Virginia Parish Bans Girls From Being Altar Servers

The race backward in time by the Roman Catholic Church continues unabated and one has to wonder when more of the Catholic laity is going to say enough is enough and vote with their feet. As a former Catholic who has found a home in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America ("ELCA"), Catholics who are treated like serfs by the Catholic clergy need to wake up to the reality that there are other alternatives - alternatives with far less corruption and moral bankruptcy than is today's norm for the Roman Catholic Church. Frankly, I feel far less dirty NOT being a Catholic in light of the rampant sexual abuse worldwide and the continued Vatican's failure to basically punish almost anyone who enabled and/or covered up for sexual predators. One of the latest example of the backward thinking of some of the bitter men in dresses is the banning of girls from acting as altar servers at Mass. Having once been an altar server myself - luckily I wasn't molested - for ten years, I can honestly say that there is nothing one does that can't be equally well done by females. One of the worse offenders in depriving females of equality is the Diocese of Arlington in Northern Virginia. The Washington Post looks at the Medieval mindset that still predominates in that diocese. Here are some highlights

The decision last fall by Corpus Christi’s pastor, the Rev. Michael Taylor, and the response of Zickel and about a dozen other families who left the 1,100-family South Riding church reflect ongoing tensions among American Catholics over the role of women.

The subject has played out unusually in the diocese, which was the next-to-last in the country to say, in 2006, that girls were eligible to help priests at the altar. (The diocese in Lincoln, Neb., still has a boys­-only policy.) Arlington Bishop Paul Loverde left the decision up to individual priests. Five years later, about 60 percent of the diocese’s 68 parishes across northern and eastern Virginia still allow only altar boys, a diocese spokeswoman said.

Catholic priests ultimately hold authority in their parishes and answer only to clergy above them, not to laypeople.

Taylor, who did not return phone calls for comment, wrote in the parish bulletin that he hoped the church would “create opportunities, and perhaps clubs” for girls as a way to help them find ways to serve the church, rather than serving at the altar. Loverde has not responded directly to requests by Zickel and others to meet, people on both sides said.

Pope Benedict XVI and his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, have in general sided more often with traditionalists who fear watering down core Catholic teachings, such as that God sets separate roles for men and women.

In recent months, liberal Catholic publications have written about churches where girls are no longer being trained to be altar servers, saying the change reflects a turn to the past. The Phoenix diocese’s cathedral returned to boys-only altar servers this fall.

From all I have heard about Bishop Loverde - who vigorously supported passage of Virginia's constitutional amendment that bans any and all recognition of same sex couples - the man would happily bring back the Inquisition. Personally, I'm thankful each day that I had the initiative to leave the cesspool known as the Roman Catholic Church.