Altar Girls Outnumber Altar Boys

August 2010 was the next designated time for Coetus Internationalis Ministrantium to organize its famous event, affectionately nicknamed the International Pilgrimage of Altar Servers, which happens every five years. The Vatican's L'Osservatore Romano estimated in the weekly news release for August 4, 2010 that over 53,000 altar servers gathered in St. Peter's Square to meet and listen to Pope Benedict XVI. This year was unlike previous events. This year, the girls outnumbered the boys 60 to 40. The Vatican's L'Osservatore Romano

Many progressive Catholics cheer the gender shift in the altar server ratio, praising the opportunity and ability for girls to serve in the Catholic Church alongside boys, and happily putting behind the former comments of the Vatican that cited girl altar servers as an "abuse" of the liturgy. Yet there are also Catholics who are concerned about this development.

All Catholic parishes in the Madison Diocese have removed girls from the altar server positions, citing that the role should be reserved for boys so that vocations in the priesthood could be encouraged. Since the Roman Catholic Church refuses to ordain women as priests, the argument of the Madison Diocese and many other conservative Catholics is that girls usurp positions that should be rightfully reserved for boys to insure the population of the priesthood. In the Madison Diocese girls are cited as "distracting" and "intimidating" to boys, as written in the Wisconsin State Journal article, "Sauk City-area priests inspiring some, alienating others".

While the Vatican, who has allowed girls to serve on the alter since 1994, had recently praised the recent event with no direct comment about any suggested relationship between the gender of altar servers and the future of the priesthood, bloggers like Meghan Duke of FirstThings.com First Thoughts address the issue in the post The Rise of Altar Girls as a need to readjust the role of girls as altar servers:

"There are many fine altar girls out there, and their desire to serve is admirable. It reflects, in fact, a very feminine quality, like Martha, they feel compelled to serve the one they love [...] If altar serving is going to continue as a way of fostering priestly vocations, it seems that another form of service needs to be found for altar girls."

Over the past ten years, the number of priests has been decreasing. The priesthood molestation scandals and growing attraction of secular life have been widely known issues for the decline in priesthood enrollment. Parishes have closed or been reduced to Missions so that priests can tend to more than one church. Seminary enrollment is down by as much as 70% in some countries from its numbers 50 years ago. Priests are retiring from the Baby Boomer generation to not have replacements from the next generation of adults. With conversion to Roman Catholicism on the rise during the same decade, the demands of parishioners will not be met with an able-bodied clergy.

Now that Catholic Dioceses are removing parishioners' children from altar server positions on the basis of only their gender, there is an underlying concern that conservative Catholicism will kill the religion's conversion rate and families will leave the Church.

Sources:

L'Osservatore Romano; Vatican News Service; Weekly news report for August 4, 2010

Wisconsin State Journal; Doug Erickson; Sauk City-area priests inspiring some, alienating others

First Things.com First Thoughts; Meghan Duke; The Rise of Altar Girls