RELIGION / JOHN DART : Many Valley Catholics Welcome Vatican Decision on Altar Girls

The presence of women reading Scripture and occasionally distributing Communion at Roman Catholic Masses may have muted any displeasure by the tradition-minded over the Vatican decision this week to permit altar girls.

“If you allow women to give out Communion, then altar girls are nothing,” noted Father Robert McNamara, pastor of St. John Eudes in Chatsworth.

The announcement was welcomed by Bishop Armando X. Ochoa, who oversees the 48-parish San Fernando Pastoral Region in the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese.

“When you have a mother who happens to be a lector (who reads Scripture) at the Mass or a eucharistic minister (who distributes Communion to parishioners or shut-ins) and you do not allow her daughter to be an altar server, it was a very difficult pastoral situation,” the bishop said.

In recent years, many U.S. parishes, including an estimated 20 of 48 parishes in the San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys, permitted altar girls, usually aged 8 to 14, to assist the priest while he is celebrating Mass, lighting candles and presenting him with bread and wine to be consecrated.

The practice had grown since 1983, when a revision in church laws did not explicitly forbid girls to join boys as altar servers. American bishops, governing parishes which jumped at the chance, asked the Vatican to clarify the issue about a year ago. At that time, new parish requests for altar girls were put on hold.

“As I went around visiting parishes, invariably the question came up from girls, ‘Why can’t we be altar servers?’ ” Ochoa said.

The Los Angeles archdiocese will issue guidelines to the parishes next week, said spokesman Father Gregory Coiro.

The muted traditionalist Catholic objections to altar girls stem partly from concerns that advocates of priesthood for women would win another small victory.

Conservative Catholics have worried that Vatican-approved altar girls “would create a comfort level with women exercising some kind of liturgical role,” said Gabriel Meyer, associate editor of the Encino-based National Catholic Register.

“I’m disappointed but not surprised by the Vatican decision,” said Jack Kocienski of Camarillo, president of the conservative California Coalition of Concerned Catholics. “It may give some women the false hope that they could become priests.”

But as Kocienski and church officials noted, the papal-approved announcement Wednesday described the change as an interpretation of existing church law and has no effect on the doctrinal prohibition against women priests.

Another traditionalist objection comes from church history.

Altar servers now perform duties in a Mass that were once done by an acolyte, an ordained position that was considered a boy’s first step toward priesthood. But the modern altar server--boy or girl--is not ordained. Yet the symbolism remains for some older Catholics.

“I think it’s a misuse of girls to have them assist at Mass because this has been the traditional means of young men to enter seminary, but we are living in a feminist culture and women want to do everything that men do,” said Charles Belting of Northridge. He described himself as an obedient Catholic even as he expressed misgivings in an interview. “I follow whatever the Holy Father approves,” said Belting.

The Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and Sacraments, in outlining the change, said that altar servers represent “a noble tradition” that has led to priests and must continue to be supported.

But editor Tod Tamberg of the archdiocese’s weekly newspaper said more was at stake than inspiring future priests. The altar role not only fosters thoughts of priesthood in boys but also imparts to children a reverence for the sacred that most ex-altar boys would affirm lasts for a lifetime, he said in an editorial this week.

“Teaching our children--boys and girls--to reverence the Sacred in our church and in our lives is something all of us can agree fits the definition of a pastoral need,” he wrote.

Msgr. Francis J. Weber, archdiocesan archivist based at the San Fernando Mission, said church traditions die hard. “Some traditions should die, some should be maintained. But traditions should always serve the time you’re in,” Weber added.

*

Altar girls “have been vastly accepted” by Burbank’s St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church since they were introduced three or four years ago, said Holy Cross Father William J. Neidhardt, the senior pastor. “I’m very happy (Vatican approval) finally came through.”

Father Edward J. Kaminski, an associate pastor at St. Francis, added that there is a practical benefit too: “The girls have been more enthusiastic than the boys and more reliable.”

In that vein, Granada Hills’ St. Euphrasia parish, which has not had altar girls, is looking forward to training them.

“We have had an extremely difficult time getting guys to serve,” said Father Raymond A. Saplis of St. Euphrasia. “I think once we get the girls in, there will be competition for recognition between the boys and girls.”