What if the Holy See abolished female altar servers?

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100% agree with you. Like I said in a previous thread, I just don’t agree with placing limitations on girls for boys (and vice versa). I also cannot stand people neglecting my personal qualities and instead, place me into a box and tell me I should like certain activities because of my gender.

Anyway, if the Church did that now, it would be extremely hypocritical of them. Woman priesthood won’t happen, but imo the church should work towards making sure women’s voices are not left out because of the male clergy, having more women in other leadership positions etc. Not doing any of that and then whining about how people see the Church as a sexist patriarchal institution is almost funny.

Gender may not be a social construct, but roles and stereotypes are, to a large extent.
 
Yeah I know Pope Paul VI and the following popes allowed it, that doesn’t mean it necessarily did good for the Church.

Have you seen the division it has caused? That’s the very reason we are debating this.

And that’s the reason we can’t ever remove it or the Latin mass because it would cause so much more division.
 
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The problem that many will see with what you said is the slippery slope. Letting the girls be altar servers is seen by some as another step towards letting them be priests and/or letting women take over all the Mass functions which allegedly somehow discourages men from stepping up to do them. I find the latter a bit odd reasoning, given that women participating in a number of professional fields like science, medicine and law hasn’t caused men to lose interest in those fields, but whatever.

In any event, I’ve been seeing female altar servers in the US for the last 40 years, and except for traditionalist congregations, I doubt the altar girls are going away any time soon.
 
If it discourages men then that’s really more a problem caused by men than women, although I think that that isn’t true. The only way that would make sense would be through circular reasoning of “participating in Mass is woman’s work>I don’t want to do women’s work”, which is an example of why strict gender roles are harmful. If it was suddenly decided that alter serving or readers where ‘feminine’ then men would be disallowed, although that makes as little practical sense as barring women from them in the first place.
 
CoffeeAndDonuts said:
Carrying candles and fetching things is not something that is masculine or feminine. I liked doing it, as it is a task well suited for children 8-12 or so…
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“Children 8-12 or so?”

Oh dear, what should we do with all the teenage boys (14-19) at my parish who serve every single Sunday?

You may think of it as “fetching things,” but honestly, there is such a reverence among the altar servers at our parish. I can’t express it really, but I never really thought of them as just “fetching things” for the priest. Their actions are a part of the mass…
 
I tend to think the real issue with men not joining the priesthood these days is stemming from their inability to be married as well as the poor examples set by a lot of the priests in the 70s through the 00’s. If we had more priests running around who were like Fr. Vincent Capodanno or Fr. Flanagan or other strong role models for boys, both in dioceses and in seminaries, the priest option would look more attractive.

I am not one to bash priests, I think they have a hard job, and many of the priests I deal with regularly these days - some of whom are not from the USA - are admirable guys. But many, not all but many, of the younger priests I encountered growing up seemed somewhere between mediocre and incompetent, and several of them quit the priesthood. They were not like the strong images of priests in the movies (think “Open City” or “Boys Town” or “Ryan’s Daughter” or even Fr. Mulcahy on MASH) and they were not much like the older, Greatest Generation era priests. I also knew one or two guys who went to seminary and soon dropped out telling horror stories of what went on in there. I am not surprised if these priests didn’t exactly galvanize young men to follow in their footsteps. I hope this is changing given that the young priests I meet now seem to be better at their jobs and more committed to their vocations.
 
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I meant no offense, and this was my experience of ages, probably because it was connected to a school. They aren’t just ‘fetching things’, true. Perhaps ‘retrieving items’ is a more accurate description?
 
What are these exact qualities and differences? Are you sure that no man have a female’s quality, and if he does, is it unnatural? How do you define what is feminine? What are these roles? How are the answers to the above questions objective rather than subjective?
 
I am a convert. I only heard about it when altar server girls were allowed.
 
Men and women are not the same. That’s it. Men are more dominant and women are not as dominant. I don’t think that has to do with altar servers though. Just my thoughts.

I do think that getting more boys acquainted with the altar more often would lead to more priestly vocations. They could see something in serving the Lord for the faithful because they are already doing that at a young age.
 
You can only say that when you’re talking about the average, though. There are lots of very dominant women, and plenty of less dominant men. I do not think that is unnatural, we are all unique. There’s more factors linked to personality traits than gender. The problem with religious people is that they tend to only attribute such instances to gender and then generalize it to all men/women.

I don’t disagree with you on the second paragraph, I just don’t think limiting girls for that reason is fair for them
 
misstherese said:
Yeah I know Pope Paul VI and the following popes allowed it, that doesn’t mean it necessarily did good for the Church.

Have you seen the division it has caused? That’s the very reason we are debating this.

And that’s the reason we can’t ever remove it or the Latin mass because it would cause so much more division.
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There is division only because the toxic element want and have made it into division.
 
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By toxic, you mean those preferring the Latin mass? I’ve seen your posts on other threads and it worries me slightly the way you talk about traditionalists.

Pope Benedict XVI allowed the Latin mass and allowed people to prefer the Latin mass. That does not make them toxic. Preferring more tradition (which is what the Church was built on need I remind you) does not equal division.

Again, division only set in when the new mass was set in place. People didn’t like the huge change so far from the tradition of the centuries (I mean just try to compare the two masses they are very different) and started falling away in masses.
 
Maybe there are less vocations to the priesthood because Catholics are having fewer children. Maybe it has nothing to do with who serves at the altar.
 
Preferring the EF is one thing – attending the EF while disparaging the OF – yes that’s toxic. And again – the division is caused by the toxic element.,
 
I realize there are different personalities they may make some women more dominant. But this passage from Genesis comes to mind:
To the woman he said:
I will intensify your toil in childbearing;
in pain* you shall bring forth children.
Yet your urge shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you.
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Women do tend have more soft personalities, even the dominant ones have more feminine traits like the role of nurturer (including my sister who is pretty dominant).
 
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In the US, only one diocese now restricts serving at the altar to boys and men, Lincoln, Nebraska, and it is apparently the case that vocations there are higher than elsewhere.
 
misstherese said:
Men and women are not the same. That’s it. Men are more dominant and women are not as dominant.
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This is very stereotypical.
Actually, I know more women with dominant personalities than men.
Just ask some men about relationships with their mother’s- in-law. :crazy_face:
 
Again my point kind of remains. It’s just the average and it’s not like nurturing is only a female trait. There are men who are way softer than women. When you take into account of other factors, gender (or rather biological sex) is almost insignificant by itself.

We can’t really say all women are more nurturing/softer personalities. That’s basically pseudo psychology
 
misstherese said:
I realize there are different personalities they may make some women more domineering. But this passage from Genesis comes to mind:
To the woman he said:
I will intensify your toil in childbearing;
in pain* you shall bring forth children.
Yet your urge shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you.
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God was not authorizing – He foresaw/bitter forecast – that men were going to give their heart/soul to the sin of pride. A sin that many men – still carry to this day.
VATICAN CITY, APRIL 2, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Here is the homily delivered today by Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the Pontifical Household, at the celebration of the Lord’s passion in St. Peter’s Basilica. The liturgy was presided over by Benedict XVI.

There are families where the man still believes himself authorized to raise his voice and hands on the women of the house. Wife and children at times live under the constant threat of “Daddy’s anger.” To such as these it is necessary to say courteously: dear men colleagues, by creating you male, God did not intend to give you the right to be angry and to bang your fist on the table for the least thing. The word addressed to Eve after the fault: “He (the man) shall rule over you” (Genesis 3:16), was a bitter forecast, not an authorization.

Father Cantalamessa's Good Friday Homily - ZENIT - English
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