Tipping the Wheelbarrow

     The big news today is not news.  For years, young men have been outnumbered by young women at college.  Apparently, all those many initiatives spearheaded by conservatives, including conservative women, have gone for naught.  Well, there weren't any such initiatives, beyond the cries of a few brave souls -- for instance our own contributing editor, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese.  So the situation has gotten much worse, and fast.  Christine Sommers is wrong: there is no war on boys.  There was a war on boys.  It's over.  The boys lost, badly -- without any help from the Christian churches, and indeed with most of them, and even most "conservatives," pitching in to help their feminist opponents.

     Since, if anything, a college education is less demanding than it was in 1950, with grade inflation partly masking the decline, it cannot be that the boys are, to so much greater a degree than before, innately incapable of doing the work.  Nor does the disparity reflect the IQ distribution: men and women consistently show up as having the same IQ, with some studies giving the slight nod to men, others the slight nod to women; and at that, since the standard deviation of the male IQ is the greater (meaning that males are much more likely than females to be either geniuses or feeble-minded), males ought to be somewhat overrepresented at the university, all things being equal.  In old days, many men and many more women opted not to go to college, because they could not afford it or, especially in the case of women who expected to marry and raise children, because they felt they had better things to do.  But unless I am missing something, that cannot be the case here either.  It seems that intelligent boys are either being dulled by the schools, or are so disgusted with the feminism of school that they don't want to be around it anymore, or suffer the more from the miseries of divorce and other crimes against the family and the community, or have their brains blitzed by the barrage of life-destroying video games and other vices for sale, keeping them indoors and imbecilic, rather than pushing them outdoors to invent a combustion engine or blow up a mountain.  I'd like to believe that their natural cleverness will out -- that the university's loss is someone else's gain.  But, given the human propensity to waste time, and given all the sloth-inducing products put out by our economy, I have my doubts.  Sure, college is overrated and overpriced; and I root for those who buck it, all the time.  But the numbers here are staggering.

     What does it mean for our civilization?  In a word, I think it means demise.  I could be wrong about this -- but history and anthropology point to a bleak future.  Unless there is some incipient institution waiting to receive the energy and intelligence of these millions, what we will see is a slow withering away of the cultural institutions they are abandoning.  And at that, I may be understating the problem.  I wish I could be persuaded otherwise, but -- maybe the problem is not what happens to boys in our schools, but what does not happen, and what is therefore all the harder to see.

     Here I'll venture an analogy.  Analogies are slippery, I know; but this one, I think, works.  There are Catholic parishes in this country where you will not see an altar boy -- where, in the words of one of my theologian friends, it is clear that if things remain the same there will never be another altar boy there again.  Even where there are altar boys, they are greatly outnumbered by the girls.  In the Canadian village where we stayed this summer, the person charged with recruiting altar servers is a woman -- and, try as she may, she cannot persuade the boys to do it.  Of course she can't; because she cannot recruit except as an image of mommy, and boys are not going to want to please mommy by doing something as sweet as serve at the altar, particularly in the company of girls.  So they decline the honor -- and those who accept look uncomfortable and, frankly, a tad surly.

      What's happened is that "altar server" has lost its valorization as masculine.  Since it doesn't pay any money, the girls themselves don't flock to it, either.  The result is that there are far fewer servers than before -- and most of them, about 4/5, are girls.  For the boys it never rises to the level of conscious decision, I'm sure: again, it's not something they decide, but something they fail to decide.  There is nothing inspiring about the role.  It doesn't intrigue them.  They don't see themselves as playing an important part in an important and manly ceremony.  So they don't check out; they just never check in.  The pattern may be observed in the mainline Protestant churches: men don't leave them, not in such huge numbers, because there are female pastors and female everything else in church.  Indeed, many of them would angrily defend the right of women to be pastors and the rest -- but then, what the women are doing strangely never piques their interest; it does not inspire them.  They don't rebel; they simply are never roused to follow.  They play golf.

     If the same thing is happening in higher education, the prognosis is the same as that of the mainline churches -- barring an extraordinary intervention by the Lord.  Not that the colleges will be turned into antique stores, day care centers, and warehouses, as so many churches have been; as I said, there's always the pecuniary incentive.  But if the men check out, we will be seeing familial dysfunction on a grand scale: women perpetually dissatisfied and overworked, men suffering self-contempt and the disrespect of their wives, nobody having a whole lot of children, and children living in confusion and ennui.

     There is a partial solution.  When I was a boy, and I'm not that old, there were some 80 all-male colleges in the United States, along with some 130 or so all-female colleges.  Most of both sorts were affiliated with one of the Christian denominations.  (Some, of both sorts, were public -- VMI, anyone?).  Now there are one or two all-male schools, and about 70 all-female schools.  (Some went co-ed for financial reasons; most, however, went co-ed out of gallantry, or a devotion to "freedom" -- it was, after all, the age of sexual liberation.)  It seems counterintuitive, but I know what men are like: if you want more of them to attend college, you have to found colleges that are all-male -- that are demanding and masculine.  Don't assume that the minds are not out there to educate; obviously it is not a static equation we are dealing with.  If you want more men to be priests, you have to make the qualifications more, not less, severe -- and then the factor of inspiration will kick in.  If I had a lot of money, and I don't, I would found such a college, and I would bet the endowment that the college would fill and more, in short order.  I am absolutely serious about this.

     If we don't do something like that?  It's like wheeling a wheelbarrow.  When the thing starts to tip, you can right it, with more or less effort, and without breaking your back.  But when once the wheelbarrow tips past a certain point, the torque is so great that Charles Atlas could not set it to rights: it must fall.  Oh, sure, there will be doctors -- sick people will have to be treated.  But just go to a church where emasculation has played out over the course of several decades.  Then extrapolate what you see -- or, more to the point, what you do not see -- to the nation.

    

Comments

[Ann Church]

Mr Elsolen,
I was very intrigued by your arguement about why men are not going to college as much as women. Could another factor in this situation, besides the feminization of schools (elementery and high school), be the lack of society's expectation of a man to "support a family"?

This is entirely anecdotal evidence, but I am amazed at the high percentage of young married couples I know, all childless and living on two incomes, where the woman has a much better paying/more secure job (with benefits), than the man. It seems to stem from habits aquired in their single lives before marriage, where the man was content with an hourly, temporary, or low wage job and the woman typically was more ambitious, often choosing a career "with a future", as they say.

Of course, what happens almost always, is that the couple FROM THE VERY START "cannot afford children", considering the fact that it will be the woman who will need at least a minimal maternity leave with pregnacy/birth!

I was just thinking that along with not being inspired by strong male role models and leaders stressing education, there is also the lack of financial motivation for men these days. They pretty much assume their wife will work (if they get married) and therefore have less motivation to put money and effort into gaining an education which will (among other things) lead to the kind of financial security to really support a family. And, of course, indulgence in TV/video games/computers do not help either!

Sincerely, Ann Church

[Rev. Michael Philliber]

It seems to me that Mr. Esolen has made a good point. His piece led me to three thoughts: First, recently I was talking to a parishioner about her young son, & my two young boys. I mentioned to her that one of the things I have been striving to teach my boys in play, story reading, etc, is that it’s good & right for men to fight evil and to defend the defenseless or weak. I have made them wooden swords, shields, play guns, etc. But I also remind them - ‘Don’t shoot your sister, she’s not the enemy. You can shot bad guys, but not innocent bystanders.’ A second thought - I started playing in an adult soccer league yesterday. My team is all male, & one of the things that came out in the game was a bond of sweat & exertion. I knew none of these young men, and became quickly connected as I carried my load on the field against the other team. A final thought - for the next two Fridays, we’re going to sing Christmas Carols outside the local abortion facility - while the women and their significant others walk past us into the place. Manly strength doesn’t always have to be bloody. To watch and hear ten men singing ‘What Child is This’, or ‘Joy to the World’ in the devil’s face can stir the depths of a Christian man’s soul, & maybe be a means of grace to some mothers & little unborn babies. O come all ye faithful, joyful & triumphant!

[Anne]

I'll have to quibble with your point about the standard devation of IQ's. It's only true that a higher standard deviation for males would lead to them being over-represented if less than half the population goes to college. If more than half the population goes, you would expect them to be under-represented. (I.e. to use your terminology and speaking loosely, if only geniuses go, males will be over represented, as they are more likely to be geniuses. But if everyone except the feeble minded goes, males will be under represented as they are more likely to be feeble minded.)

Of course the whole thing gets more complicated when you consider that there are some social strata in which far more than half of children go, and other social strata in which far less than half of children go. In short, what the percentage ought to be is much murkier than you're giving it credit for.

Not that this really touches the core of your argument, I just thought that since you're interested enough in distributions to bring them up you might be interested in this refinement.

[Charles R. Williams]

Some observations from the university where I teach lower-level math courses:

There are a phenomenal number of unhappy-looking young women studying to become primary teachers. Overwhelmingly they want to teach kindergarten. There are no jobs for them - at least in this part of the country. These are women of average intelligence and modest social status. For me, the conclusion is obvious, they would rather be married and having babies and their hopes of finding a man willing and able to support a family are dim.

Many students are wasting their time in college racking up debt and earning worthless degrees. Young women are much more compliant with the social expectation that they get a degree. Young men have a more rational - if short term - approach to this. They may do the minimum necessary to get by when they don't see the relevance of a course. Women, through their compliance, are picking up generic skills here that may ultimately have greater value in the job market. What these men lack is faith, faith in themselves, faith in the future, faith in the masculine role of fatherhood and headship of the family.

We are starting to reap the bitter harvest of the sexual revolution of the sixties and the feminist movement.

[Juli]

There are a phenomenal number of unhappy-looking young women studying to become primary teachers. Overwhelmingly they want to teach kindergarten.

God spare children from such (undedicated) teachers.

[Tony Esolen]

Anne,

Thank you, you are correct -- nor does it change the argument. In fact, fewer than half of all students do go to college, and in those places where more than half go, we've not got a typical IQ range: these are the children of professionals cordoned off from the rest of the population by neighborhood or suburb. But that's another problem -- the destruction of community life that occurs when professionals with high incomes marry professionals with high incomes.

Charles,

I see the same phenomenon. And you put me in mind of something ominous for the faith: if everyone's father on earth is a fifth wheel, how can we take seriously the idea of an almighty Father in heaven? What happens to the virtue of hope, in a feminized society? Or, from the other direction, what happens to men in a society that loses hope? Europe ...

Anne,

You bring up a crucial point. It can be pursued from many angles. For instance, the cultural push to turn all women available into professionals has come at the expense of women who want to stay home and raise their children -- since it has constricted the number of men available who could afford to have them do it. Also, as Midge Decter said years ago in a competitor magazine that shall remain nameless, "Boys need to be needed." There is a kind of sloth in that; if they aren't needed, they won't work. But there is also a lot of self-sacrifice in it. If they are needed, and they're decent sorts, they will move heaven and earth, for their wives and their families. I've seen it happen. A man will do for the woman he loves what he would never care to do for himself.

Father,

God bless you and your choir! Sports (I mean, their degradation, from cultural and ritual play to entertainment and narcissism) too are a small but insidious part of the problem we are in.

[maria horvath]

Mr. Esolen's analogy to the problem of the vanishing altar server works very well indeed. Social engineering always has its harmful unintended consequences.

With this in mind, I wonder if Title IX, that federal government mandate imposed in 1972 to enforce "gender equity" in sports in schools and colleges, could be keeping competitive young men away from colleges. There are recorded cases where an institution has had to eliminate a men's team in order to keep the male-female ratio correct in the sports department.

[sharon d.]

On the altar server topic, from a practical point of view, our parish has come up with a solution that is working very well. Boys and girls both may be servers, but there is a separate group of servers (nicknames the "A-Team") composed of older boys with a possible interest in a vocation. The noon mass and holy day masses (basically any time someone will be swinging a thurible) are served only by these boys.

The result is many altar servers in our parish, but mostly boys. It's not a strict boy/girl split, since the younger boys and boys with absolutely no interest in a vocation aren't on the A-Team. While some of the parishioners whisper about unfairness, the girl servers (including my older daughter) don't see it as unfair; they see the division as "might be priests" and "won't be priests."

[Juli]

but then, what the women are doing strangely never piques their interest; it does not inspire them

Since in theological terms the Church is understood as fundamentally feminine (receptive) - with Mary as the model for all humanity, not just women - maybe it's not surprising that the whole enterprise is devalued by a culture that values self-definition and being in control; it's nothing new that men and boys show disdain for "women's work." There are more women than men in most churches, "conservative" as well as "liberal" (quotation marks used because these are slippery categories in politics, let alone church life).

[Joe Long]

Could this portend the demise of the university, rather than of our civilization...?

Oldline Protestant churches which have lost their masculine appeal and cultural relevance are withering. Meanwhile even the economic relevance of a college education may be waning, particularly at the undergrad level. Employers must be starting to catch on to just how little a college degree really proves about the candidate, these days...other than that he's probably in debt up to his eyeballs. And daily electronic advertisements remind him he could have gotten that degree more quickly and cheaply over the Internet!

Meanwhile the universities chug merrily along, insulated from the concernes of those who pay their bills, apparently little worried that before long they may be little more than finishing schools for angst-ridden harridans.

[Christian]

At our Catholic parish we have only altar boys, and my two sons serve every Saturday evening, plus other Masses, vespers, etc. We have 3 seminarians, ordained a new priest this summer, and have other young men considering a vocation. I believe this is due in part to the pastor's conscious re-masculinization of the Liturgy.

[GL]

This issue of debt is a huge one. I recall a few years ago the Wall Street Journal reported on a study on the relative value of an Ivy League vs. a state university degree. The finding was that if you came from a very affluent, influential family or had a full or nearly full scholarship, the Ivy League degree paid off in increased lifetime income--largely due to the contacts made, not the superior level of the education. If you had to borrow heavily, the increased income was not enough to justify the higher debt load.

I believe the issue with men being under represented in colleges is primarily a problem because of the disparity in income between the sexes later in life. It is the disparity in income which emasculates the man, in both his own mind and in the mind of many women, not the college education or lack thereof.

Until the last few decades, a man with a high school degree working in a factory or mill might earn substantially more than his college-educated wife who taught in an elementary or secondary school (if she worked at all). It is the demise of large numbers of high paying jobs for men with less than a college degree that is the real problem. I have a brother-in-law who has only a high school degree but has owned his own business since he was 18. He is now 37 and probably makes at least as much, if not more, than I make as a law professor. I cannot say that his choice to forgo college was a bad choice. He is debt free, including his home and business, and has two nice late model cars. Unfortunately, in our age, he is the exception rather than the rule.

[ralphg]

The reason fewer men (er, Grade 12 boys) go to college is simple: they want to make money.

Going to college prevents them from acquiring all the boy-toys of this age.

[James Kabala]

Speaking as someone who was an altar boy both before and after girls were permitted, I can say that the popularity of being an altar boy was in decline even when altar boys were still all male. Signing up to be an altar boy was common, but actually following through on one's commitment was much less so. I can remember many Masses where three to five boys were assigned and one (namely me) showed up. At least when girls were allowed, they had a (somewhat) higher tendency to actually show up!
I actually wonder if the vernacular Mass and the subsequent decrease in the altar boy's importance played a part in the decline of the altar boy. When my father was an altar boy, the responses were in Latin and no one except the altar boys said them, making the altar boys almost as important as the priest. Now, the altar server is in the spotlight for about five minutes of the Mass and for the rest of the time is no different from the people in the pew except for his robe and his location on the altar. Personally, I approve of "full, conscious, and active participation," but this may be an inevitable downside of it.

[Judy Warner]

If you want to track this out into the future, look at American blacks. Black women have always been able to earn more than black men, since in the days of segregation and discrimination they could always get steady jobs as maids. Then when better jobs opened up many women became teachers. Far more black women have gone to college than black men, for many decades if not always. There are discussions in black media about women accepting a man with a lower-status job than herself.

With this lower status of men has come increased criminality, abandonment of families, refusal to marry, drug and alcohol addiction -- just about any dysfunction you can think of. There are so many black men in jail now that there is a severe lack of any men at all in some black communities, let along the type of men who could be role models.

Just a peek into our future.

[Gene Godbold]

In regards to men needing to be needed: I have six boys ranging in age from 13 to 2. They *really* come into their own when

1) They are solely depended upon for doing something.
2) That something is perceived as valuable.

They make and clean up after breakfast. They clean the kitchen after supper. Those over six get to use machetes to hack down weeds on our property.

I also see this same law in myself. My wife leaves the outside jobs and the laundry to me. I get a ridiculously satisfied feeling from accomplishing things outside and I really like it when she praises me for something I think is well done. Sometimes she poaches on the laundry job and I have a ridiculously territorial reaction to it. Is this human (male) nature? Or just mine? :-)

On another point: I'm a deacon in my (Anglican) church. We don't have priestesses or altar girls and the boys really seem to *want* to serve.

[Gene Godbold]

I spent two years teaching molecular cell biology and genetics at two different institutions of higher learning (both as sabbatical replacements). The women were, by far, as a group the best students in general but the best and the worst students were always men. At the College of William and Mary, where the average student SAT was something like 1370, I had three students who were head and shoulders above the rest. The top two were guys. There were five students who got Ds and obviously didn't want to be in class and four of those were guys.

[Steve Nicoloso]

Ditto on laundry thing, Gene. I'm territorial about it too. In the case of my wife and I, I've always chalked it up to me being generally better at focussing on one thing (ignoring all others even occasionally to their detriment) straight thru to completion (I do ALL 7-9 XL loads of laundry on Sat/Sun), whereas she is better (as SAH mom of 5, soon 6) at multi-tasking.

I think girls can also learn from being solely depended on for doing something perceived as valuable. But I would agree that, on average, boys NEED this more. Girls, on average, get more satisfaction from helping and not necessarily leading than do boys. I also think if we look into potential deformations of character, and that is what we are talking about, the potential of deformation, on average, for boys is far greater if denied this opportunity. Boys, on average, are simply far more brittle, far more breakable by bad or misguided or androgynous parenting. That is not to say that girls are not breakable too, but, on average, less so.

Tony, (cue in the Barenaked Ladies) if I had a million dollars, I'd buy you a single-sex college... and buy you some Art (like a Picaaso or a Garfunkel)... ;-)

[Gabriel Sanchez]

On a general level I agree with Dr. Esolen’s remarks here, though he appears to ignore the fact that the world is becoming ever more integrated and for whatever losses may be occurring in American society due to the absence of qualified men from the college campus, that is hardly the case worldwide. If the best and brightest are no longer going to come from the United States, they will invariably come from somewhere else. Without getting into too many specifics, I will say that I believe in fields such as mathematics, computer science, and economics, the East is quickly outpacing the West.

Of course, the West and primarily the United States hold an undeniably (and disproportionately) large piece of the economic pie. If learning is but a means to monetary ends (and there is good reason to believe that is the case now more than ever), the West still controls the playing field. Those minds which seek to do the best work in the best environments with all of the frills a nice paycheck delivers will come in this direction to do that. They will immigrate and achieve while the “natives” meander. They will become the heads of the university departments and eventually, they will control the capital that flows from the wellsprings once supplied by American minds. It may not signal a decline at all, but instead, a transformation.

A lot of this is speculation and I am not entirely convinced there is any way to prove that the “best of the best” in male minds still do not enjoy the benefits of a university education. I am also not convinced wholly that the women now in place in the university system will be incapable of achieving the sort of accomplishments society once relied upon men to achieve. Of course, we can still speculate that the kind of achievement women are capable of may differ significantly from that of men based upon the natural constructions of the human brain (or, if you even want to be modernly liberal about, the social construction of the “gendered” brain). Will these achievements be better/worse than those of males? That’s a debatable point. Maybe if Rousseau was right about the “natural restraint” of women in sexual matters, we can hope there would be “natural restraint” on the part of women the next time someone starts drawing up the blueprints for an “even better” weapon of mass destruction.

Now, there is no doubt that history has furnished us with great accomplishment after great accomplishment achieved by none other than men; Charles Murray’s recent Human Accomplishment more than confirms what should otherwise be part of common knowledge. Murray also interestingly noted in a recent article in Commentary the various reasons why women have likely achieved less than men (outside of the usual cultural or status arguments we find today). He noted that the greatest accomplishments were strived for and achieved during roughly the same period in a man’s life when women are fertile and procreating. What is interesting today of course is that fertility does not have to mean anything to the life of the woman anymore; her ability to achieve is no longer “hindered” by the strong possibility she will have children during the time when great achievements are accomplished.

Again, I suppose I question whether or not this marks a decline or a shift. I do not deny there is already strong evidence linking declining birth rates and the destabilization of the family to the shift of women in the workforce. I’ll leave that for another time. My focus here was to really narrow in on those individuals (or class of individuals) who tend to take the great steps in their respective fields, rather than contribute in the various compartments of those fields or of society as a whole. There’s no reason to believe such persons would normally have gone on to have families in the traditional sense we think of them today even if they had lived fifty or a hundred years ago.

[luthien]

Does eliminaing altar girls really get you more and better altar boys? I don't think so. In my (Orthodox) church, we don't have altar girls, since the Orthodox church has avoided that thus far. However, while we do have a few really dedicated altar boys, including at least one who seems pretty likely to become a priest, many of the boys are there because their parents force them to go. Despite the fact that it's a huge parish, there are weeks when my dad, who is the "altar boy tamer" (in spite of being a convert to Orthodoxy and the father of three lovely daughters and no sons) actually has to go and ask boys whose week it isn't to come help out so that therre will be altar boys! Not that altar girls woudn't be a worse problem, but this is one thing which really can't be blamed on us.
Charles, your observation about women who are becoming teachers because there's nothing else to do does seem pretty accurate. My school is a pretty major teachers' school (we graduate the majority of PA elementary teachers, or something like that) and while many of the girls are there because they truly have a passion for teaching and love children (especially true Special Ed. major students, many of whom have cousins or siblings in special ed. classes), there is a certain percentage, unfortunately rather large, which is studying to teach kindergarten or elementary school because they feel that they have no other options.
One other problem with the dearth of men in college is that it leaves more intelectually inclined girls, particularly those who are top students in college, with no one to marry. While not going to college is not in and of itself the problem, the things that intelligent young men who ought to be studying are doing instead are rather problematic. Why would a young woman want to marry a man who quit college to work at Starbucks because he didn't feel like going to school anymore and was bored? (and yes, I know someone who did this, as well as several other such)
One last thing: The problem isn't femininity but the emasculation of men and un-feminization of women. Definitely not the same thing.

[David]

As a graduate student in engineering I look at the issue of the female/male imbalance much as I, living in Canada, look at global warming. When will it reach me? :-) My undergraduate class had approximately 15% women, and this was a high point which has steadily declined since.
The interesting thing is the outcry which has resulted. All sorts of editorials, strategies, advertising blitzes, etc, all design to get more women involved in engineering. Sadly, if for no other reason than that I enjoy the company of women, so far it has all been for naught.
Of course, despite having large male-dominated engineering and computer science programs the university as a whole still graduates more women than men, and this has not prompted any sort of an outcry.
David

[Patrick Rothwell]

I think there is something to what Dr. Esolen is saying, given the demographics of altar servers, but I wonder if he is overstating his case a little. At the outset, I must say that, if I ran the zoo, there would not only be no female altar servers, but no female anything else in the sanctuary during the mass - except for blessing of marriages, etc. However, my personal experience of female altar servers chasing away male altar servers has been definitely mixed. I once was an altar server at a nationally well-known Catholic church where the new rector's decision to admit female altar servers caused a chain of events which resulted in the decimation of a fine cadre of expert altar servers. On the other hand, as a kid I attended a well-known broad (liberal) Episcopal parish in a university town - a parish which undoubtedly Dr. Esolen must have poked his nose in at least once. This parish always had female and male altar servers in my living memory. There was considerable esprit de corps amongst the plentiful numbers of altar servers of both sexes.

Why the difference? In the Catholic parish, the male altar servers tended to be of a traditionalist bent and the new pastor not only introduced female altar servers, but dumbed-down the liturgy amongst other changes which demoralized this gruop of altar servers. (The altar servers were all adults - virtually no children). In the Episcopal parish, there was a very high standard of liturgy and music and intense involvement in the parish by families and therefore support for these ministries. The fact that this was a university town with highly educated, functional laity in the parish may have made some difference, but I think the fact that there was a strong sense of community in the parish (and the town as a whole) was a more important factor for the high level of involvement by boys in parish activities, including altar servers.

I now attend another Catholic parish, this one made up mostly of working or middle class blacks. It is one of the smallest parishes in the Archdiocese, but has one of the largest groups of altar servers in the Archdiocese. There are both boy and girl altar servers, but the girl altar servers do not dominate the boys. This is a parish where the liturgy is - whether one likes it or not - definitely non-slopppy and where the laity not only support the parish as best they can with the means at their disposal, but also want their children to participate in church activities including service at the altar.

In short, I think that factors other than the presence of girls are more determinative of whether one's altar server corps is a healthy one. On the other hand, I do think that the use of matronly middle-aged women as altar servers probably is a disaster in terms of attracting teenage boys in most parishes. They won't mind teenage girls, college age/young adult women, but would be mortified having to share the stage with the Aunt Beas of the world.

[Fr. Dcn. Raphael]

Luthien, you make a good point. I would almost eliminate the whole idea of "Byzantine Day Care," and just use adults.

BTW, the Orhtodox church does have female acolytes....you just have to be a senior nun at a monastery! ;-)

[luthien]

Fr. Dcn. Raphael,
One problem with adult altar servers (I attended a teeny Western rite mission with grown up men as servers) You get scenes with small children trying to go join Daddy at the altar during the entire service. Very cute, but a bit difficult for all involved. Altar boys can be a problem, though... when my little sisters act up or play with candles, my dad is known to ask why they're trying out to be acolytes since we don't have altar girls :) (none of us being senior nuns or likely to ever be nuns at all...)