Posted on 05/03/2016 5:22:00 PM PDT by Morgana
With all the hullabaloo on this topic, I have tried valiantly to avoid having a knee-jerk opinion on altar girls. Now, however, I have actually spent some time thinking about it. And I do have an opinion, based on my personal experience both as a Catholic mother and REGINA’s Editor.
I raised a son and a daughter in the Catholic Church in Connecticut in the 1990’s and 2000’s. My daughter had zero interest in being an altar ‘server’ and I was somewhat dubious about then-popular claims that serving the altar would somehow prepare her to have a successful career.
In my own career on Wall Street, I never noted any former altar boys being Masters of the Universe. In church, the (mostly) women I saw who were ‘Eucharistic Ministers’ were inevitably housewives or stern-looking nuns in pantsuits, because of course that’s who had the time on Sunday mornings to ‘participate’ in this way.
So, my daughter escaped being an altar server, and went on to a successful career nonetheless, as a lawyer.
My son was not so lucky.
I say this because although my 8 year old son had a great priest whose Mass he served and a terrific young male altar server leader, he nevertheless became a victim of the Terrible Twins. Teenage girls whose parents were non-amicably divorced — and whose ferocious mother insisted that her girls had a right to serve Mass — they haunted his Sunday mornings.
Despite Mama’s claims that altar serving was key to their future success, her daughters hated it, as only teenage girls can. Hated getting up early on Sunday. Hated attending Mass. Hated serving the Mass. Hated the priest. Hated the whole shooting match, didn’t see the point of any of it — but didn’t dare tell Mama. So every Sunday they would stuff their mini-dresses under their serving outfits, and clonk around the altar in their impossibly high heels.
With my third-grader, like a clumsy puppy, in tow.
But they didn’t think he was cute. One simply ignored him, as she gazed incessantly around the church in a bored way. The other, however, had a more, er, active personality. She decided that she was going to take out her frustrations on my hapless son.
For about six weeks, he tried manfully to ignore her vicious, derisive whispers, mostly because he loved getting to ring the bells at the Elevation. Finally, she kicked him. Yep, with the high heels. Right in the shins.
When I told the priest about it, he looked pained. I couldn’t blame him, given the timbre of Ferocious Mama’s remarks, but I reminded him that if he didn’t discuss this with her, I would. The scene this conjured up in his mind was enough to convince him, and sure enough, on the next Sunday Ferocious Daughter seemed to have gotten the word. She stared stonily at us when we arrived in the sacristy.
Undaunted, I gave her several bright, glassy-eyed smiles, and chirped pointedly about how glad I was that everyone was working together so well as a team. From then on she subsided into gloomy silence. As for my son, he served the Mass for another four years, just long enough to serve family funeral and wedding Masses and to learn reverence from the excellent priest.
For my family, then, this relatively minor business of altar serving seemed to be over — until I started REGINA Magazine three years ago. Since then, I have edited more than a dozen editions covering the Church in ten countries.
What’s it like to have no priests? Imagine a country where there is one elderly priest for every 10 parishes. Or one where all the priests are ‘rented’ from Third World countries. Or where it’s impossible to have your child baptized — that is, if you are so lucky as to have a child. Or where the churches are closed, shuttered, and filthy from neglect.
What am I describing? Huge swathes of Western Europe today. And I have to say it: no altar boys means no vocations. Where liberal churchmanship prevails and altar girls are the norm, vocations are almost non-existent.
And like it or not, boys don’t like serving alongside girls. Now, feminists would have us believe that this is due to some innate prejudice against girls held by pre-pubescent boys. (I’m here to say that based on my son’s experience, it may well be due to fear.) In any case, it’s a fact.
It’s also a fact that 80% of recently ordained priests in the US were altar boys. I’ll say it again: altar boys = priests.
Of interest is the fact that when you bring these facts up to the pro-altar girl crowd, their eyes glaze over with a kind of righteous fury. Basically, they will inform you grimly, it is their right to have their daughters serve. Never mind that this ‘right’ is driving away potential vocations. Well, they will insist with a triumphant smile, then the Church just needs to let women be priests.
This kind of conversation fascinates me because it is evidence of two distinctly different mindsets — and some would say distinctly different Churches — in Catholicism.
Their mindset is that the priesthood is a job, and that all jobs are opportunities to gain economic and social privilege. Hence, women must be permitted to be priests. Speaking as a former senior vice president of a global bank, I just want to say that this is deeply wrong-headed thinking.
The priesthood is not a job. A priest is not a ‘community leader.’ He is likewise not social worker. He is not a shoulder to cry on or a jovial guy to preside over your family weddings. Also, he is not a facilities manager. He may act in these capacities, but it is a fundamental error to see him as a mere functionary in a collar, because of course a woman can do all of those jobs.
That’s not the point.
For 2000 years, the Roman Catholic priesthood has been understood as a spiritual vocation, wherein the priest stands in persona Christi (“in the person of Christ”). Hence, his hands and indeed his entire person are consecrated; he is a man who exists entirely for his people. He is in fact married to the Church.
It is this understanding of the priesthood upon which the Church was founded, and upon which she has built the civilization of the West. Only those who are clueless about the benefits that this civilization brings which is in fact the mother of all of their liberties would want to destroy this for feminist ideology.
Isn’t it incredibly ironic that the future of the Church should rest upon something that has gone un-noticed through all the high-flown rhetoric of the last 50 years?
The lowly altar boy.
Bring him back. He is the future of the Church — nay, the future of Civilization.
IMHO, they will never address the vocations issue without making Catholic education available to more young people. In my area so many of the schools are closed, and CCD is a poor substitute.
Altar girls are a disaster; beyond dangling the false promise of priestesses in front of these young girls, the implementation was ridiculous: Each ordinary would decide whether or not his diocese would have them. How can a new bishop “undo” them when his predecessor implemented them? (Obviously they can’t/won’t...)
Amen!
This leads to vocations to the diaconate and priesthood.
One of the churches in my vicariate has only altar boys. And you guessed right, they also have an ordination of someone from their parish nearly every year.
Proof of the pudding!
I disagree.
Wow. We’re going to Europe in August through October. I’m pretty sure we can find a Mass in Shrewsbury, our first stop. By the following Sunday we will be in Basel visiting a friend and I’ll make him find us a place. Then there will be one Sunday we’re on our own and then to a wonderful conference where we will have Mass every day in a restored monastery. But your comment about abandoned Churches in Western Europe troubles me. We attend Mass in a wonderful vibrant parish here in Eastern Kansas. I am thankful every day for this access to faith.
I was a jittery, but proud Altar Boy back in the 60’s, starting when I was about 8 years old.
It was a good thing in many ways. My duties at the church got me used to showing up on time, and working (or appearing to work) at cleaning the rectory after other tasks were done. That, in effect was my first job outside the home, and for people not family. I also knew any transgression or tale of foolish behavior would be duly tattled to my parents.
Something I definitely did not want. I was not much into sports then, so this was a good activity for me after school.
I even got to practice my Latin, so I’d know when to ring those bells.
The silliest part of this thread is the comment about girls assisting Mass in "ridiculously high heels."
Obviously, Catholic families unclear on the concept.
I was raised in a Catholicism where the rules were clear and simple - you accepted the Church teachings, or you didn't. Your "opinion" didn't matter. Thus, when I reached the point where my opinion didn't agree with the Church, I never felt I had any right to challenge the Church, nor did I necessarily "decide" to leave it. It's more like I just recognized I wasn't in it anymore, with literally no alternative.
And though some here believe this "two distinctly different churches" is a heretical, nonexistent or trivially resolved matter, I saw it rip my own family in half - not over me, but over whether Catholics should have a "say" in the interpretation of Church teachings. The pro-feminist American Catholic Church, which was in open defiance of Rome, was accepted by one parent, while the Traditional Catholic Church was accepted by the other. Then Rome itself started to change, and now we have Francis.
So whether I'm a Catholic remains a mystery, because I still believe the level of choice I have in deciding the matter remains unresolved, because Catholicism itself is now unresolved - unless you feel free discarding the teachings of the Pope, which is a whole issue in itself. That's why this quote, this article, means so much to me - its an acknowledgement of the depth of this rift. Because though it affects millions, and is addressed by Rome in a variety of ways, it is not at all acknowledged as a legitimate problem of conscience BY Rome, even now, even after so many "Catholic" churches have gone their own way.
Also, that people have actually found it necessary to curse me over these observations is something I've found astounding. Especially since we've reached the point where many absolutely "solid" Catholics believe they can call the Pope a heretic! My theory is that these unresolved schisms have driven some Catholics insane - they need it resolved, and so they simply pick a side and then go militant over it. So they're really not into Catholicism, but mere stress relief. As a result, like the liberals many "Catholics" have become, they indulge in brittle aggressiveness to defend their "safe space."
My daughters will never be alter “servers” as they are now referred to. Our cathedral is down for a few years for repairs and updating, so we are at a more liberal church. That is so weird to type because the parish is very conservative Catholic. At the cathedral, father never had female servers.
CCD is impossible, we get them for an hour and 15 minutes after a long day at school and we don’t have it in the summer.
Amen! Amen!
Prayers for you.
Thank you.
“I’m pretty sure we can find a Mass in Shrewsbury”
http://www.shrewsburycathedral.org/
“Basel”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solothurn_Cathedral I wonder how far Basel is from Soluthurn???
My diocese in NJ primarily ordains foreign priests; the few Americans that are ordained are normally middle-aged men. The lack of access to Catholic schools has been disastrous for setting examples for young people (both boys and girls).
I agree; it is too little and not very effective.
Despite strong Catholic faith, my vigilant parents shrewdly shopped parishes, closely controlled after hours school activities, and steered me and my two brothers away from becoming altar boys. In that manner, my parents protected us from becoming victims of the clerical predators operating at our high school and in the area parishes.
Not all of our friends and schoolmates were so fortunate. Might some chatty, observant, and hard to control altar girls have helped ward priestly predators away from the altar boys? I surmise that would sometimes be the case.
Traditional Catholic parishes and dioceses are the major source of new priestly vocations in America. Nevertheless, nested deep in other sectors of the American church, networks of gay priests hold on, discouraging and even blocking vocations by straight, traditional males. With that in mind, it seems that ditching altar girls will do nothing to break the pink Mafia that continues to weaken and subvert American Catholicism.
Another reason every priest needs to instigate adult catechesis in his parish!
Thanks. I’m a fan of Brother Cadfael so was hoping for Mass at the Abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul.
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