He goes into much more depth that’s not really possible to put it into a sound bite headline. Even if some disagree, one can’t argue he has thought over this very thoroughly.
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Is that interview accessed via the link in the OP?

All I read is that there were too many women in the sanctuary and not enough men. Also that since women started demanding rights, men have been afraid of marriage. So from what I read in the article, the Cardinal is against women’s participation in church and that the fault of the failure in marriage is also because of those uppity women.

It seems that the article is slanted against the Cardinal.
 
Sarcelle said:
Is that interview accessed via the link in the OP?

All I read is that there were too many women in the sanctuary and not enough men. Also that since women started demanding rights, men have been afraid of marriage. So from what I read in the article, the Cardinal is against women’s participation in church and that the fault of the failure in marriage is also because of those uppity women.

It seems that the article is slanted against the Cardinal.
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The synopsis is very slanted. He reiterates several times how important women are to the Church.

newemangelization.com/uncategorized/cardinal-raymond-leo-burke-on-the-catholic-man-crisis-and-what-to-do-about-it/
 
ProVobis said:
I would say women running parishes are more permanent than the priests or bishops who are appointed to administer them. Try changing anything and you’re sure to get a “That’s not the way we do things around here” response. As someone noted, most parishes are basically “stuck in the 70’s.”
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Wow, I guess it all depends on where you attend Mass. This isn’t at all my experience and it hasn’t been in the nearly dozen parishes I’ve regularly attended.
 
rotlex said:
👍

Absolutely. And lets add to that we should remove women’s religious orders. Lets oust the nuns even further. Heck, they played such a small part in the Church for all those decades setting up and running schools, hospitals, shelters and the like. Yeah, who needs them at all!

Yeah, letting girls be alter servers is simply destroying the Church.
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You’ll not find many nuns in schools or hospitals anymore. That, I think, is due to the decline in numbers, but also in the direction many orders took. One remembers, for instance, the “nuns on the bus”, led by Sr. Simone Campbell, whose vocation appears to be advocacy for the Democratic party and “social change” in terms of lobbying for higher taxes.

That ship sailed DESPITE altar girls.
 
Burt_Macklin said:
#priestlyswag #Jesussmackdown

I usually just roll my eyes at that kind of comical bravado. I for one am glad the Catholic Church didn’t embrace the hypermasculine fad that was trendy for a period in some Christian circles.
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I don’t think the Catholic Church ever did, despite feminist mythologies.

I recall reading some historian who was, in that segment talking about church architecture in Europe. In talking about the differences between Lutheran and Catholic churches in Germany, he said that certain religions are “masculine” almost entirely. In that context he mentioned German Lutheranism, Islam and orthodox Judaism. He opined that that “masculine” orientation was responsible for the lack of ornamentation in the houses of worship of each.

Catholic churches, by contrast, he said, were “full of women and babies” in their decor, saying it reflected a more “gender balanced” view which, he thought, was typical of Catholicism in other ways as well.

If you look at photos of churches in Europe, you can instantly see it. Blessed Mother, women saints, cherubs, children saints. “Women and babies”. The males are also represented, of course, but the imagery (and, I think, the psychology) are carefully balanced.
 
I don’t have time to explain this, perhaps later. But it is my belief that many of the religious orders of women have largely, like Esau in the Bible “sold their birthright for pottage”.

To some degree, the male clergy have as well, but not as disasterously as have a lot of the religious orders of women.

But then, one is inclined to think laymen and laywomen have done the same thing to a saddening degree, and we are now stuck with a “gender equivalency” that discourages development of some of the best traits natural to both genders.
 
And then you have way over the top Orthodox converts like Frederica Matthews-Green, who argue that Catholicism has been feminine since the Middle Ages, and that Orthodoxy is for the real men. Strange how a woman can be obsessed with things like that.
 
Ridgerunner said:
In response to no post in particular, I thought it might be useful to note that the old altar boy role wasn’t just a matter of doing what altar servers do now, which is practically nothing.

I don’t know if every former altar boy got the same background information on it than was prevalent where I live, but at the very beginning of our instruction we were told that acolytes of old were semi-clerical and, during the catacomb days served a secondary purpose of providing physical protection to the priest and the Eucharist. We were told (the tellers were undoubtedly a bit amused by this) that if it came to it, we were to resist any attack on the priest and/or altar as a sort of “last line of defense”.

I know it sounds silly to people nowadays, but at the time and as young boys we took both things seriously. We weren’t priests, but we were “acolytes”, not just “altar boys”, and as such we sort of had at least a tiny participation in the clerical state; one from which we could go no further, or could. Also, that “guardian” role was just the sort of thing a young boy could respond to. It amuses me to recall eyeing the congregation to see if any potential attackers might be ready to leap forward. (I particularly kept my eye on a certain bald-headed man who usually sat in the front)

Is that all just silliness? Well, to post-modern Americans, I guess it is. To today’s increasingly cynical and jaded youth it might seem so. But things like that did, and I suspect would now, really have an affect on young boys. Add to that the “Romanness” of the Latin prayers and the almost military precision of the movements (It was a LOT more than just holding cruets) and it did have an attraction. (We actually knew about ancient Romans back then.) Was that attraction peculiar to boys? Many today would debate it, but if we judge by the near absence of boys from the altar now and the near slovenliness and uselessness of the servers now, can one really say its opposite would not?

Were churchmen perhaps more clever once than now? I don’t mean only in priest recruitment, but also in terms of giving life lessons to young boys who, if we are honest with ourselves, are practically born hooligans. As the father of a son and of daughters and the grandfather of many girls and boys, I know boys need discipline in a way girls do not. I further know they are impressed by things to which girls are, more often than not, indifferent.

And commitment? When it was a boy’s duty, it was impressed on boys that it was, in fact, a duty. If you were scheduled to serve at Saturday morning Mass, you were there. You had to be there. It was a commitment. And whether you just woke up or not, you performed with that exacting precision to which you were also committed. Does that kind of thing make any difference in later views of commitment of other kinds? I’m sure some would think not, but i think it did. Was your commitment gender-determined? Yes it was.

And today, when we find that (what is it now?) 40% of young men do not commit themselves to marriage, can we be sure that the absence of serious gender-based commitment early in life makes no difference in later outcomes? Do boys who are never trained to be other than the Huns they would be otherwise, remain Huns for life?

I don’t know, but I think there’s something to that. Today we are so willing, even eager, to toss aside all “wisdoms of the generations”; lessons gained through centuries, even millenia. We know better, we think, in all things, because we can turn an ignition key and use a remote. But are we wiser? I don’t think we are.
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:clapping: wonderful post and reflects the experience of my fiance who was an altar boy in the 50s and early 60s. He said the training and time with the priest, the precision, the reverence and the duties were extraordinary. Further as you said, it was a commitment. His mother would get up, drive them through the snow to be at the early Mass (east coast Italian community). He had left the Church for decades and when I took him back to Mass he was shocked at the lax attitude, the rather sloppy procedures, the jeans and running shoes or even slides showing beneath. Gracepoole, I noted your comment about the devil showing through the tee shirt…that too is not uncommon.

In our parish we do have a number of wonderful Altar Servers and indeed some of them do seem to be discerning a vocation. But their training is by one of the moms, not the priest so the opportunity for young men to get the experience as a possible inspiration to a vocation has clearly disappeared.
 
Ridgerunner said:
I don’t have time to explain this, perhaps later. But it is my belief that many of the religious orders of women have largely, like Esau in the Bible “sold their birthright for pottage”.

To some degree, the male clergy have as well, but not as disasterously as have a lot of the religious orders of women.

But then, one is inclined to think laymen and laywomen have done the same thing to a saddening degree, and we are now stuck with a “gender equivalency” that discourages development of some of the best traits natural to both genders.
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👍 I think there is a cohort of shall I say aging Baby Boomers (I am of the age but not of the philosophy) who still espouse the demands for “women’s rights” and gender neutrality, a few in our parish rather stridently changing words of hymns, responsorial psalms and selected readings for parish activities such as Stations of the Cross… One even suggested honoring Lillith :eek: during one of our Women’s Group events. I see also in some of the older Religious a seeming resentment that they had expected the Church to change, embrace Social Justice as a cause instead of Christ and having not succeeded seem to display a lack of appreciation for their feminine genius as St Pope John Paul II called it. Fortunately I think both with younger priests and Religious, a return Home has created a more joyful and Holy demeanor. Look at some of the newer orders, habited, some cloistered, but expressing incredible joy, femininity and grace. Similarly the young priests are on fire for Christ. Each display as you said, the best traits of their gender.
 
Ridgerunner said:
… he said that certain religions are “masculine” almost entirely. In that context he mentioned German Lutheranism, Islam and orthodox Judaism. He opined that that “masculine” orientation was responsible for the lack of ornamentation in the houses of worship of each.
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I have a mosque within a half-mile of my house, where there is very heavy traffic many a time. And there are mostly men there and they fast and they pray in non-vernacular. What I found amusing once was a sign in front of the mosque about stopping in for prayer while a closeby Catholic Church was advertizing a bake sale.
 
Respectfully, Cardinal Burke is blaming the “beards,” not the perps. A “beard” is a cover for homosexual behavior. The feminist smoke screen cannot obscure the rampant homosexuality in some seminaries from the late fifties onward. How many real vocations came popping out of seminaries complaining about the rampant homosexuality? This became quasi-institutionalized homosexuality, and sadly included sponsorship of homosexual outreach that included the foundation–unwittingly no doubt–of N.A.M.B.L.A., the “eight is too late” folks. Pray and fast and give alms for the intention of fine vocations. This blame and shame by Burke reminds one of Adam blaming God’s gift, the Woman, for his sin. 🙂
 
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