Vocations and altar servers.

Aug 29, 2012

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One somewhat-controversial topic in liturgical circles is whether altar servers ought to be all boys, or boys and girls.

Serving at the altar used to be a no-girls-allowed thing until fairly recently. (Girls still can’t serve at Masses in the extraordinary form.) Even now, bishops are permitted to restrict altar-serving to males in their own dioceses, and where bishops have permitted girls to serve in this way, pastors are permitted to restrict it to males in their own parishes.

Unsurprisingly, some folks would rather live in a parish with children of both genders serving at the altar, and some folks would rather it be only boys. I suppose the arguments on the side of girl altar servers are pretty obvious: Rome permits it, so there is nothing inherently wrong about it; men and women are equal before the Lord, and even if men and women properly play different roles it is rather complicated to explain that to children; girls who want to serve should be able to, etc. Arguments against it have to do with the reality that the priesthood is open only to men, that vocations to the priesthood are nurtured in altar service, and that more boys serve when altar serving is restricted to boys.

I attend a parish in which only boys are altar servers (though adult men and women both assist as extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist, and sometimes assist with serving). Anecdotally, the notion that more boys serve when girls are excluded is supported here: We have upwards of a dozen servers at each ordinary Mass, and 75 is not unheard of.

I think I prefer the boys-only tradition, as long as it is accompanied by careful catechesis, because it is more supportive of our male-only priesthood — it echoes the reasoning, and it brings more boys into close contact with the Eucharist, and it is a seed for vocations. I think the dearth of altar servers today (typically only one to three at many parishes) is an unintended consequence of opening the role to girls. (Who would have expected that fewer children would serve if twice as many became eligible?) But I don’t fault pastors and bishops for choosing to permit girls to serve, now that permission is available. Rome permits it, and that means the decision is theirs to make.

I wonder if perhaps a more fruitful attitude would help both boys and girls who serve at the altar. Pope Benedict recently gave remarks to a pilgrimage audience of French altar servers, both boys and girls:

Pope Benedict told the young people they were blessed to be “particularly close to Christ Jesus in the Eucharist. You have the enormous privilege of being close to the altar, close to the Lord.”

The pope prayed that being an altar server would help the young people deepen their friendship with Christ and enthusiastically share God’s love with their friends and families.

“And, if one day you feel called to follow the path to the priesthood or religious life, respond generously,” he told the youngsters.

Luckily for you, I can read French, so I can give you the whole quote from the Vatican website. Here is my translation:

It is with affection that I greet the dear altar servers, come from France for their national pilgrimage to Rome, as well as Monsignor Breton, the other bishops who are here and the chaperones of this important group.

Dear young people, the service that you faithfully carry out permits you to be particularly close to Christ Jesus in the Eucharist. You have the enormous privilege to be near the altar, near the Lord. Be conscious of the importance of this service for the Church and for yourselves. Let it be for you the opportunity to grow a friendship, a personal relationship with Jesus. Don’t be afraid to transmit with enthusiasm to those around you the joy that you receive from his presence! Let your entire life be resplendent with the happiness that comes from this nearness to the Lord Jesus! And if one day you hear the call to follow him on the way of priesthood or the religious life, respond to him with generosity!

To all of you I wish a good pilgrimage to the tombs of the Apostles Peter and Paul!

I generally accept that one of the purposes of having young boys serve at the altar was to nurture vocations to the priesthood, and that’s why I generally support the decisions of pastors to restrict altar service to males (though, as I tried to express, I am not hostile to the pastoral decision to permit girls to serve at the altar). I know there are plenty of traditionally-minded Catholics who feel similarly to me, that boys-only altar service will better serve the Church’s need for priesthood vocations.

But Pope Benedict’s remarks make me wonder if we who feel this way haven’t perhaps lost some of our focus on vocations in general. After all, vocations to the priesthood are not more noble than other vocations to religious life (or than marriage, for that matter). Perhaps part of the lack of reverence and lack of appreciation of the importance of altar service is not really caused by the admission of girls, though perhaps that change might have triggered events that revealed more symptoms of the problem. Maybe the problem is that we aren’t looking on altar service as a place where religious vocations of all types are planted and grow.

At least in our parish, where the connection between vocation to the priesthood and service at the altar is preached explicitly, and where the pastor has made it clear that he is deliberately reinforcing the connection by restricting altar service to boys, families willingly and joyfully encourage (or require) their sons to serve at the altar and hope that from among these boys new priests will step forward.

But why not, in a parish where girls are permitted to serve, still try to make a connection between service at the altar and vocations to the priesthood, or to consecrated virginity, or to contemplative religious life, or to active religious life as a sister or brother? Why couldn’t it be, in such a parish, that families willingly encourage sons and daughters to serve, and express hope that from among these boys and girls that new priests, brothers, sisters, vowed lives of service to the Lord, will emerge?

I admit that I have never really seen such a connection made explicitly, except in the parish I attend now. I have always attributed it to the boys-only policy. But maybe the real reason is something deeper than which of two permitted pastoral choices the pastor has made.

Comments

6 responses to “Vocations and altar servers.”

Barbara C.

August 29, 2012

I remember when I first heard about this argument and people pointed out that in many parishes where girls were allowed the number of boys willing to serve decreased. Apparently this is a common occurrence…when girls take over an activity in great numbers the boys tend to drop out.
I’ve come to see how important it is to boys and men to have spaces/activities with just other boys and men. It seems to fill some sort of instinctual need for them. I’ve also come to wonder recently if the all-male priesthood doesn’t reflect a certain primal truth about how men are more willing to submit to the leadership of other men rather than women.
When I was in grade school, girls weren’t allowed to be altar servers. It always seemed really unfair because the boys got to hang out with Brother Tom (who was always known to carry candy on him and had the sweetest dog) and go on special field trips. I don’t think I would have minded a “boys-only club” if there had been a similar alternate for the girls.
And the “we’re trying to encourage the boys to be priests reasoning” never rang true to me even when I was in the fifth grade…after all, why weren’t they encouraging girls to religious vocations?
I am personally fine with boys-only or parishes that allow both sexes to serve. Although, I do find it interesting that in a lot of parishes the kids stop serving once they reach high school. It seems like it would be even more important to keep teenagers involved if we want them to seriously consider a vocation.

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Bearing

August 29, 2012

Another feature of our boys-only server squad is that we have older teens serving. Generally enough that the most “important” roles are usually performed by the bigger boys.
It is run in a hierarchical sort of way. The roles have names like “book” and “torch” and “thurifer” and the boys advance from one rank to another (though if not enough older people show up, a younger boy is pulled into service). There are enough of them that they generally don’t have to sign up for a spot, they just show up and everybody who comes serves.

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MelanieB

August 29, 2012

An alternate hypothesis is that the kind of priest who cares about the issue of altar servers enough to limit altar servers to boys only on his own initiative is more likely to be one who is more closely attentive to the training and formation of said servers.
My experience in our current and former parishes is of altar servers both girls and boys who are trained just enough not to totally flub the basics. But there is little attention to details. It seems no one has discussed with them how they should stand and sit and kneel with reverence and not staring off into space. No one has bothered to suggest that they wear appropriate attire and shoes under their robes. Flip-flops and sneakers are not uncommon. I don’t entirely fault our pastors, who are over-extended; but I do wish someone would take the servers in hand. (And for that matter it would be nice if someone would train the lectors too, for that matter, who often show up unprepared seemingly not having cast eyes on the readings before they begin to read and with no idea how to pronounce the names.)
Though a counter example would be my parents’ parish which like yours typically has upwards of a dozen servers, all very well trained, but they are mixed both girls and boys.

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Rebekka

August 30, 2012

The parish we go to is a physically small building (this is in Denmark, so historically the Catholic population has been really small) but with a very active congregation with lots of kids. Regular Sunday masses (there’s only one, at 11 am) have 150-200 people present and some have to sit on folding chairs in the aisles. We have a really engaging parish priest who (I HATE how bad this sounds) really loves kids and he encourages both boys and girls to serve as alter servers and there are usually 5-10 servers of both sexes, occasionally more. The parish has a “young Catholics” group for kids up through their teens and is run by older teens and young adults in their 20s. There are always a couple of these young adults serving at the alter as well and they keep the little ones (as young as 4) on task.
Our church is a convent church as well as the parish church for this area, and all the nuns (there are about 12) sit in what would be the apse if the building had a transept, and they are also involved with the smooth running of the Mass. I LOVE going to a church with built-in nuns. They are awesome. (It’s also occasionally entertaining as the nuns are Benedictines and the priest is a Dominican.)
I’m really glad that there are examples for both boys and girls present at every Mass. And in spite of the fairly modest size of the congregation (there are 1000 registered members of the parish in all) we have 1 novice sister in the convent and 2 seminarians in Rome at the moment.

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Bearing

August 30, 2012

Rebekka — that sounds pretty awesome.
And I love “built-in nuns.” 🙂

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Cathie

August 30, 2012

We’ve had this conversation at our house because we have two of eligible serving age (boy and girl) at a parish that allows both genders to serve. I read the book 10 Ways to Destroy the Imagination of a Child by Anthony Esolen and he speaks of this point in his book. My husband and I read it and had several long hard discussions and then discussed it with our kids. Our daughter opted to be put on the “reserve” list. She no longer actively participates on the server schedule, but will serve if there aren’t enough or for funerals (because, hey, one call and they can get two servers!) Here’s Esolen’s reasoning, along with a little mixed in from us (since you don’t have both genders at this age):
Boys need boy/male unifying activities, activities in which boys are allowed to be boys and have a “club.” I realize that sounds extremely cliche’, but it is true. At the serving age, boys really do need each other. And, they need guidance from a man. At that age, most girls are excelling over the boys in all (other) things. When girls were invited to the party, the boys stopped coming because they were tired of being out done by the girls. From a maturity standpoint, 10 year old girls TEND to be more mature than 10 year old boys. Boys already get enough scrutiny from society, school, and even parents, sometimes.
Boys need that opportunity to be required to serve (do their duty) without the automatic comparison that is done when boy and girl are up there together. My daughter totally got that. She sees also, why having it be co-ed, there is a competition, albeit unspoken. Put in that light, I get why boys quit. Girls get tired of it and stop serving. Not because it’s not cool or fun, but because that type of duty seems to appeal more to boys than girl. That’s why, I think, when there are twice as many available less actually serve.

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