Male-only Altar Servers?

[Teresita]

If I may prescind from theological arguments (not because they’re bad, but because they’ve so far failed to convince anyone on the list who’s been in favour of ‘altar girls’’):

The way in which females in a profession or occupation drive out males is not limited to the Church: any sociologist will note that this is the case in every occupation and profession, and is also the case all over the world, in tribal societies and in urban cultures alike. Feminists hate this, naturally, because the feminist dogma (based on ideals, not on knowledge of human nature) assumes that men and women are basically identical, and only need a bit of encouragement to act that way. 'T’aint so, and every bit of meddling with human nature reveals that fact.

The poster who noted that women are naturally pious and will attend church anyway, while men need to be enticed, was quite correct. There are many places (particularly in central Europe and Latin America) where the men will (or used to) wait outside the church while Mass was being said, smoking and chatting, while the congregation within was almost entirely feminine. This changes when the Church is persecuted, of course, at which time laymen come to the fore - hence the much more masculine appearance of the Church in countries like Ireland and Poland - or, indeed, my own nation (England).

Ultimately, objections to ‘discriminating’ against girls on the altar (as with ‘Catholic2003’) are based upon a misunderstanding of human nature which is dogmatic rather than open to reason. I am willing to assert that those who are keen on altar girls will be unaffected by any of the arguments I’ve proposed.

All blessings,

Sue

 

[Catholic2003]

Teresita:

The way in which females in a profession or occupation drive out males is not limited to the Church: any sociologist will note that this is the case in every occupation and profession, and is also the case all over the world, in tribal societies and in urban cultures alike.

…

Ultimately, objections to ‘discriminating’ against girls on the altar (as with ‘Catholic2003’) are based upon a misunderstanding of human nature which is dogmatic rather than open to reason.

You identify a problem, yet I’m not sure what solution you propose. Do you think we should go back to the days when teaching, nursing, and secretarial work were the only professions open to women?

When racial equality was first enforced, blacks moving into a neighborhood drove out whites in a manner quite similar to what you describe above for females and males. I believe it was called “white flight”. Do you suggest that this should have been a sufficient reason to oppose racial integration?

Perhaps when the Bishops wrote, “It is certain that in the liturgical celebration, as in other facets of the church’s life, there should be no discrimination or apparent discrimination against women,” they had a better understanding of human nature than you give them credit for.

 

[Crusader]

Catholic2003:

You identify a problem, yet I’m not sure what solution you propose. Do you think we should go back to the days when teaching, nursing, and secretarial work were the only professions open to women?

You means back to the days when the only women who were professors, college presidents and hospital administrators were Catholic sisters and nuns?

Catholic2003:

When racial equality was first enforced, blacks moving into a neighborhood drove out whites in a manner quite similar to what you describe above for females and males. I believe it was called “white flight”. Do you suggest that this should have been a sufficient reason to oppose racial integration?

Do you believe it’s OK to fill altar server slots with females when they could be filled with males who might just be fostering a vocation as a priest or deacon?

Catholic2003:

Perhaps when the Bishops wrote, “It is certain that in the liturgical celebration, as in other facets of the church’s life, there should be no discrimination or apparent discrimination against women,” they had a better understanding of human nature than you give them credit for.

To limit those who serve at the altar to young men who might just be fostering a priestly vocation is not descrimination – it’s God’s work.

 

[Catholic2003]

Crusader:

Do you believe it’s OK to fill altar server slots with females when they could be filled with males who might just be fostering a vocation as a priest or deacon?

I believe that these scarce “slots” you mention should be filled by people whose vocation will benefit from the experience of serving at the altar. Whether that vocation is priest, deacon, nun, or as a member of the laity, and whether that person is male or female. Surely you realize that there are more ways to serve Christ than only by being a priest or a deacon.

In my parish, no one is turned away from having an opportunity to serve at the altar, and many (of both sexes) have benefited from having a positive, early experience as an altar server. And as they have benefited, so has the Church.

 

[Crusader]

Catholic2003:

I believe that these scarce “slots” you mention should be filled by people whose vocation will benefit from the experience of serving at the altar. Whether that vocation is priest, deacon, nun, or as a member of the laity, and whether that person is male or female. Surely you realize that there are more ways to serve Christ than only by being a priest or a deacon.

All the slots should go to those males who might be fostering a vocation to the priesthood or permanent diaconate. All of them.

Catholic2003:

In my parish, no one is turned away from having an opportunity to serve at the altar, and many (of both sexes) have benefited from having a positive, early experience as an altar server. And as they have benefited, so has the Church.

All that does is lead to abuse. Add altar servers not because they are needed to serve, but because people want to be altar servers. Nothing like a dozen servers every Mass who only get to serve once in a blue moon and therefore never become truly profficient.

I have seen excuse after excuse for using female altar servers: they are better than males, no males want to serve, females deserve a chance to serve, etc., etc., etc. and none of them overide the fact that serving helps foster vocations to the priesthood and the permanent diaconate.

From Redemptoris Sacramentum:

[47.] It is altogether laudable to maintain the noble custom by which boys or youths, customarily termed servers, provide service of the altar after the manner of acolytes, and receive catechesis regarding their function in accordance with their power of comprehension. Nor should it be forgotten that a great number of sacred ministers over the course of the centuries have come from among boys such as these. Associations for them, including also the participation and assistance of their parents, should be established or promoted, and in such a way greater pastoral care will be provided for the ministers. Whenever such associations are international in nature, it pertains to the competence of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments to establish them or to approve and revise their statutes. Girls or women may also be admitted to this service of the altar, at the discretion of the diocesan Bishop and in observance of the established norms."

While female altar servers are indeed allowed by the Church, there is little question that males are the preferred sex when it comes to serving at the altar…

 

[mjdonnelly]

If it were only boys being altar servers, there would not be enough for the masses on a given weekend in our area.

The classes just started up at our parish for new altar servers. There were 4 girls and 1 boy. The boy and one of the girls doesn’t count as new really because they moved from one parish to another.

My daughter is in those classes and has told my wife and I that she wants to be a nun when she grows up.

If there is an overabundance of servers, maybe the parish should find ways to utilize them in the mass. I have seen 4 at a time in a mass and they are all busy. It wasn’t even Christmas or Easter.

 

[Exporter]

Catholic2003 http://forums.catholic-questions.org/images/statusicon_cad/user_offline.gif vbmenu_register(“postmenu_8226”, true);
Senior Member

I have read a few of your posts on this thread. I see ‘Social Justice’ in several of your posts. Some times to understand an issue one should take a look at an extreme example. Or as Rush Limbaugh says, use the extreme to show absurdity. Could it be that you are so oblivious to reasons listed by Crusader that you would care not what happened to the Priesthood, or the laity who attend Mass. It seems you want to promote “All Girl” servers. If you did that, I can assure you there would be a change in the people who attend Mass.

It would be good for all of us if you come out and state your agenda. I know there is a small but diligent group who clamour for a Female Priesthood. How do you feel about women becoming Catholic Priests?

 

[Crusader]

If it were only boys being altar servers, there would not be enough for the masses on a given weekend in our area.

The classes just started up at our parish for new altar servers. There were 4 girls and 1 boy. The boy and one of the girls doesn’t count as new really because they moved from one parish to another.

My daughter is in those classes and has told my wife and I that she wants to be a nun when she grows up.

If there is an overabundance of servers, maybe the parish should find ways to utilize them in the mass. I have seen 4 at a time in a mass and they are all busy. It wasn’t even Christmas or Easter.

That simply is not true. It’s one of the most shop-worn excuses there is on this topic. Place enough priority and effort into recruiting and training male altar servers and you’ll have more than enough – unless perhaps you go to a secluded convent chapel or women’s prison chapel for Mass.

 

[Crusader]

Catholic2003 http://forums.catholic-questions.org/images/statusicon_cad/user_offline.gif vbmenu_register(“postmenu_8226”, true);
Senior Member

I have read a few of your posts on this thread. I see ‘Social Justice’ in several of your posts. Some times to understand an issue one should take a look at an extreme example. Or as Rush Limbaugh says, use the extreme to show absurdity. Could it be that you are so oblivious to reasons listed by Crusader that you would care not what happened to the Priesthood, or the laity who attend Mass. It seems you want to promote “All Girl” servers. If you did that, I can assure you there would be a change in the people who attend Mass.

It would be good for all of us if you come out and state your agenda. I know there is a small but diligent group who clamour for a Female Priesthood. How do you feel about women becoming Catholic Priests?

It’s impossible for a woman to be ordained as a priest (reference Ordinatio Sacerdotalis) and that embitters more than a few females and males.

There likely will never be any female deacons either if the Church’s International Theological Commission of 2002 is any indicator, and that must further embitter those mentioned above.

Finally salvation and the ability to worship in God’s own Church are the primary reasons people are Catholics, and not social justice.

It truly is stunning to me to see people place sexist/feminist ideals ahead of God and His Church…

 

[mjdonnelly]

Crusader:

That simply is not true. It’s one of the most shop-worn excuses there is on this topic. Place enough priority and effort into recruiting and training male altar servers and you’ll have more than enough – unless perhaps you go to a secluded convent chapel or women’s prison chapel for Mass.

Then go to the parents and ask why their ‘Catholic’ son has been so terrible that they feel he should not be an altar server. If the parents don’t place a priority on it, neither will the children.

Growing up, only the ‘bad’ boys were not allowed to be altar servers. We were expected to do it, by both our school and our parents.

 

[Crusader]

mjdonnelly:

Then go to the parents and ask why their ‘Catholic’ son has been so terrible that they feel he should not be an altar server. If the parents don’t place a priority on it, neither will the children.

Growing up, only the ‘bad’ boys were not allowed to be altar servers. We were expected to do it, by both our school and our parents.

Actually I think I would begin by finding out what sort of person is in charge of altar servers at your parish. I would want to understand their commitment (are they pining for “female priests” or are they loyal to the Pope?) and their investment (how much time do they put in.)

I would then want to see how well the parish supports this person(s), and what sort of resources they give him/her – and it should be a “him” if at all possible.

Finally I would check out the training program for altar servers, and it would be interesting to see if they ever have any outings as a group throughout the year.

Again, the idea that too few males want to serve is simply rediculous. What did they do prior to 1969? I don’t recall many Masses being cancelled…

 

[kmktexas]

Let me just suggest something my pastor does to encourage boys to be altar servers. After a boy has made First Communion he will tell (not ask) the parents that it is time for the boy to start serving at the altar. This isn’t all the boys, just ones who are regularly at Mass, are attentive and reverent when they receive Communion. We are a small parish so this is probably only about a half dozen boys per year. He then gets them started right away and adds them as an extra altar server (who doesn’t do much) until the next class.

He allows girls but only if they or their parents request that they be allowed. He only “recruits” boys.

He also only allows boys to serve as the MC at Mass. At our parish, that is what they call the senior server who stands right next to Father during most of the Mass, turning pages and directing the other servers. This solves the dilema of a preteen boy being “bossed around” by a teenage girl.

We have way too many servers at our parish. They use 4 for each Mass. The kids complain because they only get to serve once a month. If we ever went to a “boys only” rule we could easily go back to 2 per Mass or have the boys serve twice a month and never feel a pinch.

 

[Exporter]

Have you thought about this? If a Catholic Church has a majority of servers who are girls, the news gets around quick: all over town. It spreads through the middle schools and to the parants that the Church that has many girl “alter-boys” is a Girly Church. What boy would want to be a part of that? Just when a boy is developing his identity things like this can be devastating to him.

 

[Crusader]

kmktexas:

Let me just suggest something my pastor does to encourage boys to be altar servers. After a boy has made First Communion he will tell (not ask) the parents that it is time for the boy to start serving at the altar. This isn’t all the boys, just ones who are regularly at Mass, are attentive and reverent when they receive Communion. We are a small parish so this is probably only about a half dozen boys per year. He then gets them started right away and adds them as an extra altar server (who doesn’t do much) until the next class.

He allows girls but only if they or their parents request that they be allowed. He only “recruits” boys.

He also only allows boys to serve as the MC at Mass. At our parish, that is what they call the senior server who stands right next to Father during most of the Mass, turning pages and directing the other servers. This solves the dilema of a preteen boy being “bossed around” by a teenage girl.

We have way too many servers at our parish. They use 4 for each Mass. The kids complain because they only get to serve once a month. If we ever went to a “boys only” rule we could easily go back to 2 per Mass or have the boys serve twice a month and never feel a pinch.

You pastor sounds wonderful…

 

[Crusader]

Exporter:

Have you thought about this? If a Catholic Church has a majority of servers who are girls, the news gets around quick: all over town. It spreads through the middle schools and to the parants that the Church that has many girl “alter-boys” is a Girly Church. What boy would want to be a part of that? Just when a boy is developing his identity things like this can be devastating to him.

Conversely, imagine an altar server corps of young men with an extremely proud and polished identification. Both young men (and their parents) would push to have their boys involved…

 

[Teresita]

Catholic2003:

You identify a problem, yet I’m not sure what solution you propose. Do you think we should go back to the days when teaching, nursing, and secretarial work were the only professions open to women?

When racial equality was first enforced, blacks moving into a neighborhood drove out whites in a manner quite similar to what you describe above for females and males. I believe it was called “white flight”. Do you suggest that this should have been a sufficient reason to oppose racial integration?

Perhaps when the Bishops wrote, “It is certain that in the liturgical celebration, as in other facets of the church’s life, there should be no discrimination or apparent discrimination against women,” they had a better understanding of human nature than you give them credit for.

1. (Is there a way of having selected quotations just before the appropriate reply, Mr/Ms Moderator?) These are rather interesting examples, actually. In each case, in Protestant countries (i.e., no teaching/nursing sisters) men largely ran these professions, insofar as they were professions: teaching certainly, secretaries almost totally - nursing wasn’t really a profession until the mid-nineteenth century, being practised by ‘Sarey Gamp’ types who were stereotypically middle-aged and elderly women, fond of the bottle. (Midwifery was rather different, of course.) As women began to be professionally trained, the men largely left those areas - particularly in primary teaching (I’m not sure of the equivalent in the US, but I mean up to about 11) and secretarial functions.

I am not recommending anything at all, merely noting something about the way people react to situations. As for ‘identifying a problem’, there wouldn’t have been a problem had people not let ideology overwhelm observation and common sense.

1. I can’t possibly comment on your situation in the US: I don’t know enough about it. I do know that over here, where obviously we’ve had a large number of Commonwealth immigrants and the problems which have arisen from such immigration, forced ‘integration’ is worse than useless, simply causing violence and hatred. What seems to work (at least, it did with my own grandparents’ generation - all my grandparents were Jews from Eastern Europe) is that, as immigrants grow more prosperous, there is automatic integration: but it’s gradual and not helped by quotas and so on.

Having answered that question, I should stress that I don’t see the two situations as analogous, since racial prejudice, while part of human nature, is (I would argue) one of the consequences of the fall, and is thus sinful. I would not see the instinctive mutual separation of boys and girls between (roughly) 8 and 15 as sinful, but as one of the important modes of maturing: boys and girls mature at different rates. Any parent who has both sons and daughters will confirm this: my own experience as an English teacher for nearly 30 years (teaching in girls’ schools, boys’ schools and mixed schools) also shows this very clearly.

 

[Teresita]

1. Which bishops wrote this? And how many feminist ‘advisors’ did they have to help them? How interesting that ‘discrimination’ has changed its meaning from ‘making necessary distinctions’ to ‘being nastily prejudiced’. Why on earth shouldn’t women be separated from men at the appropriate times? I note that all the liturgists who are soooo keen to return to early Church habits (like, to refer to another thread, Communion in the hand) keep forgetting to tell us that men and women in the early Church sat in different places during Mass/Eucharist, just as modern orthodox Jews do today. (Hence, of course, St Paul’s instruction to women to keep silence in church and ask their husbands at home if they wanted to know about anything. Go to a modern shul (as I did for years) and sit with the women in the balcony - the men will be davening below, and the women chatting about Mrs So-and-So’s ghastly hat, and the holiday in Bali which they’re going on next week.)

Luckily, bishops do not have the charism of infallibility in most documents, or I’d be getting worried. I’m all for discrimination, in both senses, in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, so, Catholic2003, you ain’t scaring me!

All blessings,

Sue

 

[bear06]

I’m a gal so I don’t think anyone can try and accuse me of trying to “keep women down”. Altar girls drive the boys away without a doubt! I’ve pretty much been in Churches with altar girls all my life. Our diocese allowed them long before they were approved. My in-laws diocese did not allow them until just recently and I was always impressed with the 6 altar boys they had at every mass. Guess what, the second the girls were allowed there were 5 altar girls and 1 altar boy. It was sad.

There are soooooooo many ways that women can serve in the Church without having to be front and center. For some reason, they want to be. It’s very hard to find people to come in and clean the Church, decorate the altar, adore the Blessed Sacrament but boy howdy, if you need an usher, reader, server, women volunteer all over the place. For some reason the former jobs listed see beneath them or not glamorous enough.

I do see the Vatican taking steps to bring back the altar boys in force and I take heart in this. I also see the Vatican appointing great bishops lately, mine included. Thankfully, vocations are becoming very important again!

 

[renee1258]

Blame the women…

There are other factors to consider. Decades ago college wasn’t an option for many Catholics who came from under educated immigrant families. The only way a young man could get an education was to become a priest. Now with the economy focused on an educated workforce many of those men that would consider priesthood can obtain academics by other means.

From my understanding even thought the vocation of preisthood has seen their numbers decline the vocation of deacons has steadily increased. And the last time I checked women couldn’t be a deacon. So the theory that female alter servers is to blame should be nixed!

 

[JKirkLVNV]

This thread was on my mind at Mass yesterday. I watched the little girl server (2 yesterday, one boy, one girl) and watched how she did so intently that I missed coming in on the tenor canon of the “Agnus Dei” and got a questioning look from our choir director. She was an earnest little thing and she did a good and reverent job (our servers must all be such a joy to Our Lord, they are all so reverent). Part of me wondered “Why shouldn’t she be allowed to serve?” When the question, however, is posed the way Crusader posed it, in the context of possible vocations to the priesthood, well, I must admit that may well be another kettle of fish. In that context, is it actually fair to allow the girls to serve, knowing that they will always be denied ordination? Aren’t we doing them a diservice in allowing them so close, yet no closer? The Holy Father has said women priests will never happen. Maybe it should be reserved just for boys.