Posted on 04/18/2015 2:45:36 PM PDT by NYer
My church has girl altarboys. The pastor is trying to get the boys more involved because the ratio is heavily in favor of the girls. He doesn’t understand that you can’t get the boys or their fathers interested until you dispense with girl altarboys.
So they stuff people in a traditional Catholic Church and proceed to celebrate the Novus Ordo New Mass? Or do they assist at a Traditional Mass?
The problem is that priests virtually can’t resist if they have a bishop that is very VII. Believe me, I know some priests who have tried.
So the best thing to do...is make the best of the situation and turn it into something positive. Use it for catechesis.
These girls have probably only known elderly flaky feminist nuns...so why not introduce them to some good ones? These girls have no idea of how to dress or act appropriately (and neither do the boys). So teach them what respect means.
That is strange. I tried too with no success. Maybe it’s a compatibility thing. I’ve been trying on an iPad. Maybe it would work on a regular desktop.
Your church (unless your bishop is in favor of boys only altar servers) has to figure out a way to make altar service make a difference in all lives.
I don’t think girls should serve, but if they are serving, both they and the boys should learn: dignity, service, respect, honor and all of the other virtues that become a girl as well as a boy. And then direct the girls towards women’s religious orders and the boys to the seminary or to male religious orders.
I’m not familiar with that church. Perhaps we need to look at their website.
Although a lot is Vatican II's fault, female altar servers is not one of them.
http://staroftheseachurchsf.com/
They have a Latin Mass and it looks like some Novus Ordo Masses also.
Yes, I just saw that. I do hope that if they’re trying to combat female altar servers that this “mass mob” is a TLM. If they want to return to tradition, then they should return to tradition.
Another suggestion is to have "special forces" servers to serve at the Vigil, Christmas midnight Mass, confirmations, ordinations, etc. Boys take well to having something to do, so I would make sure that their roles as servers were both worthwhile and well-defined.
Finally, put at least one extraordinary form Low Mass in the schedule during the week.
I just tried it again on my desktop. No success.
**Another suggestion is to have “special forces” servers to serve at the Vigil, Christmas midnight Mass, confirmations, ordinations, etc. Boys take well to having something to do, so I would make sure that their roles as servers were both worthwhile and well-defined.**
Excellent suggestion and done at my parish.
Seriously, I'm completely sympathetic to having altar boys only, for the obvious reason that the altar boys truly are the seedbed for priestly vocations. According to the most recent CARA Report, 78% of the ordinand class of 2015 served as altar boys. You can't argue with stats like that.
But sadly, we still have girls. I have noticed, though, that the person who is training them is putting two girls together or two boys together.
Very good ideas!
Fr. Illo, my friend and former paster. Yia con Dios, Padre.
Yes, it is the fault of VII. Theoretically, girls were not allowed to serve. But VII empowered the bishops’ conferences, and the other thing it did was give a “pastoral provision” to permit abuses.
People complained to the Vatican about girl servers, and the response was that the pastoral provision of VII permitted them to do what was acceptable in their countries. It really wasn’t acceptable in the US, but the major US cardinals and bishops (such as Bernardin) were all progressivists, many of them homosexuals promoted from South Carolina. “Windswept House” was not a fantasy.
Via
Vaya con Dios means “Go with God” literally. It’s like saying God be with you.
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