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.
The faithful are not offended. Apparently you are.
It does, and the reaction to this "draft" has already caused the Vatican to move the release date of anything final to early 2004.
These restrictions will be much watered down in any final document, if, indeed, they're even IN a final document.
It does, and the reaction to this "draft" has already caused the Vatican to move the release date of anything final to early 2004.
These restrictions will be much watered down in any final document, if, indeed, they're even IN a final document.
because the radical feminazi lesbians who have infiltrated the diocesan bureaucracies don't want new priests ... unless those priests happen to be radical feminazi lesbians. (See Church of England for details on how that works out.)
and they are working very hard to
reestablish fidelity to the Faith handed down to us from the Apostles. In those areas where the Church is most Traditional and orthodox, it has no trouble recruiting young, holy, orthodox men to be priests.
I guess it only looks suicidal to the abyssmally ignorant.
If one is not orthodox, one is not Catholic.
And it will not encourage them to raise their children Catholic.
It is unlikely that a heretic would raise Catholics in the first place.
It's interesting that about 40% of "Catholic" women don't raise their children Catholic, while women like my mother who have a horror of such innovations as altar girls have raised devoutly Catholic families.
The Catholic Church is not now, nor has it ever been, about marketing.
It is about the truth.
This is a very accurate observation. Now that's something that really makes my blood boil, when I see Father Nitwit parading around in front of the altar with his TV-star type microphone.
How in the world do you reach that conclusion? Based on your commets, it appears you are not Catholic. I'm a Catholic woman raising my kids Catholic. Not serving as an alter girl did not run me off. Letting alter girls in would.
Perhaps. But maybe not in the way you think.
Our parish is among the most orthodox in the diocese (or was...we have a new priest now and I'm still forming an opinion about him). It's small, but we currently have three young men studying for the priesthood and several others thinking about it. That's way more than any other parish in the state, the big towns included. And that seems to be true in a lot of places - the more traditional parishes are flourishing...the ones that cater to popular culture are not.
The proof is already here.
The only Catholic parishes that are both gaining in numbers and producing new vocations are conservative parishes where altar girls are unknown.
This is not a well-kept secret - there are reasons why conservative dioceses like Lincoln, NE - with one-twentieth the Catholic population of liberal Chicago - have forty times as many seminarians than places like Chicago where altar girls are common.
Radical feminism doesn't play in Catholic city.
For what it's worth, I have only heard women complain about altar girls. I only know women who have switched churches for this reason. Do you know the reasons why they may have certain functions for women and certain functions for men?
Do you likewise believe that Judaism is a suicidal religion, because there are certain areas/functions restricted to men for the express reason that they believe women are more inherently spiritual, so their is a necessity to enrich the men?
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