Why youngsters love to be altar servers
SIR – As someone with quite a bit of experience in fostering young people’s interest and involvement in the Church, in my Anglo-Catholic days prior to my reception into the Catholic Church five years ago, perhaps I may be able to comment on your excellent article “Rites of passage” (Education Feature, February 19). In my opinion, your writer, Fr David Elliott, got it exactly right in arguing that the Catholic liturgy (done well) responds to the need in young people to order their lives and faith in accordance with some clear parameters, and these very effectively attract youngsters in today’s increasingly secular society, in which there are so many competing demands on their time. However, I would like to focus on just one activity (among several) which, in my experience as a head server, can succeed in retaining and developing the attention in young people in church – namely, serving at the altar. Starting from the age of about seven, I have found that innumerable junior servers are attracted by starting off their “serving careers” as boat-boys or girls, assisting the thurifer with the incense-boat during liturgical occasions. More occasionally, such very young servers can act as bishop’s servers, when they visit the parish church, assisting these visiting ecclesiastical dignitaries with their crosier, mitre or the service book. After a few years, they naturally aspire to and become acolytes, crucifers and book-holders and, in due course, thurifers. It is so important that these young people are trained, visible (though ideally unobtrusive, as every good server should be) and fulfil indispensable roles in church services, rather than being casually hidden in a family pew. I have always found that by expecting high standards the junior servers naturally “up their game”, to the benefit of Almighty God, the liturgy and themselves. As so often, “dumbed-down” liturgies are not just an affront to God and His Church, an embarrassment to the congregation, but a direct and depressing way of putting off young people from worshipping and attending the parish church, Yours faithfully, Richard Eddy Bristol
