It would be a great sign of a Christian heart if people could be kind in word and deed when dealing with one another. No matter what the subject matter, no matter the question…a Christian tongue should be the rule.
For the record, when I said the Church will not ever have women priests, it isn’t because of what I think, I’m just repeating what the Church herself says. I’m not relating what I think…or how I feel…or what I would like to see or not see. I’m just relating what the Church teaches.
As for the original premise of the question: “Will the use of girls as servers lead to the ordination of women priest”… the Church says no, but that is because the Church says it doesn’t have the authority to do so.
The practice of girls serving on the altar was introduced to allow for role of server and reader to be met in congregations of women…either in cloister or active-contemplative communities, or in “all-girl” schools, or areas where a male server would not otherwise be available. In those cases, women would be allowed to serve. It was not the intention, even if it is now accepted practice, for woman to serve in the “minor orders” of acolyte or lector.
Today, only men may be formally installed into these functions and are understood to be steps toward ordination. Woman are not formerly installed, nor can they be. It is, like priesthood, reserved to men alone.
If a parish priest does offer some type of installation to his servers, either men or women, it is not the same as when a man is installed to the service of Acolyte and Lector.
When men are installed as Lector and Acolyte, it is done by the local Ordinary…or bishop alone or to another priest the bishop designates.
No one else, even a priest or pastor, can “officially” install someone into these functions unless explicitly designated by the bishop…and even in those cases, the bishop hasn’t the power to formally install a woman…at least as far as the Church is concerned. To do so would result in an act of schism.
“Blessing Ceremonies” in the parish are just that…blessings. They are not to be understood as an endorsement into the “minor Orders”.
We have to understand, in both sign and substance, unity with the Church resides in the local Ordinary who is in union with the Bishop of Rome. It isn’t a matter of opinion, choice, free-will, belief, feelings, rights, justice, fairness, perceptions, conviction, action, purpose, need, or fantasy. It simply is what it is. Reserved to the Deposit of the Faith. It isn’t a relative thing. Only the Church can ordain and the Church cannot ordain women.
I do have tremendous empathy for women who pine in the hearts to serve as priests. I have genuine sympathy for women who believe that they are called to priesthood. It must be very, very painful. Some of these women provide great acts of pastoral care and Christian Charity, and to be completely frank, some might be better at pastoral sensitivity than many validly ordained priests. But no matter how much these women want to be ordained and no matter how much they believe they have been called by God, in the end they have to trust that the institution they profess to believe in, and have a great desire to serve, can and does discern the nature of Holy Orders. This is the very reason Christ installed his Church…to discern. We either accept the nature of the Church or we wail against the night.
My prayer is that we all surrender our hopes, dreams, desires, opinions, wills, et., etc., etc., to the Will of God as revealed through Christ and his Church. That’s not easy for any of us.
