Bishops must address discrimination of girls during Mass By Adeline Fermanian and Sylvaine Landrivon | Vatican City 24 March 2023
/Bishops must address discrimination of girls during Mass
Catholic women's group in France wrote to the country's nearly 100 bishops on March 8 to ask why they allow parishes to refuse girl altar servers, but only four have responded
By Adeline Fermanian and Sylvaine Landrivon* | Vatican City
LeCroix | 24 March 2023
Altar servers lighting a candle during the Holy Thursday celebration at Saint Ambroise Parish in Paris, March 29, 2018. (Photo by CORINNE SIMON/CIRIC)
Our Catholic women's group, the Comité de la Jupe (the Skirt Committee), sent a letter to each of the bishops of France on March 8, International Women's Day,asking them to take a position on the status of something called the "assembly maids".
This practice involves giving a different role to children according to their gender. Boys are designated to serve at the altar (carrying the candles or the incense burner, assisting the priest during the offertory, preparing the altar, etc.), while the girls serve the assembly (distributing the song sheets, taking up the collection, etc.). The practice is spreading in many dioceses and looks like a denial of baptismal equality. The result is serious discrimination against girls, who are excluded from the sanctuary.
According to our survey, more than half of the parishes in France forbid girls to be altar servers. Thousands of children are therefore affected. What message are we sending to the younger generations? That girls are impure and unfit to approach the altar?
An exclusion in contradiction with the Magisterium
But this exclusion of girls goes contrary to the message of the Gospel as well as that of the Magisterium. Does one need to be reminded that Christ shared his revelation and his word, without consideration of gender, with his disciples? In John's Gospel, Martha says to Jesus: "I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God...". And while in Matthew (16, 16) Peter also declares, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God", Jesus does not go on, as he did with Martha, to reveal himself in the mystery of the Resurrection. In John, it is once again a woman, the Magdalene woman, whom Christ entrusts with the mission of announcing his resurrection, without worrying that acting in this way would go against custom... Saint Paul understood the message he was transmitting to the Galatians when he explained that "in Christ there can be neither Jew nor Greek... neither male nor female" (Gal 3, 28).
The Scriptures therefore attest to a possible, even necessary, connection between women and the spreading of the Word. It is also important to remember that Vatican II, in the conciliar text Gaudium et spes (§ 29), denounced "every type of discrimination... whether based on sex, race, color, social condition, (as it is) contrary to God's intent".
Pope Francis' clarification
Furthermore, the January 2021 "motu proprio" Spiritus Domini, regarding the access of females to the instituted ministries of lectorate and acolyte, contradicts this strange practice of "assembly maids" that relegates girls and women to subordinate roles.
Pope Francis states that "certain ministries instituted by the Church are based on the common condition of being baptized and the royal priesthood received in the Sacrament of Baptism": He goes on to say that "a consolidated practice in the Latin Church has also confirmed, in fact, that these lay ministries, since they are based on the Sacrament of Baptism, may be entrusted to all suitable faithful, whether male or female, in accordance with what is already implicitly provided for by Canon 230 § 2".
There is no lack of scriptural and magisterial support for rejecting this ostracism of girls, which is totally incomprehensible to civil society, to the point of driving away many believers who find no justification for this segregation.
A request to the bishops
And the bishops know it well. "No text of the Magisterium forbids girls from serving at the altar," Archbishop Guy de Kerimel of Toulouse was quoted as saying recently in an article in Famille Chrétienne (September 12, 2022). The author of the article also expressed surprise at the proliferation of these female assembly servers, a practice "born about fifteen years ago in France and whose growth is exponential".
We asked the bishops to explain why the practice was begun and is being maintained. We did so intentionally on the occasion of International Women's Day in order to point out this cruel failure to respect the rights of women.
Only four have responded...
To date, only four bishops have answered us. Bishop Denis Moutel of Saint-Brieuc told us that the practice does not exist in his diocese. Bishop Jean-Marc Eychenne of Grenoble, replied in the same way, as did Bishop Christian Nourrichard of Évreux. The fourth one to reply was Archbishop Olivier de Germay of Lyon. He confirmed that there is nothing to oppose the presence of girls around the altar; consequently, he leaves his priests free to choose, while alerting them to the fact that "it will not be long before we realize the limits" of the "current all-mixedness".
We await a response from all their other conferes who maintain this "fashion" to let us know how they manage to justify doing so. This is their duty – on the anthropological, theological or ecclesiological levels – when no support validates it.
Adeline Fermanian and Sylvaine Landrivon are members of the Comité de la Jupe.
https://international.la-croix.com/news/religion/bishops-must-address-discrimination-of-girls-during-mass/17500
