Going back to male servers?

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minkymurph said:
Post 2 - You said she was not at the Last Supper table with the Apostles. Perhaps you did not intend to suggest she did not attend the Last Supper at all, but you can understand why people would think this is what you were implying. So, to clarify and clear up any misunderstandings, do you think Mary attended the Last Supper, or do you think she didn’t?
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I think Blessed Mother was there, however like I said the Gospels or Sacred Tradition do not mention her among the ones sent to prepair the passover meal, nor do they mention anyone else but the 12 apostles as being those who were sitting at the table with Christ.
minkymurph said:
Given that there was only one celebration of the Eucharist in the Gospels that’s not surprising. I stand to be corrected, but I can’t think of any passage of scripture that outlines the celebration of the Eucharist.
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The Last Supper was the main one; however no women were mentioned as helping distribute the loaves and the fishes during the miracles that prefigured the Eucharist and Mass.
minkymurph said:
The Eucharist was celebrated in a very different way in the early Church, and the liturgy of the Eucharist developed over time. There’s evidence women were deacons, and evidence woman had a more active role in the early Church.
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Deaconesses were not ordained and their function was to assist full immersion Baptisms of female adults. From what I’m aware of they did not serve at the altar, and as we can see today their position is no longer used in the Church; probably because it is not needed which I believe to be the case with female altar servers.
 
I think this is a silly matter. Nor do I think girl altar servers are the reasons some parishes have a lack of boy servers; something else is going on at that parish. In my parish, with a very conservative minded pastor, we have a 70/30 mix of boy/girl servers; both do an excellent job. The Church authorizes it, leaves it to the pastor to make the decision, and that should be enough for anyone. If it bothers you so much, talk to the pastor and tell him about your concerns of girl altar servers, and give him a chance to explain. But be prepared to accept girl altar servers are likely to stay, as a decision to remove them now would be considered to be worse than if they were never allowed at all.
 
minkymurph said:
The Gospels don’t record anyone other than Jesus himself acting as a ‘server’ of the bread and wine.

From what I can remember, the Apostles weren’t that hot on ‘serving’ each other, which is why Jesus washed their feet.
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The Gospels record Peter and John as serving by preparing the Passover meal, and all of the apostles as being servers because they were at the table with Christ as He acted as the celebrant (which of course would be the case since He is the High Priest, and Our Lord).
 
Giuseppe_Gavino said:
Deaconesses were not ordained and their function was to assist full immersion Baptisms of female adults. From what I’m aware of they did not serve at the altar, and as we can see today their position is no longer used in the Church; probably because it is not needed which I believe to be the case with female altar servers.
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Well, your entitled to your opinion. However, the fact that you personally think women are not needed as altar servers isn’t exactly the most valid of arguments.

Individual parishes may be successful in re-establishing male only altar servers, if there is enough pressure and it keeps the majority happy. However, I would be VERY surprised if the Church at some point insists there is a return to male only altar servers. I say it’s not going to happen, irrespective of how much anyone wants it to.
 
TimothyH said:
God picked a woman to do the most magnificent work that any human being has ever done - bring God himself into creation as man.

Mary is the mother of Jesus and as the Eucharist is Jesus, Mary serves at the altar at every Mass, making Jesus Christ - grace himself - sacramentally present in time and space.

Whether you like it or not, you are never going to remove that one female altar server. You can put all the boys in the world up there at the altar and make every woman go 1000 miles away, and Mary is there, making Christ present, as she has always done and as she always will do.

There may be valid liturgical, theological and disciplinary reason to not want female altar servers, but a female is there and there isn’t a thing anyone can do about it.
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The Blessed Virgin Mary is NOT serving at the altar during Holy Mass. She is not omnipresent, like God is. She is in Heaven and not in your Church, or any other Church on Earth for that matter.

It seems to me that you are reacting emotionally because of your desire that your daughters be permitted to serve at Mass.

For my part, I will rejoice the day your daughters are prohibited from serving at Mass. Altar girls have no tradition and were not even permitted as a result of some positive decision by the Holy See, but rather by reliance on ambiguity in the language used in the law and the fact that the practice of altar girls (like so many other innovations) was common, even though illicit and illegal, for some time before official permission was actually interpreted.

All such innovations should be banned.
 
minkymurph said:
I would be VERY surprised if the Church at some point insists there is a return to male only altar servers. I say it’s not going to happen, irrespective of how much anyone wants it to.
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I say it will happen, because the Church is indefectible and modernism will eventually be defeated.
 
Giuseppe_Gavino said:
How is disagreeing with women altar servers an attack on Marys role?
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It’s not.
Giuseppe_Gavino said:
Your making it sound like were diminishing Mary’s importance as Mother of God and Queen of Heaven and Earth just because we think there should be return to male only atar servers.
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Perhaps you have read that into my words or perhapse that is how my post came across. That was not my intent. I’m sorry if it came across that way.

-Tim-
 
minkymurph said:
Well, your entitled to your opinion. However, the fact that you personally think women are not needed as altar servers isn’t exactly the most valid of arguments.
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I just feel the duties of a server promote vocations to the priesthood which is why they were implemented in the first place. When it comes down to it a Priest can do everything needed at the altar. Offices like acolyte were instituted as minor orders in the Latin Rite (which I don’t know if that is still the case) to seminarians as a step in their progression towards priestly ordination. As far as I know the position of an acolyte is no longer considered a minor order in the Latin Rite and that the duties are performed by altar servers in present times. Yet should we view the position of an altar server as being instituted for any other reason than to promote the same spirit for which the office of acolyte was instituted, which was to increase a seminarians desire to be ordained as a priest?

To be honest I think we run a huge risk of giving some women a false hope that one day there will be women priests in the Catholic Church. Sure not all women are going to have this feeling of wanting to be a priest but why even risk it?
minkymurph said:
Individual parishes may be successful in re-establishing male only altar servers, if there is enough pressure and it keeps the majority happy. However, I would be VERY surprised if the Church at some point insists there is a return to male only altar servers. I say it’s not going to happen, irrespective of how much anyone wants it to.
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Like a lot of things, only time will tell.
 
TimothyH said:
Perhaps you have read that into my words or perhapse that is how my post came across. That was not my intent. I’m sorry if it came across that way.

-Tim-
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I did :(, but I thank you for the clarification.🙂
 
Will_S said:
The Blessed Virgin Mary is NOT serving at the altar during Holy Mass. She is not omnipresent, like God is. She is in Heaven and not in your Church, or any other Church on Earth for that matter.

It seems to me that you are reacting emotionally because of your desire that your daughters be permitted to serve at Mass.

For my part, I will rejoice the day your daughters are prohibited from serving at Mass. Altar girls have no tradition and were not even permitted as a result of some positive decision by the Holy See, but rather by reliance on ambiguity in the language used in the law and the fact that the practice of altar girls (like so many other innovations) was common, even though illicit and illegal, for some time before official permission was actually interpreted.

All such innovations should be banned.
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I do desire my daughters to serve. But I said I’m proud of my daughters. I never insisted that they should be allowed to serve nor that they have any right to serve.

My desire that my daughter serve is predicated on the Church’s position that girls are permitted to serve. If the Church prohibits girls from serving at the altar at some point in the future, I will not complian or make a fuss, nor will I permit my girls to do so. I will not insist that I or my daughter’s have somehow been wronged, nor will I post on CAF that they should be allowed. I will quitely abide by whatever position the Church takes and go on with my life, as will my girls. I’m sure my youngest will be disappointed, but it won’t be the first time she was disappointed about anything, nor will it be the last.

As for Mary… the second greatest love of my life… she is the mediatrix of all grace. But that is for another thread.

-Tim-
 
Melchior said:
Wait, does that mean Canon Law is modernist?
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Two things:
  1. Canon Law does not specify that females are permitted to serve at the altar. It just doesn’t specify that they aren’t so permitted. That shouldn’t have been an issue since the status quo and default position was that they were not permitted. But, seeing a possible loophole, those who wished to upset the status quo took advantage of it.
  2. There is no reason to believe that every discipline of the Church is for the best. No doubt there are many ways in which the Church has been influenced by modernism, liberalism, and other undesirable “isms”.
 
TimothyH said:
I do desire my daughters to serve. But I said I’m proud of my daughters. I never insisted that they should be allowed to serve nor that they have any right to serve.

My desire that my daughter serve is predicated on the Church’s position that girls are permitted to serve. If the Church prohibits girls from serving at the altar at some point in the future, I will not complian or make a fuss, nor will I permit my girls to do so. I will not insist that I or my daughter’s have somehow been wronged, nor will I post on CAF that they should be allowed. I will quitely abide by whatever position the Church takes and go on with my life, as will my girls. I’m sure my youngest will be disappointed, but it won’t be the first time she was disappointed about anything, nor will it be the last.
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I pray that such a decision doesn’t affect you and your family 🙂 If they ever do go back to not allowing girls to serve, I hope they’ll not just pull the rug out from the girls arleady serving, and just not accept any female candidates anymore. But hopefully that won’t happen and hopefully there will always be a parish that allows girls to serve.
 
minkymurph said:
That would be my understanding as well.

In addition, who cooked the Lamb and did the dishes?

And -

If we follow the line of reasoning there were no women present at the Last Supper, should women be present at Mass or receive the Eucharist at all?
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I was going to say the same thing. There were no congregation in the pews during the Last Supper. Maybe we should take out the people in the pews. The Last Supper happened in an upper hall of a home, so we should stop having Mass in big churches and just use small banquet halls.

I mean, c’mon, comparisons like that are ridiculous.
 
Rence said:
I pray that such a decision doesn’t affect you and your family 🙂 If they ever do go back to not allowing girls to serve, I hope they’ll not just pull the rug out from the girls arleady serving, and just not accept any female candidates anymore. But hopefully that won’t happen and hopefully there will always be a parish that allows girls to serve.
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And who says that it ends there. Women can still lector or cantor/choir. There are many ways to serve 😉
 
ConstantineTG said:
I was going to say the same thing. There were no congregation in the pews during the Last Supper. Maybe we should take out the people in the pews. The Last Supper happened in an upper hall of a home, so we should stop having Mass in big churches and just use small banquet halls.

I mean, c’mon, comparisons like that are ridiculous.
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One of the most moving Masses I ever attended was held in the Catecombs in Rome. No tabernacle, no one dressed in white robes, - as they would not have been in the past, the wine and host were in hole carved out of the stone wall - as it would have been in the past - and there was no big fuss about who handed it to the priest in the small, confined space. The altar was a big, round stone in the middle of the small, cave-like room and we all gathered around it, standing on the very spot where people had been killed for celebrating the Mass.

In Ireland, Mass was celebrated a Rock Masses during the time of the Penal Laws. People gathered around a big rock, some of them are still in existence today, because they had no church. Attending a Mass was punishable by death and priests had a price on their head. It is said the practice of bowing one’s head when the host is raised came from this time in Ireland, because if you were caught and tortured, you may have told who the priest was, so no one wanted to know what the priest looked like. The wine and consecrated host, the priests vestments and the paten and chalice were hidden under trees, and I don’t think there was a huge big fuss about what gender the person who hid it, or fetched it for the Mass was. This is also were belief in ‘fairy trees’ arose. Parents used to tell their children not to go near the trees the articles were hidden under because the fairies lived there, they would be cross if the children disturbed their home and everyone would have bad luck. Men and women risked their lives to hide priests and some of them were caught and executed.

And here we are on the internet, having a big debate about altar girls, like it’s such a big issue. I agree comparisons such as the above are ridiculous.
 
minkymurph said:
And here we are on the internet, having a big debate about altar girls, like it’s such a big issue.
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If it were not a big issue, it would not have been condemned over and over again by Popes until, suddenly, magically, it was tolerated.
 
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