_____Follow-up___________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________

 New Developments on Stories Featured in Catholic World Report

Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, the African prelate who first participated in a mass wedding ceremony under the auspices of the “Moonie” sect and then returned to the Catholic Church, has been staying quietly in Castelgandolfo, near the Pope’s summer residence there, an Italian newspaper has reported.

Rumors had circulated in the Italian media that the Zambian prelate may have been dispatched to a diocese in Canada. But Il Messaggero said that the Vatican “prefers to have him close at hand, to guarantee a kind of stability.” At the age of 71, the archbishop is still well short of retirement age (75), and his physical health is considered robust. But after the bizarre chain of events that unfolded last summer after the African archbishop announced his intention to marry a Korean woman at a mass wedding ceremony under the auspices of the Unification Church—events which finally reached a climax on August 5, when a repentant Archbishop Milingo knelt at the feet of Pope John Paul asking to be accepted back into the Catholic fold—the Vatican wants to keep close track of the archbishop’s plans.

Archbishop Milingo reportedly spoke last year to representatives of the religious orders he had founded in Zambia, and emphasized that “he would not abandon his spiritual daughters.” However, he also informed the nuns that henceforth they would be under the administrative supervision of the Congregation for Evangelization, rather than his personal control.

Clarification on altar servers
Option preserved for priests
In a decision that was published in September, but has drawn virtually no public notice at all, the Vatican has ruled that even when a diocesan bishop allows female altar servers, individual priests are not obligated to celebrate Mass assisted by female servers.

In 1994, the Vatican reversed an ancient policy with a surprise ruling that the Code of Canon Law allowed for women and girls to become altar servers, at the discretion of the diocesan bishop. Within days after that decision was announced—and even before it was officially promulgated—all but two of the diocesan bishops in the United States announced that they would approve of altar girls. (In fact, the use of female altar servers had already become widespread in the US, so that the Vatican policy reversal had the effect of ratifying what had heretofore been a clear violation of liturgical norms.) Only the dioceses of Lincoln, Nebraska, and Arlington, Virginia, held the line, continuing to allow only males to serve at the altar.

However, while the 1994 decision authorized bishops to allow altar girls, it did not answer the question of whether a bishop could require priests to accept altar girls. Some priests held to the old tradition, and held out against the trend to recruit female altar servers. Was such resistance illicit?

In announcing the change in policy, the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship had said that the approval for altar girls carried “a permissive and not a preceptive character.” That phrase suggested that neither bishops nor their priests would be required to accept altar girls. But some bishops struck a different note. The late Cardinal John O’Connor of New York announced: “I don’t want to hear of any pastors saying, ‘We’ll have altar girls over my dead body.’” The pastors who resisted altar girls faced a great deal of informal pressure to yield.

Now, in a move as unexpected as the 1994 ruling, the Vatican has affirmed that such pastors have the right to maintain the old tradition. Oddly enough, the decision from Rome comes in the same form that allowed for the abandonment of the all-male policy: a response to a dubium, or question, submitted by a bishop.

In the August/September issue of the official Vatican bulletin Notitiae, Cardinal Jorge Medina Estévez, the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, answers a dubium about altar girls by saying: “Such an authorization may not, in any way, exclude men or, in particular, boys from service at the altar, nor require that priests of the diocese would make use of female altar servers.”

The announcement in Notitiae does not reveal which bishop submitted the dubium, asking for a clarification of the policy. Since the answer is given in English, it is fair to assume that the question came from the English-speaking world —where the issue of female altar servers has been most contentious. To date, no bishop has identified himself as the source of the question. Nor has any diocese announced that individual priests are free to preserve the old policy of male-only altar service.

Back to Catholic World Report January 2002 Table of Contents