Posted on 02/28/2011 5:35:55 AM PST by verdugo
The Feminization of the Church and Vatican II
Marian T. Horvat, Ph.D.
There has been much talk of late about a long-observable fact: the feminization of the Catholic Church. My friend Jan was quite impressed with the term and thought it accurately expressed the reality.
“I went to a Catholic church downtown yesterday,” she said, “and really, it was all women on the altar – except for the priest. At Communion four ladies – three in pants –went to the side altar to pick up the chalices. The song leader was sensuous, in a blouse showing cleavage, waving her arms like a traffic cop. Only a few women in the pews were singing along. All the altar boys were girls.”
The Mass service invaded by women and girls in Linz, Austria According to the National Pastoral Life Center (NPLC), today there are more lay ministers than priests working in Catholic parishes: that is, 31,000 lay ministers to 29,000 diocesan priests. It notes that this “revolution in ministry” has meant a “stronger lay, feminine dimension” in the Church. (1)
Quite correctly stated. Almost every parish across the country uses scores of lay eucharistic and song ministers, lectors, and altar servers for its various Masses. Then, there are the liturgists, youth ministers, social concerns directors, adult education coordinators and other professional pastoral positions that never existed before Vatican II. Lay ministers make most of the pastoral visits to the sick and prisoners. And roughly 80 % of these positions are held by women. The NPLC predicts that the overall pattern indicates the bulk of positions will continue to be filled by women. (2)
Parishes have become “feminized,” the NPLC report continues, not only because many lay ministers are women, but also because parish ministry has become more collaborative and concerned with nurturing. This “feminine” spirit is to replace, I suppose, a “masculine” spirit which is more akin with hierarchy and institution.
In short, today’s parish minister is more like to be a layperson – and a woman. And increasingly, women are on the altar doing almost everything – including preaching.
The easily discerned cause
To understand the cause for this feminization, Jan decided to read a book on the topic by the reportedly conservative Catholic Leon J. Podles entitled The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity. But, she reported to me, the book didn’t seem to really explain how things had changed so radically in so short a time. She asked my opinion.
Podles identifies the problem: an altar overrun by women, songs written to please a woman’s sentiments (“You are my everything,” etc.), an ethos of pacifism and self-surrender, all of which serves to render the men who still frequent the churches passive and emasculated.
A young woman in a sweat shirt distributes Communion without seriousness. Below, a woman-cantor directs the singing at the Mass
But he doesn’t even get close to the nail when he tries to hit the cause for the calamity.
Quite extravagantly Podles places the principal responsibility for this process of feminization on St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the rise of scholasticism and the expansion of female monasticism. His rationale for such fantastic claims is simply too complicated to enter into here. There is convoluted twisting and turning through Platonic influences and Aristotelian dichotomies.
In the end he never finds the simple solution to the present-day astonishing crisis of the feminization of the Catholic Church. He fails to see the obvious, that this process is a direct consequence of Vatican Council II.
In the United States today, 45 years after Vatican II, 31,000 lay persons plan liturgies, direct the music groups, schedule the lectors and run the education programs for adults, engaged couples and children; four-fifths of these ecclesial ministers are women. Before Vatican II, most of those jobs did not exist; less than 1 % of these jobs were filled by lay people. (3) Before Vatican II the average parish lay woman were most likely to be found in the Altar Society or Holy Name Society. Today, almost 50 % of all administrative positions in dioceses are held by women.
Before Vatican Council II, Catholic men frequented the Sacraments, took family responsibilities seriously and filled the seminaries. After Vatican Council II, the churches emptied, the divorce rate skyrocketed, and the sacristy was overrun with women. A kind of effeminate man attracted by the New Theology entered the seminaries, and the virile ethos of the Church grew fainter and fainter. It is no wonder not only men, but also many women, are leaving the Catholic Church today or no longer assist at Sunday Mass.
Vatican II opened the doors to a lay, feminine church
At the 40-year anniversary of the closing of Vatican II, a spate of analysis of the Council’s fruit flooded the Catholic press. I do not know of a single one that failed to underscore the new lay ministry as one of the significant marks of the Council’s legacy. Of course, that lay component is mostly women.
John Paul II posing with altar girls Ministry transformation as part of the Church renewal is based in particular on the teachings of Lumen Gentium, the Constitution on the Church, which encourages the layperson’s active participation in the liturgy. It also presents the Catholic Church as a communion of baptized believers with a call to ministry, which sounds an awful lot to me like the” heretical Protestant statement that “every man is a priest.
The result has been the multiplication of lay ministries, with lay men and women replacing clerics in numerous church positions.
It is clear to the objective onlooker these three things are necessarily enchained: The Clergy is increasingly less numerous and more absent; Lay people are ever more present and taking over clerical tasks; Women are taking over the majority of the lay ecclesiastical jobs. No sign of change
I wish I could tell my friend Jan that I see positive signs of a less femininized Church in the future. But I can’t.
Women and girls in the liturgy during Benedict XVI's visit to Bavaria
Pope Benedict XVI made it clear from the first day of his election that Vatican II will be the “compass” of his papacy. The compass, of course sets direction. (4) With regard to women and lay ministries, all his actions indicate he will continue the effort to empower women in the Church in all ways short of sacramental ordination.
By the end of John Paul II’s pontificate, women were 21 % of Vatican personnel. (5) Benedict XVI has stated that he would like “to offer more space, more positions of responsibility to women” and affirmed that he would consider opening more influential Church positions to women. (6) Following JPII’s model, he speaks often of the human dignity of the person, decries every kind of “discrimination” against women, and proclaims the need for equality of opportunity in the public sphere.
Among the Bishops, one finds this same concern to increase women’s visibility in the Church. Here is one recent example. At the February 2008 Bishops Conference in India, the Prelates made “women’s empowerment in the church and society” a high item on the agenda to correct the problem of women’s under-representation in administrative and executives roles in the Church. They voted to set quotas, requiring that at least 35 % of members and office bearers in parish and diocesan pastoral councils should be women. The quota will grow gradually until women get at least 50% of positions. (7)
The position of resistance Catholic should adopt is more than a mere “nostalgia” for the old ways of worship. We have an obligation to resist this feminization of the Holy Church.
1. National Pastoral Life Center. Lay and Religious Parish Ministry: A Study Conducted for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1991 2. Ibid. 3. “Today’s parish minister more likely to be a layperson,” Catholic News Service, October 21,2005 4. “Forty years later, Vatican II continues to reverberate through the Church”, Catholic News Service, Oct. 12, 2005. 5. “Women chip Vatican’s glass ceiling with increased numbers, influence,” Catholic News Service, March 7. 2007 6. “Vatican Shows New Openness to Women,” National Catholic Reporter, November 3, 2006 7. “India’s Bishops strive for Gender Equality in Church Bodies,” National Catholic Reporter March 7, 2008.
Makes sense. Then as long as boys are given priority at altar server spots over girls then it is ok to have female altar servers (as long as there is a slot open for a girl that is not filled by a boy)?
I don't agree with that.
If, in fact, being an Altar Boy is taking the first step toward the priesthood, then no girl should ever be an Altar Boy. To allow her to take that first step is to lie to her and to the entire Church, that she could complete the journey. Better to have no Altar Boys, than to have girl Altar Boys.
I was an Altar boy for five years. I did it out of love for Christ, a need to participate in my parish and a sense of duty. No other reason...I had no intention of becoming a priest. I hope you don’t think that I was lying to my entire Church, because my 11 year old son is an Altar boy because of love of Christ, parish participation and duty - not as a calling.
We've been there and done that the last 30 years. It does not work, because the job becomes effeminatized.The boys start dropping like flies, and the girls start to take over. Moreover, the girls will never become priests, so the whole purpose of altar servers is lost. The sancuary is no place for women.
We've been there and done that the last 30 years. It does not work, because the job becomes effeminatized.The boys start dropping like flies, and the girls start to take over. Moreover, the girls will never become priests, so the whole purpose of altar servers is lost. The sancuary is no place for women.
I presume that you're female? (On the internet, nobody knows ...)
If I presume correctly, then read my previous post carefully. I did not say that you lied to anybody. I said that the folks who permitted a girl to dress up like an Altar Boy, and to play the part of one, lied to her.
Bluntly, somebody 'in charge' in the parish where you were a girl Altar Boy lied to you.
I’m afraid I would take it a step further and say no women on the altar at all. This is a personal preference. I don’t want women up there doing the readings. I’m all for a male comeback in the Catholic churches. I am blessed to have found a parish in our area that has a huge homeschool community. Our family with 5 kids is one of the smaller families in the parish. On any given Sunday you will find a minimum of 4 but most likely 8+ altar boys serving at Mass. There is about a year waiting list to be trained by Monsignor to become a server. You have to be 12 years old, too. No little guys up there! It makes my heart swell to see it every week.
What I explained is not theoretical, it is historical, the Latin was never ad-libbed during the 60's. What the innovators did before the New Mass, during the early 1960’s, was vernacularize more and more portions of the mass, till by 1968, the change over to the New Mass in totally vernacular, was not as big a change. They NEVER ad-libbed the Latin, and still don't today! The New Mass in it's original form is in Latin, and you don't see anyone ad-libbing in Latin. If they ad-lib, it's done by vernaculizing first, then it's further changed to ad-lib.
Remember, the Gregorian Latin mass was used all over the world. If I went to mass in California, Chile, Japan’ India, or Mozambique, the mass was the same mass in the same language from 6 am to 11:59 am, all the same mass. Very difficult to ad-lib. ,p>
I didn't realize that pants suits from JC Penney = Thai stripper. Now I know. I guess my church clothes (blue jeans, black shoes, plain jacket) are like going naked.
Apparently to be Real Catholics (TM), we all have to wear lace doilies on our heads when we go out. And we have to sit in the wimmen section.
Pat is brilliant at spelling and anything else one can learn with photo-memory. Anything that takes actual thought is harder, because he doesn’t think the way ordinary humans do.
I haven’t attempted to teach James to spell, yet. I think he’ll just stare blankly at me and mumble about dinosaurs, but I could be surprised.
You can just say you’re the bouncer ;-), like when we had the enormous police officer who would stand at the back of the church smiling gently at anyone who tried to leave before Mass was over.
No. Real bouncers show their tattoos. I cover mine up unless it’s hot.
I am male.
I had valid reasons to be an Altar boy (Christ/parish involvement/duty), but I never intended to become a priest. I don’t like anyone thinking that my parents lied to me; they never had any intent to push me towards the priesthood.
When I was in training to be an Altar boy, I was never asked if it was my intent to become a priest. Nor was it ever stated that it was the first step to the priesthood. There were lots of calls for the priesthood in CCD classes, but not in altar boy training.
While becoming an altar boy may be the first step to the priesthood, I have seen nothing that indicates that it is the exclusive reason to be an altar server. As such, calling female altar servers a “lie” is excessive.
In addition, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, confirmed in 1994 that service at the altar is one of the liturgical functions that can be performed by both lay boys and girls. If you believe that the Pope is Peter’s successor and the primacy of Peter, then how can a girl altar server be a “lie” when papal-approved Canon law allows it?
OK ... then nobody lied to you, and I wasn't talking about you personally.
In addition, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, confirmed in 1994 that service at the altar is one of the liturgical functions that can be performed by both lay boys and girls. If you believe that the Pope is Peter’s successor and the primacy of Peter, then how can a girl altar server be a “lie” when papal-approved Canon law allows it?
OK, it's a prudential judgment, by the Pope, and therefore warrants respectful consideration. Upon respectful consideration, I consider the decision to have been unwise. I note historically that those who pushed for girl Altar Boys were the same folks as were pushing for female Priests. That alone is cause for suspicion. To the extent that being an Altar Boy is (perceived to be) a first step toward the priesthood, allowing girls to take that first step is lying to them. It is telling them, implicitly, that one day (when the Church is more "enlightened") they too may be ordained.
I was an Altar Boy from about age 8 to about age 18. I was never asked if I wanted to be a priest (surprising, in retrospect). I thought about it, but did not have that vocation. Still, there was a pervasive understanding that while not all Altar Boys become Priests, virtually all Priests had been Altar Boys. First step? I think so.
Canon Law permits girl Altar Boys. Therefore, they are permitted. The decision is above my paygrade. It is, however, not a doctrinal definition and I am free to think it unwise.
Why are you keeping Michael Moore in your basement?
In whose opinion? :-)
Or maybe it's a reaction to so many gay priest who basically preached 'forgiveness' without repentance or change ( in short, priests teaching liberal theology - as opposed to Christian theology )...
Pope JPII must have thought the same thing. Two months after the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments clarified Canon Law about girl altar servers, the Pope issued his statement that men-only priests was a matter of Divine Law and this CANNOT be changed. He drew a line in the sand.
Yes. He did. And when the line was questioned, he held firm. He was the Pope, that was his job. He also threw a few bones to the heretics (girl Altar Boys, Holy Communion in the hand). I wish he had not, but it was his call.
hmmm... ok — we can discuss this over freepmail and perhaps after Great Lent. There are quite a few anti-Catholic posters who would like nothing better than for us to get filled with rage during Lent, so they will post articles that aim for us to fight.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.