My mom used to clean the sanctuary when she just a young girl in school. She went to Catholic School 1936-1948 and was among the school children who always cleaned the whole Church, including the sanctuary where they washed and ironed the altar linens and priest's vestments, arranged the flowers and so on.
Great, but coming from someone who rants about all 20th and even (lately) 19th century theologians as being all corrupted, it doesn't mean much.
Issue is the theological question regarding the nature of the Divine Liturgy, the priestly / clerical state, etc.
Throughout at least the first millennium and a half (at least) of Church history, Minor Orders (an extension of priestly power/authority) were required to take any part in the Sacred Liturgy. Just to enter the Sanctuary required the Minor Order of Porter. Then, if you participated by, say, holding candles and other things, Acolyte. If you were to do the first reading, Lector (Cantor in the East). Exorcists could bless things, like homes, food, etc.
But then this gave way to various practical considerations, and the Minor Orders were reduced to meaninglessness, into mere ceremonial stepping-stones on the way to the priesthood. Those need to be restored. It takes 30 seconds to confer Acolyte Minor Order on some altar boys so they could function properly as clerics in the Sacred Liturgy.
From there, it should follow that only clerics should enter the sacred space of the sanctuary, something again that people have morphed into a practical thing, where, that's the place up front where the priest does his thing. No, the sanctuary, following the notion in the Temple Holy of Holy's is the space "set aside" (meaning of the term "sacred") for the actions of the Divine Liturgy, and as such should only be entered by clerics. In the Eastern Rites (most of them), the space is kept separatae by curtains, and the curtains are pulled closed during certain parts of the Divine Liturgy, and there are actual holy doors that clerics must past through to enter, thus the original significance of the Minor Order or "Porter" or "Doorkeeper".
Once you reduce the Minor Orders to ceremonial meaninglessness, where any layman can just pop on a black cloth with a white one on top and pretend to be a cleric and play the part ... and obviously this would preclude women from doing the same ... you're just a half step to where the Novus Ordo went. In terms of practicality, it would be no problem whatsoever to have the altar servers (clerics in Minor Orders) take turns cleaning the sanctuary area, where perhaps once per week you'd use a dust mop or vacuum cleaner (if carpeted), perhaps dust on parts of the altar, etc. ... and then retrieve altar linens as needed from cleaning. That's really all that would be required, 20-25 minutes once per week and if you have 4 altar servers, you would just have a rotation to take care of it. It's not like they'd be having to clean the entire church. If you can't summon this many resources, then I'd be shocked if you can have altar servers at all ... and so just bring on the altar girls. So many of these compromises are introduced under the guise of practicality. "Oh, there's a shortage of altar boys, so bring on the girls." (even though they have an actual agenda behind it). "Oh, there's a shortage of priests, so let lay people do the readings." So, the priest who's there and sitting there anyway can't spent an extra 5 minutes during Mass to do the reading? But you could raise laymen to the Minor Order of Lector and do it right (having them wear cassocks and read from the sanctuary). Except you need women too, you see. "Oh, there's a shortage of priests, so bring on the lay Eucharistic ministers."
See, once you start reducing the Minor Orders, which used to have theological significance, to practical functions during the Liturgy, i.e. turn them into mere functionaries playing practical roles during the Liturgy, that's nothing other than what the Novus Ordo did in elmiminating the Minor Orders and redefining the roles as functional ones, as "ministries". That's at the heart of the Conciliar Liturgical Revolution, where the Sacred Liturgy is no longer prayer of intercession, a prayer of the Entire Church, therfore offered by her designated represenatatives (Clerics, Priests, Bishops, etc.), but is just a stage show, a play, where people perform parts. It's all tied to the whole notion of turning the Sacrifice of the Mass into a "Memorial Meal", where we just re-enacted the Last Supper and pretend we're there. It's right there in their own docuмentation. Indeed, if Minor Orders mean nothing but some ceremony that all priests have to go through on the way to ordination to the priesthood, then, hey, why not just go all the way and do as the Novus Ordo? And then if these Liturgical roles are no longer clerical in nature, but functional, what indeed is the problem with altar girls, female lectors, etc? Just go all the way to the logical conclusion.
No, the Minor Orders must be restored to permanent states for anyone participating in and exercising Liturgical roles. I also have no problem with permanent, married deacons (done correctly, unlike Novus Ordo style) to assist priests. I'm sure you can find men at each chapel that could take on the role, perhaps former seminarians and therefore most of the way toward being trained for the role, or else find some respected man and send them to the equivalent of a year or two of seminary (perhaps part-time over some years as they do in the NO), and then even when the priest is away, the deacon could conduct exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, benediction, and, as far as I'm concerned, I would amend the ceremoney for ordaining deacons to consecrate their hands to permit them to distribute Holy Communion. They would obviously have to be thoroughly and properly trained. This way, even in those Traditional chapels that just have a priest fly in on the weekends, they could have benediction and Holy Communion daily. These deacons then could also take the Blessed Sacrament to the shut-ins, the sick, those in prison, etc. I think the current state of the Church requires it. If you look at the early Church, it was that practical consideration, where the Apostles needed help, that they created the Order of deacon, but they actually created an Order, an extension of the priestly Order, requiring a laying on of hands, and didn't just say, "Hey, Bob, need some help. Come on over." They did not compromise the theology of the Liturgy and authority in the Church for practical considerations.
And if we wanted to get regular access to Confession/absolution to the faithful who are in these "mission" chapels, it might even be expedience to create some "simplex" priests, those who could hear Confessions (well, the part where the penitent declares their contrition) and confer absolution, with the condition that the penitent later had to speak those sins to an actual ordained priest when one became available, and offer daily Mass (no sermons, no advice, no preaching, or teaching outside, say, basic catechism). When priests perform group absolution, for instance, in a time of war, the obligation remains to confess your sins (any mortal sins that were not confessed yet) and the next available opportunity, so similar law could be put into place where these simplex priests could absolve but the obligation remained to confess sins to the priest once he's available. There's nothing prohibiting these kinds of practices.
I'm very troubled by how FEW Traditional clergy realize how desperate a state the Church is in, with the SSPX acting like this is the "new normal" and not some grave aberration and mass apostasy. We are in desperate times. Bishop Williamson realized this and it's why (per his own statements) he consecrated so many bishops, but very few besides him understood. Bishop Slupski understood this (having grown up behind the Iron Curtain), and was not averse to ordaining married men. But everybody else just plods along thinking we're in normal times or quasi-normal times. NO. We are in the End Times Apostasy. During the early times of persecution, there were practices that the Church later abandoned and which many today would claim were "Modernist" ... but these were exceptions made during the time of persecution, and once the Church was permitted freedom in society, these were rolled back. Priest were married, blended in to society with regular jobs, keeping a low profile, and in some cases, even lay people would carry the Blessed Sacrament to others in secret.
Currently the Church is in a desperate state. I've long deplored the practice of some groups, SSPX and, even more egregiously, that new Congregaton of St. Pius V, where they'll have in some cases nearly double-digit priests all hanging out together at a "priory", and in the case of CSPV, even more, offering Mass in closet-sized chapels, while there are many thousands of faithful who have no access daily to the Sacraments, where I'm sure people are dying without the Last Sacraments, since the priest had not yet flown in for the weekend. There's absolutely NO NEED for this at all, and, morever, no justification whatsoever for this practice. MAYBE 2-3, tops, but even then, in the old days, you'd have a priest getting on back of a horse and riding for months by himself into the wilderness seeking souls. We don't have the luxury of these stupid priory setups these days, and I don't think it's what +Lefebvre had in mind, where he stipulated 2-3, not 10 ... while chapels with sometimes thousands of faithful have to wait for a priest to fly in for a few hours on the weekend. It's utterly deplorable.
So you'll find in me someone with an unusual admixture of very (hyper-) Traditional, e.g. no more lay people in the sanctuary, but then calling for things that many modern minds associate with the NO and would therefore consider "Modernist", like restoring permanent Minor Orders and even permanent diaconate.
Topic: Can laywomen clean in the sanctuary? (Read 7564 times)