Leo XIV: “Altar servers, be attentive to God’s call.” So Why Female Service?

Female altar servers are one of the causes of the lack of vocations to the Priesthood. Boys no longer see the role as a model of what they might become.

From One Peter Five

By Gaetano Masciullo

A few weeks ago on August 25th, in the Clementine Hall, Pope Leo XIV welcomed a delegation of French altar servers, delivering a deeply rich and countercultural address, in contrast to the prevailing ecclesiastical trends.

At the heart of his speech was the affirmation of Christ’s uniqueness and necessity for salvation. “Who will come to our aid? Who will have pity on us? Who will come to save us? Not only from our sufferings, from our limits and our mistakes, but even from death itself?” The answer, the Holy Father reminded them, has echoed for two thousand years: “only Jesus comes to save us, no-one else: because only he has the power to do so – He is God Almighty in person – and because he loves us.”

The proof of this divine love is manifested in the Cross and is renewed daily on the altar, in the Eucharist. “In the hands of the priest, and in his words ‘This is my Body, this is my Blood’, Jesus once again gives his life on the altar, he once again sheds his blood for us. Dear altar servers, the celebration of Mass saves us today! It saves the world today!”

For this reason, the Pontiff emphasized the gravity and sacredness of the liturgy. He explained that the Holy Mass is not just any ritual, but a “serious, solemn” moment, “imbued with gravity”, which demands from everyone an attitude marked by the dignity of service, liturgical beauty, order, and the majesty of gestures, so as to lead the faithful “to the sacred greatness of the Mystery.”

Altar service, Pope Leo XIV further emphasized, is not limited to the worship owed to God. It also opens the heart to the possibility of a higher calling—that of the priesthood. Speaking candidly to the consciences of young people, he said: “the lack of priests in France, in the world, is a great misfortune! A misfortune for the Church!” Yet he immediately followed with a hopeful invitation: “May you, little by little, Sunday after Sunday, discover the beauty, the happiness and the necessity of such a vocation. What a wonderful life is that of the priest who, at the centre of each day,encounters Jesus in such an exceptional way and gives him to the world!”

Indeed, the liturgical service of altar boys has, for centuries, been a small but essential nursery of vocations: standing beside the priest, learning the gestures, hearing the prayers, and perceiving the Eucharistic Mystery up close has sparked in many young hearts the desire to offer their lives to God in the priesthood. How many vocations have been born at the altar during the celebration of the Eucharist, and not during spiritual retreats or sermons of questionable reliability and orthodoxy?

This truth is also confirmed by Sacred Scripture, where we read that the prophet Samuel received his vocation precisely during his service in the Temple. The text describes the young Samuel, still a boy, serving in the Temple under the guidance of the priest Eli. “The boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord in the presence of Eli” (1 Sam 3:1). It is precisely during this service that the Lord calls him by name, in the middle of the night. Samuel, not immediately recognizing the voice of God, runs to Eli several times. Only after the third call does Eli realize that it is the Lord who is addressing him, and he teaches Samuel the proper response: “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening” (1 Sam 3:10).

This passage teaches us two important things. First, the calling appears as an effect of service. This, of course, does not mean that there is an immediate causal relationship between altar service and the vocation to the priesthood, as if it were automatic. Rather, altar service gradually educates the heart in availability, so that if God calls a young person to the priestly state of life, it is only in His presence that He can make His voice clearly heard. In truth, altar service is also helpful in discerning one’s vocation in states of life other than the priesthood. After all, the vocation to the priesthood is also a vocation to generation and spiritual fatherhood: suprema lex salus animarum. As such, it does not present itself as an antithesis or alternative to natural fatherhood, but as its supernatural perfection: gratia non tollit naturam, sed perficit.

Secondly, priestly mediation is fundamental. Since man is not capable of being his own judge, the Church must necessarily mediate between God and the candidate in order to discern whether the signs of a vocation are truly present. In the biblical example cited, we see how Samuel does not understand that the one calling him is God. He is unable to discern on his own. It is the priest Eli—note well, not by human experience or age, but by spiritual maturity—who recognizes the divine origin of the call and teaches him the proper response to address to the Lord.

Indeed, the discernment of spirits is a most noble and essential task, yet today it is often neglected or treated superficially, because people place more trust in feelings and impressions. These, however, are immediate and fleeting, whereas vocation is for life. The neglect of proper discernment is a consequence of prevailing modernism, which, as Saint Pius X teaches, springs from four poisonous sources: agnosticism, immanentism, the primacy of feeling over faith, and the primacy of experience over Tradition.

If it is true, then, that altar service is the privileged path for discerning a vocation to the priesthood, today’s vocational crisis can—and indeed must—be addressed first and foremost from this perspective. It is not merely the consequence of the doctrinal crisis and the crisis of priestly identity within the Church—though these certainly exist, contribute, and are equally grave effects of what I call the “central axis of the crisis”: namely, the crisis of the Papacy. Nor is it merely the result of the relentless and merciless secularization afflicting civil society. Access to the presbyterium as the privileged place of Sacrifice has been altered: we must understand how.

What I am about to affirm may seem strong, but it is logically and theologically coherent. The inclusion of women in altar service and the ministry of acolyte—now even regulated at the canonical level—is the primary cause of the vocational crisis. This is not a matter of discrimination against women. Altar service and the acolyte ministry were conceived as functions oriented toward Holy Orders and, to some extent, shaped by it. Holy Orders can be conferred only upon men.

This is not a patriarchal remnant, as contemporary woke ideology would suggest, but a matter of theological and anthropological propriety. Theologically, because Christ chose to found the Church upon Peter and not upon Mary, even though she surpasses him in every respect. Christ entrusted to Saint Peter the fullness of the threefold power: of order, governance, and teaching. Moreover, God Himself became incarnate in a male human body, and Christ is the High Priest of the New Covenant, the archetype of all priesthood. Finally, Christ instituted the episcopal college upon the twelve apostles—twelve men.

There also exists an anthropological reason. The difference between male and female is not merely genital. If Catholic theology does not recover and deepen this awareness and this factual reality, it will become increasingly incapable of defending Catholic dogma against the attacks and neo-Modernist deviations that seek to transform the Mystical Body of Our Lord from a core monarchic, hierarchical, subsidiary, and sacred institution into a parliamentary democracy.

This is not the place to explore the topic in full depth. Suffice it to say that male psychology is more suited to the priesthood because, by nature, man tends toward exteriority, symbolic representation, and mediation, whereas woman is more oriented toward interiority, receptivity, and nurturing. The priestly ministry, which consists in acting in persona Christi as a mediator between God and men, requires a disposition toward ritual separation and the governance of a community—dimensions that align with the male psychological structure, which is more inclined toward norms and the necessary distance to exercise authority.

Female psychology, precious in other areas of ecclesial life, is more naturally inclined toward immediate proximity, personal relationship, and care—elements that find their fulfillment in irreplaceable roles, though distinct from the priesthood. In this sense, the distinction is not a devaluation, but a recognition of a complementarity willed by the Creator, so that the Church may live from the richness of both principles: priestly fatherhood and spiritual motherhood.

Altar service, which also serves vocational discernment, must faithfully reflect and anticipate this sacred distinction. Adolescent psychology teaches that boys, at this stage of life, tend to avoid places and activities perceived as “feminine” or dominated by female presence. This is a natural mechanism of identity formation: the male, in order to affirm and consolidate his masculinity, seeks spaces for challenge and growth where he does not feel overshadowed or reduced to a “guest” in a context where girls predominate. Thus, when girls take on the role of altar servers, boys gradually withdraw—and with them, the possibility that the Holy Spirit might speak to their hearts beside the altar.

In fact, this has contributed to rendering the womb of the contemporary Church sterile, seemingly incapable of generating new priestly vocations in sufficient number. It is undeniable: what was once a forge of future priests has, in many places, become a mixed and confused environment that discourages precisely those who should be the primary recipients of that formation.