Disobedience to a legitimate authority constituted by God can never, by definition , lead to anything good. In point of fact, it is the quickest way to evil.
Stop trying to make bizarre leaps.
Saying that disobedience to the See of Peter can lead to change for the good is perhaps the bizarrest leap.
Whaaa?
I'm not sure how to respond to this impeccably reasoned criticism.
Women's suffrage came about through the efforts and disobedience of radical feminists. Does that mean we should go back in time and take away the right to vote from women?
I think we should stick with our system as originally conceived, wherein only heads of household who own property are allowed to vote. But this is a digression.
You argument is akin to saying the VW bug is bad because it was one of Hitler's brainchilds.
The plural of "brainchild" is "brainchildren."
The VW Bug is an inanimate object designed to fulfill a morally neutral function: transportation. The introduction of altar girls does not involve mechanical engineering, but social engineering and their intended purpose - disobediently remaking the Catholic liturgy - was not a morally neutral one.
Apples and oranges.
In the case of the beetle, I'd rather have someone make the point that it's a bad car because it's unsafe in an accident rather than saying that the person who conceived it was evil.
I think you are transposing two senses of the word "bad" here.
In the same vein, I would rather you explain why altar girls are a bad idea in 2003 rather than point out that the originators of the concept were 'radical feminist apostates'.
I explained this already. You ignored the explanation.
It is not an ongoing manifestation of disobedience.
Yes it is. It began as a specific act of disobedience and it continues to this day.
It is allowed at the discretion of the bishop under certain circumstances.
Yet many parishes have introduced the practice without such express discretion, many others have introduced it when those "certain circumstances" are not even present. It is an embarrassing mess.
You have not shown any connection or proof of how it ruins the fostering of vocations.
Altar girls, communion in the hand, lay lectors and extraordinary Eucharistic ministers were all introduced in the mid-1970s. Since the priest's responsibilities were so drastically compromised and the training ground for future priests was deconstructed, vocations have been devastated.
Yet curiously, the dioceses which retained the traditional, reverent way of doing things have seen strong vocations. As I pointed out above the conservative Diocese of Lincoln, NE has only a handful of Catholics yet it has 20 times as many seminarians as the Diocese of Chicago - which is the second largest Catholic diocese in America and also one of the first dioceses to introduce these innovations in the 1970s.
The correlation is demonstrable everywhere you care to look. How many seminarians are there in your diocese?
I did not say the motive is irrelevant, and don't make the illogical leap that anyone who supports girl altar servers today has the bad motives of the folks who originally came up with the idea (if indeed they truly had the motives you ascribe to them).
That is precisely what you said. You stated that it does not matter how something happened. Those who have been compromised by the altar girl movement do not necessarily share those motivations, nor did I say they did.
Altar girls were introduced using the usual methodology of apostates: claim that they are necessary in certain rare circumstances, shop for an irresponsible bishop willing to look the other way, and then aggressively promote the practice without regard to circumstance.
I claim that people who support girl altar servers today are not necessaritly radical feminist apostates.
And people who pay income taxes are not necessarily socialists. But they are cooperating with socialism.
My daughter will be an altar server. I have no interest in the priesthood being open to women.
Of course, if your daughter does serve at the altar she may well ask herself why she cannot preside at the altar - and who can blame her? She has been sent an ambiguous, mixed message. The concept of altar girls was introduced precisely to promote such thinking.
In fact, there is no one who would describe me as a feminist either in regards to church doctrine or societal norms in general.
Perhaps this is true. In that context, it is odd that you are so stridently defending a practice disobediently introduced by radical feminists.
I never made any of these claims.
You certainly did.
You said that disobedience doesn't matter as long as it leads to "good" things - a concept which is radically alien to the Catholic faith and as a consequence, demonstrably untrue.
By saying that it does not matter when a liturgical practice began - in your words "15 years or 150 years ago" means that you find tradition to be irrelevant.
You also said that the only question that matters is what altar girls mean "TODAY."
What I said, if you took the time to read my many posts on the subject today, is that traditions and customs should adapt but only after careful and deliberate consideration...this clearly flies in the face of making people happy from moment to moment.
You made no mention of careful and deliberate consideration.
You basically argued that hey, it doesn't matter how something started, hey, it doesn't matter what something is intended to accomplish - do people like it?
The Holy See legislates for the Church. That's why Christ gave the keys to Peter.
Bishop Bruskewitz follows the GIRM, which means there are lay lectors, communion in the hand, communion under both kinds, Extraodinary Ministers, and references from non-Scriptural sources quoted in homilies in churches in his diocese.
So, it must be something other than liturgical practice that is responsible for increased vocations.