At the center of this situation (surprise!) is the Apostle of Vatican II, Pope John Paul II, who early on in his pontificate laid down the law in support of the traditional practice:
INAESTIMABILE DONUM
Instruction Concerning Worship Of The Eucharistic Mystery
James R. Cardinal Knox
Prefect Virgilio Noe Assistant Secretary
Prepared by the Sacred Congregation for the Sacraments and Divine Worship
Approved and Confirmed by His Holiness Pope John Paul II 17 April 1980:
18. There are, of course, various roles that women can perform in the liturgical assembly: these include reading the Word of God and proclaiming the intentions of the Prayer of the Faithful. Women are not, however, permitted to act as altar servers.John Paul II, Apostle of the Second Vatican Council and the New Consciousness in the Church however, knew that the old days of Papal command and episcopal obedience ended when Pope John XXIII was overwhelmed at the first session of Vatican II by the demands of the Rhine Fathers. Pope Paul VI similarly took no action at all against openly dissenting episcopal conferences when they refused to teach Humanae vitae after its promulgation in 1968. Democracy having been firmly established in the Church thanks to the theory of collegiality explained in Vatican II's Constitution on the Church Lumen gentium, the US Council of Catholic Bishops easily obtained an indult for distributing holy communion in the hand on 29 May, 1969 - contrary to canon law.
The democratization of the hierarchy could only lead to the democratization of the sacred liturgy, especially under the rubrics of the modular, tailorable Missale Romanum promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1969. The Novus Ordo offers the celebrant multiple options, so who can be surprised that it fell prey to the whims of each individual liturgist shortly after it's promulgation?
It was in fact, democracy that led to the acceptance of 'altar girls.' The reality is, just as with communion-in-the-hand, the abuse - then condemned by canon law - of employing 'altar girls' became a norm later affirmed by the episcopal conferences. So abuses can become new norms in the People's Republic of Catholicism! Capitulating to 'popular demand' Rome proclaimed:
3) If in some diocese, on the basis of Canon 230 #2, the Bishop permits that, for particular reasons, women may also serve at the altar, this decision must be clearly explained to the faithful, in the light of the above-mentioned norm. It shall also be made clear that the norm is already being widely applied, by the fact that women frequently serve as lectors in the Liturgy and can also be called upon to distribute Holy Communion as Extraordinary Ministers of the Eucharist and to carry out other functions, according to the provisions of the same Canon 230 #3.
| VATICAN COMMUNICATION ON FEMALE ALTAR SERVERS |
| Congregation for Divine Worship, 15 March 1994 |
Anything that originates as an abuse and then later receives official permission should be suspect. Why after two millennia of consistent praxis should this abuse become a permitted norm in the Church? What changed? The Second Vatican Council changed everything, including the Church's self-consciousness:
"Entrusting myself fully to the Spirit of truth, therefore, I am entering into the rich inheritance of the recent pontificates. This inheritance has struck deep roots in the awareness of the Church in an utterly new way, quite unknown previously, thanks to the Second Vatican Council..."Ah, democracy! The vox populi! The consciousness of the faithful, the new standard for transforming abuses into the Lex Orandi of the Church!
Pope John Paul II, Redemptor hominis (1979)
Pope Benedict XIV, in his Encyclical Allatae Sunt, July 26, 1755, n. 29, writes
Pope Gelasius (+496) in his ninth letter (chap. 26) to the bishops of Lucania condemned the evil practice which had been introduced of women serving the priest at the celebration of Mass. Since this abuse had spread to the Greeks, Innocent IV strictly forbade it in his letter to the bishop of Tusculum:
"Women should not dare to serve at the altar; they should be altogether refused this ministry." We too have forbidden this practice in the same words in Our oft-repeated constitution Etsi Pastoralis, sect. 6, no. 21."It's obvious that old Papa Gelasius didn't have the advantages of democracy in his benighted epoch. The effeminization of the Church is a direct result of Pope John XXIII's aggiornamento - adapting to fit the so-called modern world and its obsession with human rights and popular democracy. The democracies which now overwhelmingly favor radical feminism and sodomy can only be expected to bring the same into the new democratized Catholic Church.
I would like to give Saint Pius X the last word:
For in the same way [say the Modernists] as the Church is a vital emanation of the collectivity of consciences, so too authority emanates vitally from the Church itself. Authority therefore, like the Church, has its origin in the religious conscience, and, that being so, is subject to it. Should it disown this dependence it becomes a tyranny. For we are living in an age when the sense of liberty has reached its fullest development, and when the public conscience has in the civil order introduced popular government. Now there are not two consciences in man, any more than there are two lives. It is for the ecclesiastical authority, therefore, to shape itself to democratic forms, unless it wishes to provoke and foment an intestine conflict in the consciences of mankind. The penalty of refusal is disaster. For it is madness to think that the sentiment of liberty, as it is now spread abroad, can surrender. Were it forcibly confined and held in bonds, terrible would be its outburst, sweeping away at once both Church and religion. (Pascendi gregis #23)Forward!
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| The 1966 Peoples' Mass Book with it's creepy graphics and socialist styled title helped cement the idea of popular democracy in the American Catholic Church. |