Are Girl Altar Servers Having a Bad Effect on the Priesthood Or is Contraception Hurting the Priesthood?

As a someone who used to be a girl altar server and who is proud of participating or helping in the Mass, I must say that women altar servers could be hurting the priesthood. But one must take into account several factors when trying to answer this question. Has there been a decline in births among Catholics over the years? Has there been a decline in the number of Catholics who follow the Magisterium? Has there been a population decline in the Church as a result of Catholics leaving the Church, either for another church or because of those who are fallen away and don‘t attend church period? What are the reasons behind this?


In 2006 there was a survey of Catholic women asking whether they took birth control or not. The poll revealed a stunning and quite horrifying reality - that 9 out of 10 Catholic women have used birth control. If this poll merely asked “Have you used contraceptives?‘ this needed to be deconstructed a little further since contraceptives do have alternative therapeutic uses. People, like myself, may have resorted to use contraceptives at one time or another to treat such female diseases such as endometriosis, so saying “using contraceptives is always immoral or is always intrinsically evil” seems to be an overstatement since the qualifier “always” wouldn’t allow for the therapeutic (and non-contraceptive) use of a substance often prescribed as a means of birth control. But then if a substance isn’t being used to contracept, but for some other legitimate benefit (e.g., treating a disease), then in that case the substance isn’t a contraceptive. Thus, while contraception may be intrinsically evil, a certain medication might not be intrinsically contraceptive, but only contraceptive in relation to those using it in that conventional way. One might say that if a woman uses “contraceptives” to contracept and to purposely avoid procreating or creating life, then that is always intrinsically evil. But, regardless this astounding result is way, way too high among Catholics, and is a serious problem that must be addressed through better education in the Catholic sphere. On this distinction between legitimate and sinful uses of substances that are conventionally used as birth control, I have no statistics, but my intuition is that there could not be nearly that many women with conditions that would call for the medicinal use of such medications.

From the National Catholic Reporter, there are two items that are noteworthy:


‘First, for the first time this year, the female altar servers in attendance outnumbered the males. According to organizers, the balance was roughly 60-40 in favor of females. The official Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, pointed to the turnout as a symbol of “the massive entry in recent decades of girls and young women into a role once reserved exclusively to males.”’


“Second, Vatican sources seemed eager to bill the gathering of tens of thousands of devoted young Catholics with Pope Benedict XVI as a kind of counter-point to the sexual abuse scandals of recent months.”

It seems like there are simply less Catholics, at least in part due to contraception, and therefore less boys, less altar boys, which ultimately has led to a decline of priests. Maybe, more of those who are faithful Catholics are simply having more girls than boys? Could a backlash against girl altar servers inevitably produce more dissent among those girls later in life, as they become mature women? Shouldn’t we encourage participation among women also instead of stifling it? I believe as long as it is made crystal clear that altar girls can NEVER become priests then it is okay for girls to be altar servers and assist the priest in the Mass.

It is my conclusion that the allowing girls to serve at the altar is not the primary cause for the decline of men entering the priesthood. I also believe that even if the presence of altar girls are having a negative effect that is discouraging young men from becoming priests (which I doubt since most traditional Catholics encourage young men to consider the priesthood as a vocation and one would think that a girl altar server‘s family would most likely be traditional and adhering to the Magisterium), the effect is minimal and miniscule in comparison to the negative effect that contraceptives have had in the past and are having on the decline in vocations to the priesthood.