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To: kidd

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.


42 posted on 01/28/2015 12:36:55 PM PST by Romulus
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To: Romulus

Most practicing American Catholics see altar serving as a way for children and young adults to serve the Church. Involvement. Responsibility.

When the practice of having any-child altar servers is changed to having male-only altar servers, THEN it turns into a matter of rights.

The rest of your post then applies, but the value of the Eucharist is obscured by the now-changed countersign of “no-females allowed”

Should girls have been allowed to be altar servers in the first place? Probably not. But changing it back is worse than leaving it like it is.

You may be under the impression that girl altar servers is a display of feminist activism. But I’ve never seen even a hint of that. Not as an altar boy, nor as a parent.

I am old enough to remember pre-Vatican II. Prior to Vatican II, there WAS a viewpoint that altar serving was preparation for the priesthood. After Vatican II, but BEFORE female altar servers, that viewpoint changed from priesthood preparation to layperson involvement in the Mass. That attitude changed a good 10 years before girls were allowed to serve.


67 posted on 01/28/2015 1:20:07 PM PST by kidd
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