Posted on 09/24/2003 3:06:09 PM PDT by Lorianne
A heated battle has been joined in the Vatican between moderates and conservatives over a directive, called for by the Pope, that would bar altar girls and stop millions of Roman Catholics around the world dancing, or even clapping, in their churches. _________________
Anger at Vatican plan to ban altar girls
John Hooper in Rome Wednesday September 24, 2003 The Guardian
A heated battle has been joined in the Vatican between moderates and conservatives over a directive, called for by the Pope, that would bar altar girls and stop millions of Roman Catholics around the world dancing, or even clapping, in their churches. The document would also clamp down on adult, lay pastoral assistants. It would forbid priests during sermons quoting from ethical texts other than the Gospels. And it would rank services jointly celebrated with Protestant ministers or Orthodox priests alongside black masses as one of the four "most serious" abuses
In a clear effort to block, or, at least dilute, the measure, a leaked text of the draft was this week published in Jesus, the monthly review of the Society of St Paul, an international Catholic organisation.
One Vatican insider was yesterday quoted by the Rome newspaper Il Messaggero as saying it contained "idiocies so mad as to incite fear".
The document was compiled by officials from two Vatican ministries, responsible for doctrine and liturgy, after the Pope called earlier this year for new guidelines on the way masses are held. Many clerics had complained that liberalisation and experiment in recent decades had left them not knowing what was allowed.
Catholics in western, and particularly northern, Europe are likely to be most taken aback by the Vatican officials' determination to block one of the few means of participation in church ritual for women.
The draft text states that priests should only allow girls to help them at mass if they have a special dispensation from their bishop and there is "just cause", which Italian commentators took to mean an absence of boys. According to the leaked draft, priests ought "never to feel themselves obliged to recruit girls".
In developing countries, where the Catholic church now has most of its members, the most controversial injunction will be the one banning "applause and dance within the place of worship, even outside the celebration of [mass]".
Dance is an integral part of worship in Africa and Asia and has figured in numerous services attended by the Pope. Clapping is also commonplace in Italy at weddings, baptisms and even during funerals.
The draft "instruction" was reportedly tabled in June and came in for stiff criticism at a meeting of the two departments. A final version is due to be published this year.
Speak for yourself...I see this as a good thing. Women have plenty of other ways to serve.
Men and women both have roles within the Church - and in society, for that matter. They're different. That's not a bad thing.
The thing that got me really incensed was a younger priest, right after 911, going on about how we essentially deserved it, the Golden Calf and so forth. I am not a Bible scholar so I'm not sure what chapter and verse, but to choose that as the basis of your homily was offensive. There is a certain leftism in the Church, IMO. The Church helps many but there is too much lefty self-sacrifice for my tastes.
It should be a reason for rejoicing!
Exactly!
While this is true, it is also true that banning them will not keep them Catholic. And it will not encourage them to raise their children Catholic.
Any woman who is "alienated" by an all-male acolytate is equally alienated by an all-male priesthood.
If certain women believe that Church is meant as an exercise in affirmative action identity politics, then they were never Catholics in the first place.
No woman in my family is fooled by leftist self-worship masquerading as Catholic worship.
The godless want the Church to do nothing else because of the scandals of a few. Sorry, but it's not going to happen.
Bringing the Church back to her roots, cracking down on abuses (even small ones) is a good way to flush out the bad priests. It's a start.
I'll leave a more detailed response to someone else.
The scandals are part of a long-simmering neglect of important theological issues regarding sex and sexuality.
The same people who agitated for altar girls are the same people who agitate for the Church to "be welcoming" to homosexuality and the same people who introduced altar girls into the churches are the people who shifted pedophile priests from parish to parish.
As I said, it is all of a piece. When the priesthood and the sacraments are not taken seriously, traditional morality is not taken seriously either.
There is a parable about the servant who was faithful in small things.
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