Ministeria

Dr dear Dr: Is there any sign of some opening up of the liturgical altar ministries to others of some lay deputation or something, any sign of a growing liberalisation on the part of your religion?

Pontifical Councils there are a few, quite a few nowadays, and for a long while after Vatican II, there was an organisation called the Pontifical Commission for the Interpretation of Vatican II (1962-1965), something akin to another Commission of similar import after the Council of Trent (1549-1563) called the Congregation of the Council, and these organisations dealt with the correct interpretation of the Church’s councils over time, in this case for 400 years after 1549, since like as per Vatican II, among the debates after the council there were many misleading claims made about the Council of Trent too for years and years and years, though as we read in the Treasury Archive of the Congregation of the Council, now hidden away inside the halls and sacred palaces of the Vatikanstadt unless one knows where to look, Trent turned out to be surprisingly liberal in its correct applications in this timeframe - 1549-1965. Anyway, on the opposite side, misleading new claims had been circulating about Vatican II in the 1980s and 1990s and 2000s that it was just another essentially traditionalist council, even if for more and more theologians of conciliars this is not a million miles away from the truth, since it was surprise surprise conducted entirely in Latin and not in English, with no serious innovations for some time during the 1980s, but then surprise surprise again, out came a Pontifical Council Oracle that the canon 230 of the Western Codex, which curiously is not repeated in the Eastern Codex like anywhere which is just so curiously fascinating since normally the Western canons derive validation in some sense theologically with an appearance of a similar norm in the Eastern Codex, so the new interpretation of Vatican II claimed that it should be interpreted as saying nothing new about ad hoc deputising laity for liturgical ministries. But this was not so, that in sum, the Council had signalled some sincere intent toward a new style pro-vocation liberalisation, for girls just as much as boys, and a growing openness to girl altar servers for this role, since the beginning of liberal almost woke laws enshrined in canon 230 now constituted “internal human magna carta style rights”, like true ecclesial rights, which the chief members of the Pontifical Council, the highest body in the Roman Curia like a Supreme Court of Cassation of lower laws anywhere in the Church by whichever bishop, like 12 presiding judge cardinals, asked to be respected by everybody, and not just by more traditional parishes. So a right to some “liturgical ministry” is now enshrined in the canon of the westerners at canon 230. What this means in practice is left to parish priests to decide since many parish priests in Traditionalist England and Wales will wish to conserve their numbers of boy altar servers for recruitment and vocation purposes, say by putting boys in red cassocks and girls in blue cassocks with different functions accorded to each, and will seek to restrict girls to certain defined liturgical roles around the blue server model of the Oscott liturgical movements, and this is only mete and right, since it would be silly of the Church to begin a liberalised canonical movement that would lead to its structural and institutional suicide through the non-recruitment of boys - boys simply do not like to work alongside girls in such circles without some clear delineation of colour or uniform to distinguish one from t’other. Terentius Maximus says this delineation is very important. Vocations to the presbyteral ministry - and these are the stuff of the boy recruitment ministry - have to be doggedly and solidly continued, come what may. So that is what has been happening since the Pontifical Council got started on this thorny issue which is felt here in the Islands more keenly than elsewhere - though Britain retains some pride in being one of the few territories in the Eurozone churches where boy recruitment continues unabated and very successfully, notwithstanding overtures by the civil protestant police forces to have more and more boys playing football on Sunday mornings with them rather than assisting a la messe in churches at those times, their statutory duty but then disobedient MI3 style civil police forces do exist in the old empire territories - even if, though this is largely untried, girls can be recruited and are recruitable to the ministry of female sister even active pastoral sisterhoods through girl liturgical serving - it can be known and is more and more a tried option for the girls. So largely left to the discretion of the parish clergy themselves more and more, though girls do have a right of general access now, whatever about particular details, to the serving liturgical ministries in partibus infidelium. Eventually, the Pontifical Council published the fonts for the new law and the new rights in the official annotated Codex, the royal blue codex, as Ministeria Quaedam, 3, 7, 12; plus Apostolicam Actuositatem 24, a SCDS Instruction Fidei Custos of 1969 and a SCproC responsum of 1973, plus the final response of the Pontifical Council in recent times in the 1988 phase. So it is all there - a more detailed theological commentary and a long article on the subject is written by Fr Fox and Fr Barrett and Fr Corbellini for the Roman Curia magazine Seminarium and this is yet to appear, being a Thomist analysis of the liturgical theology issues behind the mentioned ad hoc deputations of canon 230. Again no mention in the Eastern Codex.