Girl Altar servers in Greek Catholic Church

[ConstantineTG]

Relax with your “dead” wrongs, Aramis. I obviously know that some married men can become priests. But in the Latin West it isn’t going to happen and you know it. A married man cannot go and get ordained unless it’s in the Eastern rite or Anglican ordinariates or some special exceptions. Face it, the married guys participating in Mass as altar servers are not going to become priests.

The rationale here that girls cannot participate because they can never be priests is questionable at best. You’re basically demoding altar service to not service but on the job training, which it isn’t. I happen to be extremely, passionately opposed to women’s ordination. But allowing girls to serve at Mass? Give me a break; I have no problem with it. And I don’t look at altar service as only a step toward a future priesthood, but rather a special participation for kids and young people playing an important role at Mass worshipping their Lord.

To add, what does an altar server do that the priest does himself which makes it a preparatory step?

Although my personal preference is still males as servers. But I’m open to having females if there is a genuine need for it (ie, not enough males serving)

 

[bkovacs]

Relax with your “dead” wrongs, Aramis. I obviously know that some married men can become priests. But in the Latin West it isn’t going to happen and you know it. A married man cannot go and get ordained unless it’s in the Eastern rite or Anglican ordinariates or some special exceptions. Face it, the married guys participating in Mass as altar servers are not going to become priests.

The rationale here that girls cannot participate because they can never be priests is questionable at best. You’re basically demoding altar service to not service but on the job training, which it isn’t. I happen to be extremely, passionately opposed to women’s ordination. But allowing girls to serve at Mass? Give me a break; I have no problem with it. And I don’t look at altar service as only a step toward a future priesthood, but rather a special participation for kids and young people playing an important role at Mass worshipping their Lord.

They can never be priests so get used to it!. That’s the reason!. As for EMHC, that is a post Vatican 2 innovation in the ROMAN Rite to cater to the laity, in their and most Roman clergys false interpretation of active participation.

 

[Cecilianus]

Relax with your “dead” wrongs, Aramis. I obviously know that some married men can become priests. But in the Latin West it isn’t going to happen and you know it. A married man cannot go and get ordained unless it’s in the Eastern rite or Anglican ordinariates or some special exceptions. Face it, the married guys participating in Mass as altar servers are not going to become priests.

The rationale here that girls cannot participate because they can never be priests is questionable at best. You’re basically demoding altar service to not service but on the job training, which it isn’t. I happen to be extremely, passionately opposed to women’s ordination. But allowing girls to serve at Mass? Give me a break; I have no problem with it. And I don’t look at altar service as only a step toward a future priesthood, but rather a special participation for kids and young people playing an important role at Mass worshipping their Lord.

The rationale was quoted by Diak.

Altar servers have traditionally held the rank of sub-deacon. In
places where this custom has fallen into disuse, boys may act in the stead of the sub-deacon provided the prescriptions of Article 278 are fulfilled. Since the subdiaconate
is a clerical rank, those designated to act in place of an absent sub-deacon should be of the male gender. Under no circumstances, whatsoever are members of the female gender permitted to act as sub-deacons or altar servers.

Laymen acting as acolytes are treated with the dignity of a subdeacon when functioning as such. Though Church law obviously does not specify this, I would argue that the reason is because the male gender is itself quasi-sacerdotal naturally through the fatherhood of Adam and supernaturally through participation in the masculinity of Christ. There is a natural fittingness to a male, even a lay male, performing quasi-sacerdotal actions such as chanting the Epistle (when the church has no ordained sub-deacon or reader) or functioning as an acolyte. (This is also, I would argue, the deeper reason why men should wear beards, a symbol or “sacrament” of hieratic wisdom, and why the modernist custom of shaving one’s beard is an affront to the dignity of a priest - though I hope none of the clean-shaven males reading this take offense; I myself am clean-shaven for pragmatic reasons. In the Western Church priests are clean-shaven for the same reason they take the tonsure - an ascetic symbol which is perfectly theologically valid.)

If laymen are to be given the dignity of one who is ordained, there must be some natural compatibility, similarity, or correspondance. A child who inherits a hereditary throne is given the honor of an adult, reigning king even though he is only a figurehead, precisely BECAUSE there is some natural compatibility - even if he were terminally ill, planned to abdicate, or were only a figurehead with a parliamentary government he can still represent the idea of kingship. Plenty of countries (England, for example), have such figureheads. But it would be absurd by contrast to crown a monkey as figurehead monarch, because a monkey can never be or represent a king.

Acolytes are not just priests in training. I function as an acolyte at my church, even though I am not called to the priesthood or even to the minor orders. (It’s not a role in the Liturgy where I particularly belong any more, and ideally my proper place would be on the other side of the iconastasis, but it’s a small parish.) But even having known most of my life that I was not called to the priesthood, I served at a Roman church as a teenager and I do not think that doing so was a waste of time.

 

[Cecilianus]

They can never be priests so get used to it!. That’s the reason!. As for EMHC, that is a post Vatican 2 innovation in the ROMAN Rite to cater to the laity, in their and most Roman clergys false interpretation of active participation.

As was letting women function as acolytes, except then they were catering to feminism as well.

 

[gurneyhalleck1]

I agree that being an altar server in NO way is a waste of time. But I disagree about girls being acolytes and don’t see them as having quasi-sacerdotal natures or subdeaconesque status. I think this is carrying tradition too far and trying to justify it. I think most folks say, “when I was growing up we didn’t let girls be altar servers!” and that’s that right there. Just like the folks who say, “when I was a kid, it was all in Latin!” and that’s all the reasoning there really is. It’s a desire to return to the “good old days” pure and simple, with some rationalization and a cherry on top. Don’t buy it.

But you make the best argument I’ve heard, Cec.

The rationale was quoted by Diak.

Laymen acting as acolytes are treated with the dignity of a subdeacon when functioning as such. Though Church law obviously does not specify this, I would argue that the reason is because the male gender is itself quasi-sacerdotal naturally through the fatherhood of Adam and supernaturally through participation in the masculinity of Christ. There is a natural fittingness to a male, even a lay male, performing quasi-sacerdotal actions such as chanting the Epistle (when the church has no ordained sub-deacon or reader) or functioning as an acolyte. (This is also, I would argue, the deeper reason why men should wear beards, a symbol or “sacrament” of hieratic wisdom, and why the modernist custom of shaving one’s beard is an affront to the dignity of a priest - though I hope none of the clean-shaven males reading this take offense; I myself am clean-shaven for pragmatic reasons. In the Western Church priests are clean-shaven for the same reason they take the tonsure - an ascetic symbol which is perfectly theologically valid.)

If laymen are to be given the dignity of one who is ordained, there must be some natural compatibility, similarity, or correspondance. A child who inherits a hereditary throne is given the honor of an adult, reigning king even though he is only a figurehead, precisely BECAUSE there is some natural compatibility - even if he were terminally ill, planned to abdicate, or were only a figurehead with a parliamentary government he can still represent the idea of kingship. Plenty of countries (England, for example), have such figureheads. But it would be absurd by contrast to crown a monkey as figurehead monarch, because a monkey can never be or represent a king.

Acolytes are not just priests in training. I function as an acolyte at my church, even though I am not called to the priesthood or even to the minor orders. (It’s not a role in the Liturgy where I particularly belong any more, and ideally my proper place would be on the other side of the iconastasis, but it’s a small parish.) But even having known most of my life that I was not called to the priesthood, I served at a Roman church as a teenager and I do not think that doing so was a waste of time.

 

[Aramis]

Relax with your “dead” wrongs, Aramis. I obviously know that some married men can become priests. But in the Latin West it isn’t going to happen and you know it. A married man cannot go and get ordained unless it’s in the Eastern rite or Anglican ordinariates or some special exceptions. Face it, the married guys participating in Mass as altar servers are not going to become priests.

The rationale here that girls cannot participate because they can never be priests is questionable at best. You’re basically demoding altar service to not service but on the job training, which it isn’t. I happen to be extremely, passionately opposed to women’s ordination. But allowing girls to serve at Mass? Give me a break; I have no problem with it. And I don’t look at altar service as only a step toward a future priesthood, but rather a special participation for kids and young people playing an important role at Mass worshipping their Lord.

When the poster is arrogantly wrong, and talking counter to canon law, he is dead wrong.

A married man may be ordained a priest after the death of his wife. (min 2 years between her death and his admission to seminary.) I know of at least two such men in the Roman Rite Archdiocese of Anchorage, one personally. Fr. Erik Wiseman was married for many years, and is now a priest. The other joined a monastic order after his wife died, and was later ordained an RC priest. (He might not be up here any more.)

Any man, married or single, not having taken a second wife, has the potential to become eligible for the priesthood.

 

[OrdinaryMelkite]

I personally would be open somewhat to Girl Altar Servers (nothing more than that), but like I stated in a post earlier in the thread, we alreayd have astrong female presence at the Melkite church I attend. Our cantor is female and is married to one of the Deacons. And their Down-Syndrome afflicted son is one of the Altar Servers. And so On.
And like I said before, half the Liturgy constantly references and honors the Theotokos anyway.
Again, I would be open to maybe having girls as Altar Servers in our Church, but I don’t really see the need if we are to “honor women.”
This looks uncomfortably like a “Feminist Attempt At A Power Grab” to me.

 

[Cecilianus]

I agree that being an altar server in NO way is a waste of time. But I disagree about girls being acolytes and don’t see them as having quasi-sacerdotal natures or subdeaconesque status.

Whether we see them as naturally having this “subdeaconesque” status or not, the canon Diak quoted grants them this status, at least for the Ukrainian Church, and this grant is not an innovation but a longstanding tradition. Tradition is important; it is how the Faith is transmitted, and the only case when “this is the way my grandparents did it” is not a good reason to do something is when your grandparents had lapsed from the original, purer tradition (e.g., most people’s grandparents practicing the Byzantine rite in a heavily Latinized form - but the form people are returning to is in fact the more traditional expression of the Faith).

 

[Cat_Herder]

They can never be priests so get used to it!. That’s the reason!. As for EMHC, that is a post Vatican 2 innovation in the ROMAN Rite to cater to the laity, in their and most Roman clergys false interpretation of active participation.

Beware of hasty generalizations.

They can never be ordained deacons either. Yet there were deaconesses; not ordained clergy, of course, but analogous to servers.

 

[Aramis]

Beware of hasty generalizations.

They can never be ordained deacons either. Yet there were deaconesses; not ordained clergy, of course, but analogous to servers.

They were ordained, at least in the east.

 

[SVP]

The whole issue of female altar servers could also be seen from the standpoint of a sort of unwritten insistence in the Western (Latin) church of the term “altar boy” rather than acolyte. The term would imply that being an acolyte should be only confined to a particular age group (ie under 18). In many smaller parishes there may not be enough boys(under 18) who would want to serve. Young men and older men can and likely should serve as acolytes. Properly speaking, as several posters have indicated, altar servers can be males of any age (though there is a limit at the younger end of the spectrum for practicality).

If we as a church want more boys and young men to serve as acolytes, perhaps then, the older men of parish need to take the lead and show the way, leading by example. As men are pushed out of (or just don’t want to be a part of) the liturgical worship, the younger generations pick up on this and decide not to be acolytes.

just my fraction of :twocents: on the subject

 

[Cat_Herder]

The whole issue of female altar servers could also be seen from the standpoint of a sort of unwritten insistence in the Western (Latin) church of the term “altar boy” rather than acolyte.

At least in South Texas we call them “altar servers” for the purpose of being gender/age neutral.