What do you think of altar girls?

Sincerely,

Candice B. Phoreal 

What do I think of altar girls?  I don't think of them. 

Let us define some terms. We're not talking about altar girls and altar boys. Perhaps the proper term should be altar children.  At my current parish, Saints Dismal and Precipitous in Frostbite Falls, we don't have altar children. We have altar servers who are adults. Some, admittedly, are very young adults, but they are all people of proven maturity. 

Let us review the history of altar servers.

In the early Church there seem to have been four minor orders and three major orders. The minor orders were porter, lector, exorcist and acolyte. These were, until very recent times, required ordinations before entry into the major order of subdeacon, deacon and priest, which were liturgical roles. 

The porter, or ostiarus, locked and unlocked the church, cared for things at the church that had to be locked up and they insured that no unbaptized or unworthy people were admitted to the Eucharist. 

The lector had the job of publicly reading the Scriptures in a time when books were rare and many people were illiterate. 

The exorcist helped prepare people for baptism which involved quite a few exorcisms. 

The acolyte brought communion to the sick and imprisoned and assisted at Mass. 

The whole thing served as a sort of seminary training before such things as seminaries existed. So it continued, in a certain sense, until the bright and carefree days of my youth. We recruited altar boys in the knowledge that some of them would so love the beauty of the liturgy that they would hear a calling to priesthood in their grimy little hearts. Some did, others just figured out how to filch the altar wine when the priest wasn't looking.

Well, that canoe is over the falls! We no longer get vocations from altar boys because service at Mass came under the rubric of affirmative action as part of liturgical renewal. If the boys could be excused from math class to go over to church to serve a funeral, darn tootin' the girls had better be able to do likewise.

This is, after all, the U. S. of A. ! ! ! ! 

Before any permission was given by competent authority, progressive parishes worth their salt had altar girls.

I remember an old bishop who officiated at a Confirmation Mass, years before there was permission for altar girls. He was adjusting the Missal in the hands of the server and, as he got the book where he wanted it, he noticed that the altar boy holding it was, in fact, a girl. He was absolutely startled and shouted into the  microphone, “My God, it’s a girl!!!”  True story. 

Rome finally acquiesced to what had become a general practice in the U.S. and Europe and so we had altar girls.

In the years since, I have noticed an odd phenomenon. Where you have altar girls, you soon have very few altar boys. 

Remember that I come from a German background, and back in the Upper Lower Pilsener Urquell district, when we talk about the weaker sex, we mean men. 

It’s really true, after all. The male identity is much weaker than the female. 

No one ever has to  “prove she’s a woman.”  I've never heard anyone say, “Suck it up and take it like a girl!” or “You throw like a boy!” Nope, a girl is a girl, a fact of which most thirteen or fourteen year old boys are very aware. 

Where there are altar girls, it seems that there are soon no altar boys. 

As I mentioned, altar boys are no longer a source of priestly vocations in most places. 

Here at Sts. Dismal and Precipitous we've done away with the whole business. 

We have Mass servers. 

All our lectors, communion assistants, and acolytes are dressed in black robes (like graduation robes which are actually modeled on the robes worn by Benedictine monks and nuns.) Over these, they wear cowls in appropriate liturgical colors. I don't dress them in albs lest they be mistaken for concelebrants and I don't dress them in cassock and surplice because these are traditionally clerical dress and they aren't clergy. I don’t permit street clothes because people would insist on coming dressed in pink sweat suits or cut-off shorts. (We Americans are, after all, such a dignified lot.) 

We don't invite children to serve, though if a young person is mature and committed to the liturgy, he or she is welcome to serve. It is a beautiful thing to see a fifteen-year-old boy or girl standing side by side with someone who is in advanced age, one who has served the Lord faithfully for a lifetime and another who is just beginning. 

Altar serving is not for children, it is for committed Christian adults, though admittedly there are some people who are mature at a very early age. 

If we shove children into the job, especially some surly twelve-year-old boy, and make him dress up in an outfit that the girls wear, he will breathe a sigh of relief when he graduates from grade school and doesn't have to do that anymore! 

However, if we point out that service at the altar whether reading, serving or helping, when necessary, with Holy Communion is part of a grown up commitment to the Lord and the Church. Vocations to the priesthood and religious life are increasingly coming from Catholic student organizations like Newman centers and Focus (FOCUS - Fellowship of Catholic University Students).

I believe that altar children no longer have a purpose or place in the current liturgical framework, except in the Tridentine Mass  (whoops! I should be calling it the extraordinary form of the Roman rite. My bad!) There, all bets are off. Boys only. 

Why, you may ask? 

Have you ever looked at the elaborate movements of the servers at a solemn high Latin Mass? Put them down on paper and they look exactly like the diagram of a football play.

I know more women are watching football, but I still can’t believe they really mean it.

Yours as always,

Rev. Know-It-All