Posted on 01/28/2015 10:42:11 AM PST by keat
A Roman Catholic church in San Francisco has become one of a handful around the country to prohibit girls from being altar servers.
The Rev. Joseph Illo decided to train only boys to assist him at Mass after he was assigned to Star of the Sea Church in the Richmond district last year because he thinks the primary purpose of altar service is preparation for the priesthood, which women are ineligible to join, Illo told television station KPIX.
"The specifics of serving at the altar is a priestly function," Illo said. "And the Catholic church does not ordain women."
Illo said in a statement posted on the church's website Sunday that boys often lose interest in altar service when the programs are co-ed because "girls generally do a better job."
"I want to emphasize that we are not discontinuing altar girls because females are somehow incapable or unworthy. Girls are generally more capable and certainly just as worthy as boys," the statement said. "It is simply giving boys a role they can call their own, and more importantly recognizing the priesthood as a specifically fatherly charism."
Existing altar girls will be allowed to continue carrying the cross, washing the priest's hands and performing other duties of altar servers until they are phased out through Star of the Sea's new boys-only program, Illo said.
Girls and women have been permitted to serve Mass alongside priests since Pope John Paul II approved the practice in 1994. But a mixed-gender altar service is not a requirement, and the decision is usually left up to local bishops. San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone authorized Star of the Sea's move to only having altar boys.
Some churchgoers told KPIX they were unhappy with the change.
"Those who can or cannot serve based on gender, that is discriminatory," parishioner Dunstan Alabanza said.
Oops... probably too late now. I meant to say, “if you are Catholic we CAN talk about it.” Don’t know how it became “can’t”. Oh well. [Donning flame-retardant suit...]
If the problems with female altar servers were never explained to you as a boy, it wasn’t your fault. But it’s time you learned now.
Most American Catholics view altar serving as a matter of rights, or else of practical competence. Either way, they’re wrong. The Eucharist is a sacrament, and as such it’s harmful for the sign value of the Eucharist to be submerged or obscured by countersigns. This goes way beyond the fact that altar serving does foster vocations, as I can attest myself. It has nothing to do with the undoubted greater maturity and attention to details of girls. It is about what the Eucharist is and whether we wish to see it concealed or else proclaimed. The difference is that stark.
Are you Catholic? You seem to need a refresher on what participation at Mass is.
If altar service is seen only in the context of preparation for service in the priesthood, then perhaps you might have point. From the point of view of a lay person, I never had any trouble with altar girls or female lay readers or female EMs. Of course our most recent memories are that of the horrendous homosexual/pedophile priest scandal which nearly destroyed the Church. And many altar boys were their victims. When you consider the duties of altar service and watch them in action, I personally see no reason why females should be excluded. It’s the same as being a lay reader or an EM IMHO.
Rather than fake-clericalizing little girls, why don’t some of the men in your parish step up? Don’t you have any?
Only a priest can be a Eucharistic minister. You really do not know enough to be commenting on this.
If that’s the case, the poster should have started a caucus thread.
I ain’t Catholic, though I studied it in my youth, and have great respect for the institution.
But alter girls wanting that much of the mystery of the Eucharistic experience can’t have it?
San Francisco? Coincidence?
Yes. Lifelong Catholic. But post Vatican II. Was raised with English Mass and females serving as altar girls and Eucharistic Ministers, Lay readers, serving in the choir and other parts of the Mass as well.
I’m not one of those Catholics who say only the Latin Mass is acceptable, or only Holy Communion received directly on the tongue is acceptable. I have no problem with Catholics who prefer the Latin Mass or Holy Communion on the tongue, that’s fine with me. But that’s not what I raised with.
No priest is permitted to marry anywhere. Married men are sometimes ordained. There’s a difference. The married clergy model has been tried and found to be gravely inadequate and even counterproductive to the demands of the priestly life.
Says who???????????????????????????????????????????????
If you have no issue with girl altar servers, you never received a proper liturgical catechesis.
Redemptionis Sacramentum 154. Look it up, chum.
As I said, you really do not know enough to be part of this conversation. Get catechised; you’ve been cheated and defrauded.
Absolute nonsense. Although I am not a fan of the current Pope, he has said three things about clerical celibacy:
1) The policy is not a dogma or a doctrine, but rather a discipline.
2) The policy was implemented many centuries after the founding of the Church.
3) The policy is not etched in stone and is subject to change.
All of which is of course correct.
Further, priests were married men in the Bible, in both the Old Testament and the New Testament.
May I refer you to 1 Timothy 3:2:
“A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, given to hospitality, apt to teach.”
I am VERY conservative. But traditionalism is not always conservative. For the longest time, because of rigid Jansenistic opinions among the clergy AND laity, most Catholics only received communion once a year. In fact, Catholics were encouraged not to receive frequent communion. This was practiced for so long and so universally, that it was considered “tradition”. Thank God for Pope St. Pius X!!!!
I also thank God for the Vatican II Council. I would hope and pray that all Catholics would. But I can understand the nostalgic desire for the old Latin Mass. And certainly would not hold someone at fault for their love of that form of the Holy Mass. But likewise, we should be careful whom we belittle and also exclude from the celebration because that’s what “we” think it should be.
Deacon Francis
The beginning of participation in the Mass is through being personally conformed to Christ, through baptism and being in the state of grace. Worthy reception is the most profound and perfect aspect of participation. (Sacrament. Car. 52-53). Liturgical participation is not merely formal and external. According to Vatican II, engagement of heart and mind in the interior person is what makes liturgical participation authentic and protects us from being mere silent spectators (SC 48). Participation is increased through catechesis since one needs to first understand what is happening in order to pray the Mass (SC 21). As St. John Paul II said, “Active participation does not preclude the active passivity of silence, stillness and listening: indeed, it demands it.” (ad limina address to the Bishops of the United States On Active Participation in the Liturgy, 1998)
Perhaps you believe Latin to have been outlawed when the Second Vatican Council in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium called for the text of the Mass to be revised. This widespread misunderstanding is actually contrary to the facts. While allowing a place for vernacular languages in the Mass, Vatican II is quite clear in its words that “the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites” (SC 36.1), and that “steps should be taken so that the faithful may also be able to say or to sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertain to them,” (SC 54). If Latin is excluded from the Mass, the Council’s mandate is being disobeyed. In more recent years, Pope Benedict XVI has affirmed the continuing validity of this mandate: the 2007 Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum caritatis addressed to the Synod of Bishops endorses the Synod’s observation about the role Latin can play in promoting inclusiveness in the liturgy (Sacrament. car. 62). With regard to the use of chant, I direct you again to the Council, which specifies that among musical forms suitable for liturgy, chant must have “pride of place” (SC 116). You may be interested to know that in a 1998 address to the bishops of the United States, St. John Paul II pointedly mentioned that even as we allow the treasures of the liturgy to be opened up by greater use of the vernacular, the Latin language, especially in chanted form, is superbly adapted to the Roman rite and therefore should not be abandoned.
Yes, you would. You don’t have boys right now because altar service is seen as a “girl” thing.
We only have altar boys at our church, and there are plenty of them.
If you are really a deacon, you really ought to know that the desire for the Extraordinary Form is powerfully attractive to young people and frequently sought after by families. To characterize it as a concession to nostalgia is grossly ignorant and inexcusable in a cleric.
Your understanding of participation also appears to be deficient and deformed. Are you sure you’re a deacon? We used to have a “deacon” around here who turned out to be a fraud.
Have you considered the possibility that the act of saying that was proof that it was not true?
Pride is also a sin, is it not?
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