The real sadness here is not the issue of "altar girls". Ms Zickel left the church over an issue that is on the "surface" of the church. She quotes Jesus, "Let the little children come to me", yet she now deprives her own children of the Eucharist. This is both a tragedy and a scandel. Maybe this is really more about her than about her children? Shame on her for being so selfish.

WOW! Isn't there better things to fight for? This is stupid! This woman has too much time on her hands. Can't she see that alter boys belong with the priest not the girls. Girls can't be priests so why should they be up there? Next thing you will see is gay teenage boys demanding to enter the convent!

This woman got it wrong;
she might have been spiritually abused;
not Blessed John Paul but perhaps Fr. Liar said that in her church.

In 1755, Pope Benedict XIV said:
"Pope Gelasius 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 … [Más]

Pope John Paul II said explicitly that serving at the altar is not a "right."

The secularized thinking of the people in this article would have to conclude that the Church has been guilty of a profound injustice for almost two thousand years. If there is a "profound inequality" in having only males serve at the altar, what about the priesthood and the episcopacy?

In a better time and place these kinds of whinny little objections to church authroity would not have occurred.

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