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On March 15, 1994, a virtual tsunami struck the Liturgy of the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church. Cardinal Antonio Ortas wrote a document to the Episcopal conferences announcing that the Vatican had, for the first time, permitted altar girls. Over 20 years later, many question the impact of this decision as the Church continues to reap a desperately meager harvest of young men responding to God’s call to the Priesthood.Born in 1997, I was blissfully unaware of the damage being wrought in the Eternal City. By the grace of God I was destined to remain ignorant of the fact for many years. Thinking...

While working a summer job in high school, one of my Catholic, male co-workers and I were leaving a building. I was ahead of him, so opened the door and stepped aside so he could pass. “Oh no!” He cried sarcastically, “You just emasculated me!” We then joked that a woman’s real role was obviously to be in the kitchen, and after a good laugh we went our separate ways. Our changing attitudes towards gender roles don’t stop at held doors and pulled out chairs. Obviously, if feminism is to have any value at all, and if Catholicism has any...

It has been twenty years since the Catholic Church officially permitted the use of altar girls at Mass. While extending this permission for girls to serve, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments (CDWDS) was also careful to state that: “The Holy See wishes to recall that it will always be very appropriate to follow the noble tradition of having boys serve at the altar. As is well known, this has led to a reassuring development of priestly vocations. Thus the obligation to support such groups of altar boys will always continue.” Two decades later, there is...

The Video at the bottom of the page was sent to me today and I want to say that I find it beautiful.What makes the video so good is that it inspires a spirituality for the server that includes some of the following encouragement and advisement: That the Mass is mystical, beyond mere human sight, and that the server must learn to be sensitive to what lives beyond ordinary perception and become more spiritually aware.In so doing he should lead others to greater reverence by the example of supreme awareness of the presence of God.He should also, by his reverence...

Vatican may prohibit female alter (sic) service By Michaels, Amanda Published: Tuesday, October 14, 2003Updated: Wednesday, September 12, 2012 11:09   Only nine years after the Vatican gave women permission to serve beside their male counterparts at the altar, a new proposal threatens to force them back into the crowd. On Sept. 23, the Italian Catholic monthly, "Jesus," released advanced text of an article featuring excerpts from a draft document, or directive, written by the Vatican congregations for Divine Worship and the Sacraments and for the Doctrine of the Faith. Distributed on June 5, the document was an expansion on the papal...

Vilshofen: Ministrantinnen prügeln sich ums Weihrauchfass - Bayern - Aktuelles - tz-online.de Things are not what they used to be Altar girls fight in front of the sacristy Vilshofen - charity is actually the great commandment in Christianity. Well yes! But in reality in Vilshofen two altar girls currently show each other anything but love. Who is allowed to swing the censer? This vexed question has made for a storm of trouble with two altar girls who are between the ages of 19 and 20 years Oh no, the two fight! What is it all about? The censer used in worship....

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) -- Dozens of former altar boys who sued Vermont's Catholic church over alleged sexual abuse by priests will share in a nearly $18 million settlement of their cases.

The altar servers at Holy Family Catholic Church in St. Louis Park, Minn., are a sight to behold. In their white surplices and black cassocks — red for special feasts like Christmas and Pentecost — six carry candles, while others process in with the cross, Sacramentary and incense thurible and boat. Between 12 and 20 altar servers assist at every Mass, every Sunday. On special feasts, the head count jumps to more than 30. And the most astonishing facet of the scene: All of the altar servers are boys. It’s a sight that must put a smile on the...

2 August, 2006 VATICAN - MIDDLE EAST "Heart full of sorrow", pope urges prayer and effective action in Middle East At a special audience for ministrants, Benedict XVI condemned the massacre in Qana and the “spilling of innocent blood from whichever part it comes”. He called on 35,000 altar servers to be “witnesses” of nearness to Jesus, and to heed calls to the priesthood. Vatican City (AsiaNews) – With "a heart full of sorrow" and the "chilling images of mangled bodies of so many people, especially children," before his eyes, Benedict XVI appealed once again for prayers "for the dear,...

Presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry is urgently pressing uncatechised or ‘dumbed down’ Catholic voters to believe he is a faithful Catholic that best represents the Church’s defined teachings. Nothing could be farther from the truth. He woos the ignorant Catholics, laity, and clergy alike, by reminding them he was an altar boy. Adolf Hitler, a/k/a Adolf Schicklegruber, was also a Catholic altar boy, so this snippet of past religiosity tells us nothing of the man today - except that Kerry certainly has come a long way from being an altar boy. Furthermore, this ‘Catholic’ demagogue promises in the next sound...

"By driving men away from the Church, this feminisation has undermined Christian fatherhood. A man cannot be a Christian father unless he is a Christian first, and even fatherhood has been undermined in the Churches. In parishes, fathers are ignored or denigrated. Priests boast that they became priests because of their mothers. Don't they have fathers?"

OTTAWA, April 11, 2003 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In a shocking official statement, the Catholic Women's League of Canada (CWL) has demanded that the federal government approve of legal homosexual civil unions. The statement flies in the face of repeated directions from Pope John Paul II which have condemned legal recognition of such sexual unions which are considered by the church to be unnatural and harmful. The statements came in a presentation to the House of Commons Justice Committee, which is conducting hearings on same-sex 'marriage'. The CWL statement, signed by Marie Cameron, National President; Agnes Bedard, National President-elect; Lucille Partington, National...

When it comes to doing the right thing by the poor and the downtrodden, Bernard Cardinal Law has a message for all us taxpayers. Give, give, give 'til it hurts. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and then some. Yet when Law himself is asked to meet his obligations to those raped and violated by his priests, His Eminence has a very different response, which is: I'll see you in bankruptcy court. What a surprise, eh? In yet another realm, the fraud's message is, do as I say, not as I do. Responsibility, apparently, is for the flock. When it...

THE news from America is not good. In my day, there was none of that sort of malarky. At school (in England), the priests who taught me were good and holy men who did not, as a rule, indecently assault the boys. The only incident I can recall that might now be classed as paedophilia involved a friend who was given one-on-one counselling about masturbation by his housemaster. My friend was told to take down his pyjama trousers. There was no "inappropriate touching", at least by hand, but there was a bit of close and apparently expert scrutiny and ....