The rector of the Catholic Cathedral of Phoenix, Arizona, has decided
that girls will no longer be allowed as altar servers (though they will
continue elsewhere in the diocese).
His reason is simple: he thinks
that an all-male sanctuary promotes vocations to the priesthood.
“The
connection between serving at the altar and priesthood is historic,” he
says: “it is part of the differentiation between boys and girls, as
Christ established the priesthood by choosing men. Serving at the altar
is a specifically priestly act.”
I’m not sure, to be pedantic, that
that’s entirely orthodox (in the context of the Mass, only the priest
himself performs specifically priestly acts), but one knows exactly what
he means: what the server does is intimately related to the Eucharistic
action and can be seen as an intrinsic part of it: the server is a kind
of extension of the priest himself; if there were no servers, the
priest would do what they do. According to Fr Lankeit, 80 to 95 percent
of priests served as altar boys.
The question is, why shouldn’t
that happen when there are also girl servers?
There are two reasons:
firstly because the causal link between servers and priestly vocations
is weakened if some or most of the servers in the sanctuary are excluded
from it.
But secondly because as soon as girls appear, the supply of
altar boys tends simply to dry up.
The first time this occurred to
me was in the house of friends with whom I was staying in France.
One
of the guests at dinner one evening was Archbishop André Vingt-Trois of
Tours (now Cardinal Archbishop of Paris).
The subject of conversation at
one point was the way in which, in the local Parish Church, presumably
in an attempt to involve women in the celebration of the Mass, not only
were all the readers women but so also were all the servers girls; my
wife (not I) compared it to a farmyard, with the priest as the cock
strutting about in the middle of a flock of hens.
Archbishop Vingt-Trois
said that the priest may have had no choice over the all-girls serving
team: “Once the girls arrive, he said, the boys disappear: you can’t see
them for dust” (his explanation was much more graphic in French).
And
he was adamant that though there were, of course other factors
contributing to the decline in priestly vocations, the decline in the
number of all-male sanctuaries was certainly one of them.
I
suspect, though there’s no way to prove this, that many if not most
Catholics, once they think about it, will have the feeling that this is
either obviously true, or at the very least a plausible hypothesis.
For
what it’s worth, the US website Catholic Answers carried out a poll in which they asked the question “does having girl altar boys help with vocations to the priesthood?”
The answers were as follows:
YES, Girl Altar Boys help Vocations To The Priesthood: 2.98%
NO, Girl Altar Boys don’t Help Vocations To The Priesthood: 64.29%
Girl Altar Boys, Have No Effect At All On Vocations To The Priesthood: 32.74%
Voters: 168
It’s
a pretty small sample, of course: but I would be surprised if it’s not
true that almost nobody thinks that girl servers help vocations to the
priesthood, that of the remainder, about two thirds think it doesn’t
help, and another third thinks it makes no difference.
If the question
had been asked differently: if the question had been “does an all-male
sanctuary foster vocations to the priesthood?”, I suspect that more than
that two thirds would have replied “yes”, since historically it has
observably done so.
In the US, only one diocese now restricts serving at
the altar to boys and men, Lincoln, Nebraska, and it is apparently the
case that vocations there are higher than elsewhere.
The late Pope
was opposed to the practice, and didn’t allow it in his own diocese of
Rome: so why on his watch, in 1994, was the rule that only men and boys
could serve at the altar (which had been firmly reimposed by Pope Paul
VI and Pope John Paul himself) relaxed?
It’s a puzzler.
Some say it was
inevitable since, especially in the US, it was already being widely
defied: but all kinds of things the Church is against are indulged in
defiantly by disobedient Catholics, and the Church quite rightly doesn’t
give an inch.
One theory is that it was a tactical retreat to avoid
legal action. As the writer David L Sonnier explains it,
Take a moment to recall the circumstances under which this practice was allowed.
We lived in a hostile political climate in 1994; the politicians in Washington were condemning the Catholic Church for not ordaining women, and ridiculing the Church for Her stand against abortion.
It seemed that according to these critics at the highest level of the Clinton administration, the Catholic Church would not be qualified to address the issue of abortion until women were ordained.
In 1994 a document from the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts gave some room for the novel practice of “female altar servers” under political pressure from the U.S., but nevertheless insisted that “the obligation to support groups of altar boys will always remain…” due, of course, to the relationship between service at the altar and future vocations. Has there been any such support for “groups of altar boys?”
Well, no: of course there
hasn’t, because as soon as the girls appeared, the “groups of altar
boys”, as Archbishop Vingt-Trois put it, couldn’t be seen for dust.
But
could the document be withdrawn?
It won’t be easy: there are already so
many girl servers.
But they tend to disappear when they grow up.
And
though no bishop may impose them on his priests, he does have the right
to forbid them.
This is the paradox; he may not impose girls - but he
still may impose boys, as may any of his priests.
And this could
be the time to start: radical feminism is much less of a threat than it
was, and may be confronted more readily than it could, say, in the US in
the eighties.
I remember vividly arranging my notes before delivering a
lecture on feminist theology in the General (Episcopalian) Seminary in
New York, in 1983.
I was approached by a male seminarian, who said
simply, “Oh Dr Oddie, I just wanted to tell you, since I know your
views, how much we admire your courage in coming here to explain them”.
“I need courage”, I replied, slightly alarmed: “Oh yes”, he
said, and disappeared.
And so it proved: I was heckled repeatedly, but I
think I gave as good as I got, and the evening was an exhilarating one
in the end.
The church has not entirely given in on this,
and little by little, girl servers could be phased out: a final date
could perhaps be announced for this to be achieved, diocese by diocese,
parish by parish.
The tradition is still solidly there, beneath the
surface.
As David L Sonnier puts it,
Let’s take it one point at a time. First of all, the Holy Father does not allow Girl Altar Boys within his own Diocese of Rome. That should be enough to give pause to a number of people who currently see nothing wrong with the practice.…
Second, this practice of placing girls at the altar has absolutely nothing to do with Vatican II and was condemned in the strongest of terms twice following the council.
In 1970 Pope Paul VI said in Liturgicae Instaurationes, “In conformity with norms traditional in the Church, women (single, married, religious), whether in churches, homes, convents, schools, or institutions for women, are barred from serving the priest at the altar.”
And in 1980 Pope John Paul II stated in Inaestimabile Donum, “There are, of course, various roles that women can perform in the liturgical assembly: these include reading of the Word of God and proclaiming the intentions of the Prayer of the Faithful. Women are not, however, permitted to act as altar servers.”
That
is the tradition of the Church to which we should now return. To begin
with, that 1994 statement by the Pontifical Council for the
Interpretation of Legislative Texts (I bet you’d never heard of them)
should be simply withdrawn.
Why not?
Its issue was a huge mistake, whose
consequences have been disastrous: It’s time now to begin to repair the
damage.
It may take some time: so the sooner we start the better.
Any
priest who reads this can start on Sunday: a bishop could get on the
phone today.