Weapons of Mass Destruction

I am curious about the inclusion of Altar Girls in the list.

Altar girls in our parish has more than doubled the number of children involved in the Mass and it seems to me that they are more careful to observe the rubrics than most of the boys were.

Evidence has shown that having altar girls has reduced the number of vocations to the priesthood for each parish that allows this practice.

For example, the Diocese of Lincoln has the largest seminary classes in the country and the highest ratio of priests to parishioners in the world and they are the only diocese in America that does not allow altar girls to serve.

I sincerely apologize for bringing down the Catholic Church. I just wanted to serve and be a part of the liturgy. I love my faith and think it’s ridiculous that you believe that my existence is destroying the church.

Who was the first person to proclaim the good news of the resurrection? Mary Magdalene

Who said yes to God and Gabriel and brought Jesus into the world? Mary

Who said “Do as he tells you?” Mary

Why was there only one man at the foot of the cross as Jesus was dying?

I was an altar girl. You told me I did a fantastic job chairing Cafe Catholica. I am SO sorry my willingness to participate in the liturgy is bringing destruction to the Catholic Church.

I think you need to add one more item to your list – “Closed-minded people who point fingers at simple things that don’t really matter”

Actually, the most destructive, in my opinion, would be the extreme lack of spiritually and academically grounded catechesis based on the Teaching Magisterium of the Church.

Jay,

That is why I said “generally”.

I do think it “generally” represents how orthodox the parish is in relation to other good things that they are doing.

Mr. Iafrate,

I love you man.

G-veg.

I am curious about the inclusion of Altar Girls in the list.

Altar girls in our parish has more than doubled the number of children involved in the Mass and it seems to me that they are more careful to observe the rubrics than most of the boys were.

There’s no doubt that young girls do very well at serving on the altar, but does it do them a service or a harm? Serving at the altar has long been a path to the priesthood, do you not see how having altar girls gives false expectations and cuts off the valid path for boys? Do you not see how the boys have tended to shun the service now?

Also, look into the history of altar girls, it was introduced as a liturgical abuse and was finally allowed? The same is the case for communion in the hand.

Matt,

Surprise, we agree again.

The next logical step after altar girls is women priests. You know, they just love the liturgy and they just want to serve the Church, so why can’t they do that?

“Participation is not about who gets to be on the altar, or who gets to run around with the Precious Blood.”

This is absolutely right. The Mass is not entertainment, it is not a show during which the priest is the lead role and the servers are is co-leads.

I reject anything that is demanded in the spirit of “I want”. It isn’t about you, whoever you are, male or female. Men and women are not interchangeable biological organisms, they are unique and different for purposes determined by God.

Another thing that bothers me – the notion that these things, these traditions, ancient and sacred, “don’t really matter”. Why not have altar girls, why not have anything we damn well please?

It is not for us to decide “what matters”.

And of course I realize that our modern Church allows these sort of things to take place. I find it terribly unfortunate that the generation of hippies – aging and thankfully on their way out – decided to push the traditions of the Church into the background in an effort to appease the modern secular world, the Protestants, and everyone else but the faithful Catholics who didn’t ask for or require innovative gimmicks to stay within the Church.

I look forward to the day when the younger and decidedly more conservative generation reverses the bulk of this sappy, feel-good nonsense. And I am grateful that our Pope has reaffirmed the right of Catholics to establish and attend a traditional Tridentine Mass in their parishes, where these sort of things simply do not take place.

Joe,

I concur.

Kristan,
apparently this former altar girl is still able to serve in the local church without bringing about the deterioration of the liturgy.

I don’t think Tito was accusing you (or any other former altar girl) of personally causing harm to the liturgy, or that a former altar girl can’t do some good. The point is that THE PRACTICE of having altar girls contributes to a serious problem with the liturgy. I’m sure nobody here thinks you did anything morally wrong by being an altar girl, surely you didn’t know better at the time, and meant only to do good.

Kristan,

I completely support the male only priesthood

I never questioned your support of a male only priesthood, I’m merely pointing out the incongruety of your position with this doctrine. In Italy, altart boys are referred to as “chierichetto”, literally little clerics.

I understand that altar service is historically a precursor to the priesthood. It is a precursor – not a prerequisite.

in case you haven’t noticed, there is a deep shortage of priests… do you think it’s a good idea to cut off this customary path to the priesthood?

Many of the theology classes that are prerequisites to ordination are also attended by women who are pursuing a Masters in Theology with the intent to teach … should they be banned from taking these classes?

Of course not, that’s a completely different situation. I have no objection to women learning anything or teaching anything that they have the ability to do.

it is an opportunity for our youth to participate in the Mass and serve their community.

As I said, it is incorrect to believe that a youth participates any less fully and really from the pews than she does on the altar, in fact the opposite could be argued. There is no shortage of ways to serve the community which more correctly orient young girls to their proper roles in the Church and without alienating the young boys from theirs.

The list of “weapons of Mass destruction” explicitly list women in two of the “weapons” – nuns wearing pants and altar girls. Women have historically played a strong role in the Church – I agree that the Sacrament of Holy Orders is for men just as bearing life is for women. Give the women a chance to serve in the role that the USCCB allows them to do so and stop blaming us.

nobody is blaming YOU, please, this is not about YOU. We don’t blame the women for being altar girls, we blame the priests and bishops who encourage or allowed the illicit practice in the first place, and we blame the pope for conceding to it.

As to the nuns in pants, I guess that blame falls on the nuns, but also to the priests and bishops.

restrainedradical,

i don’t know where you get your material from, but none of the things listed are called for by Vatican II.

Two points.

There is nothing inherently wrong with Mass in the vernacular. The oldest liturgies of the Church were celebrated in the language that the people actually spoke.

The Bible itself and the liturgy shifted into Latin because the New Testament, as we know, was written in Greek and the majority of educated minds spoke Greek — but Latin was the common tongue of the poor, who would obviously have expressed difficulty in any real meaningful participation or understanding of what it is they are entering into.

The Divine Liturgy was celebrated in Latin because it was the language of the people. There is nothing wrong per se about a vernacular liturgy. I think the point of frustration has to do with the quality of biblical translations, not the language the liturgy is celebrated in.

There is evidence that communion was distributed on the hand in some places, notably Jerusalem, in the early church. Addressing the issue in “The Living Liturgy” the Pope reminds us that it was permitted and there is nothing in Tradition that absolutely forbids this — “I wouldn’t want to be fussy about that. It was done in the early Church. A reverent manner of receiving Communion in the hand is in itself a perfectly reasonable way to receive Communion.”

Are there differences between the two? Definitely. Are there problems with some of the mentalities and ideas that are used to justify some of these liturgical changes? Yes. But this does not violate the validity of receiving communion in the hand.

For example, in the Eastern tradition, which is just as rich (if not at times, theologically and liturgically richer), Catholics remain standing for the majority of the liturgy, receive communion standing, and usually do not kneel.

If you think about the Jewish mentality that influenced the West (i.e. Diaspora Jews, particularly those in Rome), there is a strong top-down mentality. In Matthew, Jesus gives the Sermon on the Mount — God is looking down on us. There is strong emphasis on the prophecy of Isaiah that all shall kneel before Christ in adoration due to the one God of Israel. This influenced liturgical thinking in the West, in terms of things that traditionally varied beyond those things fundamentally essential to the liturgy itself.

But in the East, with greater Greek influence, the focus is on the process of “theosis”. The whole spirituality really in the East focuses on becoming “partakers of the divine nature,” which is the fulfillment of the kergyma of salvific recapitulation described by St. Paul in Gal 4:4-7. In this way, we are being incorporated into the very life of God — to share in the ‘Sonship’ of the Son of God. If you read the Gospel of Luke, I think there are traces of this spirituality in the Sermon on the Plain — the equal grounding, of God coming down from heaven and “clothing” Himself in our human nature. So in that spirit, the Christian East (which is now being mimicked in the West — without the proper understanding, unfortunately) we stand in reverence of Christ, like we stand in honor of a King or someone of respectable nobility in our presence (and also because the Divine Liturgy and the canonical hours of the East are so incredibly long in their celebration, when not cut short, if you weren’t forced to stand, you would literally go to sleep). This understanding is not without merit.

So in defense of what I think in many ways are legitimate and superior understandings of the Roman-rite, we must not use language to absolutize them as irrevocably essential to the liturgy itself to the point that all else is absolutely invalid (and notice I am being vague and not pointing to specific things here) because the great number of Christian liturgies might contradict you. So, I would be careful in that regard.

I would rather we maintain both of these understandings and I’m not convinced we began to stand in the West for the reasons that Eastern Catholics do — if anything, I’m not sure what the reasoning was because I have never looked into it.

Just a few thoughts.

Eric,

good points. I think that it’s possible to take each of these issues in isolation and say that alone destroyed the liturgy, the point, as I think you alluded to, is the intention of each step and their affect as a whole. One practice that at it’s core can be blamed is the “versus populum”, that posture fundamentally changes the people’s perspective of the priest and worship, and so it must also change the priest. He no longer stands leading us to worship, but instead, we turn towards each other, and he appears as a showman on the stage.

It is noteworthy that the age-span and number of the altar servers is greater in our parish in the four years that we have had altar servers.

Not so long ago, it seemed as though, due to forgetfulness or valid excuse, the earlier and later masses were often served by only one altar boy. Most of the altar boys were 14 or younger and there were no altar servers at the weekday masses at all.

Now there are altar servers as young as 10 or 11 and there are ALWAYS at least 2 and usually 3 altar servers on Sunday masses and those on Holy Days.

From a purely practical point of view, this seems to be an improvement.

I am also not terribly impressed with the argument that restricting altar servers to boys preserves a path to the priesthood.

I suspect that God calls many more men and women to His service than follow his path. With an average of 2.6 children per Catholic family, I suspect that the smaller families tend to deter acceptance of vocations. Fewer priests, brothers, sisters, and nuns make the religious life less visible and further subordinates the position of that vocational choice for young people.

It is important, I think to note that vocal dissenters at American Catholic universities can’t be helping and various scandals within our Church has to have taken a toll.

My point is simply that the gender of altar servers has to be pretty low on the list of reasons for the decline in acceptance of vocations.

Finally, from a practical point of view, having older teens of both genders in the sacristy presents a unique opportunity to reassure the Catholic laity that the American Church has learned its lesson with regards to protecting children from abuse.

(I hate to bring up that specter since I think the Voices of the Faithful crew were little more than tools of Satan but part of the Church’s duties must include systemic changes to affirm its commitment to child protection.)

Do we truly believe that altar girls are in any way either to blame for or a symptom of the problems in the Church?

I also missed the memo that “vernacular liturgy” was being purely defined as totally one language to the exclusion of Latin in even some of the prayers or “Mass parts.” So be ware of that in my previous comments.

Tito, shame on you for leaving off one of the most significant abuses. The blurring of lines between the priest and the faithful caused by the ordinary use of Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion:

Redemptionis Sacramentum
[158.] Indeed, the extraordinary minister of Holy Communion may administer Communion only when the Priest and Deacon are lacking, when the Priest is prevented by weakness or advanced age or some other genuine reason, or when the number of faithful coming to Communion is so great that the very celebration of Mass would be unduly prolonged.[259] This, however, is to be understood in such a way that a brief prolongation, considering the circumstances and culture of the place, is not at all a sufficient reason.

Eric,

I don’t think we disagree at all. I’m not at all suggesting that any of these practices are “invalid”, only that their practice, as a whole led to a degeneration of the Sacred Liturgy. As you said, we are not discussing questions of infallibility but ones which are prudential, and within the authority of the Holy See, or in some cases deferred to the local ordinary.

It seems to me, that the “versus populum” changes the perspective of all participants in a way that would allow all these other problems to occur without objection. If it’s just a “show” why can’t we have girls up there, why can’t all the people distribute communion, why should we kneel?

Eric,

it is a refreshing change of pace. I have long and often noted that there is a divergence doctrinal liberals and political ones. I think that there are a very many people who are doctrinally very conservative and yet have a more “leftish” view of politics. The converse of course is true (O’Relly and Hannity come to mind).

Matt. You have issues with Hannity (well, he supports contraception, left the Church I think, and attacked a priest on the air for calling him out on his dissent) and O’Reilly?

We have made more progress than Catholics and Orthodox have in a thousand years. I’m being hypoerbolic…I hope.

Those two actually, in union with Glen Beck, make me very angry. But then again…Olbermann, Maddows, Matthews.

I actually like Gretta and Morning Joe. But I absolutely love and admire Pat Buchanan.

We have gotten off topic…

Kristan

By the way … how does allowing girls to be altar servers alienate young men from becoming altar servers?

Growing up with a predominately boy neighborhood and with 3 brothers, I know that girls have cooties until they are in middle/high school (in which they become cute or hot and dating material).

Little boys want nothing to do with with little girls until they get rid of their cooties.

https://the-american-catholic.com/2009/09/20/weapons-of-mass-destruction/#comments

Elaine Krewer,

My vote goes to something not even on the ballot — displacing the tabernacle from its position of honor, on the dubious grounds that it would “confuse” or “distract” parishioners from the action of the liturgy. This, I believe, reduced the sense of the Real Prescence and reverence for the Blessed Sacrament, though not perhaps intentionally.

Another great item!

I don’t know that liturgical dance was really widespread enough to have caused “Mass destruction” on a global or nationwide scale.

It’s really not that widespread I think, but it is completely devastating to True Worship that it bears mentioning.

As for altar girls I think it’s too soon to tell what the long-term effect will be. You see, they’ve only been permitted by the Holy See for the past 15 years. I don’t think the negative effect (if any) would be as pronounced in parishes and dioceses that WAITED until the practice was authorized (thereby showing obedience to the pope) to start it, as in those parishes that started doing it when it was clearly not allowed.

Because the salvation of souls depends on a strong and plentiful supply of priests, it’s just not a place for gender “bending” which will lead to at least some, if not many souls lost.

I have absolutely no beef with a male-only priesthood, I never had any desire to be a priest myself nor did I ever have a desire to be an altar girl. So what follows is not intended as a raging feminist rant but simply to point out a flaw in one of the arguments against female altar servers.

For that matter why not ban women from coming anywhere within 20 feet of the sanctuary, or from attending Mass at all if that’s the case? Why not set up separate chapels strictly for women to attend or divide every church into a men’s and women’s side with a screen like some Orthodox Jews do in their synagogues?

Why? Because every Catholic man or woman has a right to the sacraments, an obligation to attend, and an important role to play at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Nobody has a “right” to be in the sanctuary, or fulfill any role not proper to their station. Those roles are strictly for the good of the Church.

Redemptionis Sacramentum:
[40.] Nevertheless, from the fact that the liturgical celebration obviously entails activity, it does not follow that everyone must necessarily have something concrete to do beyond the actions and gestures, as if a certain specific liturgical ministry must necessarily be given to the individuals to be carried out by them. Instead, catechetical instruction should strive diligently to correct those widespread superficial notions and practices often seen in recent years in this regard, and ever to instill anew in all of Christ’s faithful that sense of deep wonder before the greatness of the mystery of faith that is the Eucharist, in whose celebration the Church is forever passing from what is obsolete into newness of life: “in novitatem a vetustate”.

Frankly it would be best if the bishops implemented the canonical status of lector, and acolyte sufficient to perform their rightful functions in the sanctuary, and expand the permanent diaconate for similar reasons. Why do you think the Church treats these minor orders as steps along the path to the priesthood, and reserves them to men?

No, I don’t think women should be specifically banned from the sanctuary, I believe all lay people who have not been canonically instituted to the proper function should not perform those functions absent TRULY extraordinary circumstances. That is what the rubrics actually call for.

Elaine Krewer,

allowing females to do something thereby automatically makes it less attractive to males.

that argument was specifically addressed to the question of altar boys, because, even if it’s not very mature, do think little of “girly” activities, and so if you, as I do, believe we are in dire need of more manly, and Holy priests, should not want to see them discouraged at a young age from heading down such a fruitful path to the priesthood.

Although, if your recommendation that the minor orders of lector and acolyte be restored or attached to the permanent diaconate, and that no lay person who hasn’t been formally installed in those ministries be allowed to perform them except in emergencies, wouldn’t that in effect ban women from the sanctuary altogether, as they would not only be forbidden from serving but from giving any of the readings?

yes.