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netmilsmom
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It’s because we are SSSSSOOOOOO blessed!BTW, Brendan and netmil(name removed by moderator), are you finding it as amusing as I am that this thread has turned into somewhat of a SS C&M gabfest?
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Brendan
Guest
One other tradition they have: whenever one of them enters the Sacristy, they say “Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ” and anyone in the Sacristy responds “Now and Forever”
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netmilsmom
Guest
He’s a great conversationalist as well.Thanks for the nice complement, he is a really good son and big brother to his sisters
I mean, he and I talked and he is very mature.
How old is he now? Is he doing the Christmas Play?
I’m herding the Shepherds.
(and my Net will not be Mary,sniff, sniff but is going to reprise her role as the 1st female shepherd in the entire history of our parish. Father Ben said, shepherds need wives too!)
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djrakowski
Guest
Indeed he is! Remember the kind of day my daughter L was having after her baptism? I credit Brendan’s son with calming her down (well, Fr. marching hand-in-hand out of the church with her didn’t hurt, either!)
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netmilsmom
Guest
Were you there during the Lenten Mission two years ago?
One of the EWTN Priests was there.
He got up into the Pulput and said,
“Praise Be to Jesus Christ.”
And the parish answered
“Now and Forever.”
He smiled and said, “I love doing that!”
(He then bragged about us on EWTN during the Homily of the following Saturday’s Mass)
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Brendan
Guest
He’s 8 and you guys are embarassing me
As far as the Christmas party, probably not. We have a baby due in a 2 weeks, and being our 5th, we’re prepared for her to come any day now. So we aren’t making any plans at all for much of anything
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Rebecca_New
Guest
So you know what God calls people to be
! I happen to think that God calls us to many things, especially our professions. Parents are supposed to ask their teens frequently what God is calling them to do with their lives.
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djrakowski
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No way! Which priest was it? Too bad I was still on the outside looking in at that point.
Fr. Bill Casey did a really cool Advent mission at our parish - was it last year or in 2004? But when I closed my eyes, I could’ve easily been in a Baptist or Pentecostal church. That dude can preach!
I’ve even heard the folks delivering the announcement start with “Praise be to Jesus Christ.” And Fr. Ben sometimes closes out his homilies with it.
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netmilsmom
Guest
My girls want to come to the baptism. Please make sure you keep us informed of which mass you’ll be at!!!He’s 8 and you guys are embarassing me
As far as the Christmas party, probably not. We have a baby due in a 2 weeks, and being our 5th, we’re prepared for her to come any day now. So we aren’t making any plans at all for much of anything
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Brendan
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The Doctor is right on that one. A vocation is a calling to a particular STATE; priesthood, diaconate, married life, single life, religious.
That is excercised in a particular charism, or set of gifts. That might be a particular knack at explaining the faith, or a desire for service to the poor, or a desire for a large family.
The particular excercise of charism, the circumstances where we excercise our gifts is a matter of free will.
A great example is the parable of the talents (a greek coin BTW). The King gave talents to his servants, and expected them to invest them. But he did not say specifically where. Which banker, which investments, which trader, were left up to the servants. Those who use them wisely were rewarded, those who let them stagnate were condemmed. But the king didn to call a particular servant to invest in a particular bank, did he?
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Brendan
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No problem. We’re still working out all the details (depending on when the baby comes, of course)
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Brendan
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No, we only found that parish about a year ago. I was at Mass last Sept. when Fr. Pablo Straub said the Mass. He was in town as was told by the other EWTN priests that he had to visit our church.
He mentioned that to Fr. Ben and Fr. Ben replied “Fine, 9:30 Holy Mass is yours”
He gave a great homily on how being Pro-Life was more than being against abortion, but included accepting children lovingly from God and the virtue of large families.
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ChemicalBean
Guest
Okay, Brendan, I’ll take your bait.
I can offer you that our tradition teaches that the Eucharist is a re-presentation of the sacrifice on Calvary. And if I recall correctly, tradition also teaches that men and women were actively present and serving him during Jesus’ passion and crucifixion.
Who helped (rather involuntarily) Jesus shoulder his cross?
Oh, yeah, it was a man. Simon.
Who (rather heroically) busted through the crowds and past the guards to wipe Jesus’ unrecognizable face? Oh, yeah, it was a woman. Veronica.
Yes, in light of our tradtion, males and females have complementary roles as servers in the liturgy.
But I would remind you that if you take that statement at face value and compare it to your parish, you will not have a very valid comparison. We are a smaller, aging, urban parish. There is no school and few young people in proportion to the congregation. In light of that, there is an extremely limited number of young people (boys or girls) who have an interest in altar serving or can do it properly. So this “well-known assistance” that we have described about altar service is afforded to too small a sample to make meaningful assumptions.
I would also remind you that church vocations do not have a timeline. God might be planting seeds now (or even 10 years ago) that won’t come to fruition for another 20. Remember Jesus in the temple as a child? He was 12. He had to spend another 18 years as a carpenter before exercising his ministry.
Now, Brendan, you can answer my question:How good is your parish’s program of catechesis? If you recall, my theory is that this is more important to an increase of vocations than anything else.
I think we agree here. Altar serving in itself does not make church vocations. But I would agree that it provides assistance in “planting a seed” or discerning a call. Heck, I was discerning a call very strongly to become a sister for 2-3 years. When one serves at the Mass, one can develop a profound reverence for the Eucharist and deep understanding of the parts of the Mass. One excercises stewardship of the liturgy in a very physical way. And stewardship of the God’s mysteries is one of the very important aspects of a call to religious life.
No, I am not studied enough to give you a chapter/verse prooftext of my informed opinion from some Vatican document.
I can offer you that our tradition teaches that the Eucharist is a re-presentation of the sacrifice on Calvary. And if I recall correctly, tradition also teaches that men and women were actively present and serving him during Jesus’ passion and crucifixion.
Who helped (rather involuntarily) Jesus shoulder his cross?
Oh, yeah, it was a man. Simon.
Who (rather heroically) busted through the crowds and past the guards to wipe Jesus’ unrecognizable face? Oh, yeah, it was a woman. Veronica.
Yes, in light of our tradtion, males and females have complementary roles as servers in the liturgy.
I can answer your question with the answer I think you’d like to hear: My home parish currently has 0 novices or candidates to orders. (That I know of, anyway.)
But I would remind you that if you take that statement at face value and compare it to your parish, you will not have a very valid comparison. We are a smaller, aging, urban parish. There is no school and few young people in proportion to the congregation. In light of that, there is an extremely limited number of young people (boys or girls) who have an interest in altar serving or can do it properly. So this “well-known assistance” that we have described about altar service is afforded to too small a sample to make meaningful assumptions.
I would also remind you that church vocations do not have a timeline. God might be planting seeds now (or even 10 years ago) that won’t come to fruition for another 20. Remember Jesus in the temple as a child? He was 12. He had to spend another 18 years as a carpenter before exercising his ministry.
Now, Brendan, you can answer my question:How good is your parish’s program of catechesis? If you recall, my theory is that this is more important to an increase of vocations than anything else.
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E.E.N.S
Guest
In the Vatican journal Notitiæ, the liturgical scholar we have already mentioned, Aimé-Georges Martimort, affirms that [the] general discipline of the Church [against female altar service] has been set in stone by canon 44 of the Collection of Laodicea which dates generally from the end of the 4th century and which has figured in almost all canonical collections of East and West. 3 Martimort also recalls that Popes ever since St. Gelasius in 494 had denounced this practice as an abuse. It appears there were already feminist influences making themselves felt in Sicily and southern Italy at that time, and Pope St. Gelasius felt obliged to write to the bishops of those regions saying We have heard with sorrow of the great contempt mépris] with which the sacred mysteries have been treated. It has reached the point where women have been encouraged to serve at the altar, and to carry out roles that are not suited to their sex, having been assigned exclusively to those of masculine gender. 4 Every edition of the Roman Missal from 1570 till 1962 carried the prohibition of female altar servers, as did the 1917 Code of Canon Law (c. 813, §2), not to mention the documents of the post-conciliar liturgical reform in their earlier and less radical phase.
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netmilsmom
Guest
I’m at that parish.
We have a wonderful CCD program but not every child goes to it.
We have a TON of homeschoolers.
The difference in us and the parish up the street is not the Catechesis. (although I want to give Kudos to our volunteers) it’s that we live Catholic. There are people (and I’m not talking one or two) that drive an hour to our Masses. They are by the book and Historically Catholic.
You don’t see handholding, socializing in the main, banners, or any other innovations that make us look like the Evangelical church up the street. We are Catholic as well as Christian, not Christian as well as Catholic because we believe we have the one true religion.
Our boys are young men. Our girls are young ladies. The older kids treat the younger ones like they are actually worth something, not to be ignored or made fun of.
Our Pastor is a gem. He is orthodox, strict yet loving. He believes that young boys who serve are special, which is so lacking in todays society.
I don’t understand why anyone would not be willing to give the boys a very special place in the liturgy. Girls get all the nurturing and shining opportunities. They are constantly puffed up and told how special they are. Let the boys be something special for a change.
And I want you to know, I do not have sons. Only girls. My older daughter would love to serve on the altar. She never will while she lives in my house. She sings until she can read. In between, she can lead the Rosary or bring up the gifts.
Our boys deserve better.
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ChemicalBean
Guest
Netmil(name removed by moderator) it’s good to hear you have a healthy Catholic identity at your parish. But if the following statement is your reason for preferring males-only altar service, it’s not a very strong, or convincing one.
How?
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fullofzeal
Guest
Afew years ago my daughter wanted to serve and I explained to her that it was something she would not be able to do, and I explained why. Just like the 12 school Jr. High dance that a local parish seems to find necessary every 6 weeks or so. I let her go to a couple here and there but never to all of them. Why parents clubs insist upon putting 6,7and 8th graders into adult situations so frequently is beyond me. The point of all this is parents are terrified of telling their children “NO, and here’s why!” The virtues need to be excercised in order to be appreciated and applied, for them to be virtues. Temperance.
I also cathecise my kids at home, they don’t get it at the Cath school they go to…sad but true. Im a revert after twenty years gone and now 7 yrs back and I can’t stand wishy washy non-sense, there is a much bigger picture of faith that I understand now unlike before and orthodoxy is supreme in vocations being filled and for the kingdom to be had.
peace and love
I also cathecise my kids at home, they don’t get it at the Cath school they go to…sad but true. Im a revert after twenty years gone and now 7 yrs back and I can’t stand wishy washy non-sense, there is a much bigger picture of faith that I understand now unlike before and orthodoxy is supreme in vocations being filled and for the kingdom to be had.
peace and love
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ComradeAndrei
Guest
Your spin on the Passion narative is not an argument from Tradition. What Veronica did was great (certainly) but it was not liturgical, neither was what Simon did for that matter. You cannot say what people should do at Mass by trying to make it a Passion play (or a recreation of the Last Supper as other people seem to be hell-bent on). That is not what re-presentation means.
This would be an argument from Tradition.
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JamieMc
Guest
You are correct in the assumption that you cannot be disobedient of there is no obligation to obey. If a priest choses not to use girl alter servers he is not disobeying. I would say that if you leave a parish because they use alter servers, depending on how you do it, it could be considered a form of civil disobedience since you are doing it as a form of protest.
My point though, is the irony of some who trust the Church in major things of faith/morals and their afterlife but bad mouth it because of perceived liturgical abuses (if it’s allowed it’s not an abuse is it?) Is it just me or isn’t there irony there? " I trust the church with my soul and will obey it and accept it’s teachings but I know better than it does when it comes to allowing girl alter servers and that’s wrong!" A little ironic maybe.
So the one valid point I’ve seen is that using a girl alter server takes a place of a male alter server and by being an alter server may influence that boy into becoming a priest. Does that girl taking that spot actually take a spot of that boy or is he still allowed to be an alter server. What percentage of boys that were alter servers actually moved on a became priests?? Sure, someone said that when they were alterservers everyone wanted to be the priest. How many of them actually became a priest? Show me the stats. Don’t just say it—prove it. I don’t know–maybe there are stats that show it. Maybe the stats show otherwise and that’s why the church started to allow it.
And yes—I believe that my daughter being a server is the best way for her to serve the parish and the church. And despite what some on here seem to think—my 11 year old daughter is not a feminazi who only serviing because she’s trying to stick it to the church for not allowing female priests. She’s doing it to serve the Lord.
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ComradeAndrei
Guest
You set up a strawman. I think that most of us have put forward a more intelligent and well developed argument than that. No one claims it is “wrong” as far as legal or moral issues go. However, prudentially, it does certainly seem misguided and done for less than stellar reasons.
The Fourth Lateran Council set forth some pretty draconian laws against Jews (that were disciplinary in nature), that was a good thing they changed. The Jesuits were supressed once (back when they were more orthodox) and that was reversed. Sometimes the Church does things, outside of the realm of solemn dogmas on Faith and Morals certainly, that are just not very well thought out, inconsistent, etc.
As to the best argument, take tradition. The Church has not allowed females to serve at the altar for the better part of 2000 yrs. There is really not much precedent for the practice, and there really ought to be an EXTREMELY good reason why a 2000 yr. old practice should be reversed.
Being “fair” according to 21st Century notions isn’t a good reason and the Church has never denied people the opportunity to serve the Church according to their state in life.
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