
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, December 4, 1994                   TAG: 9412050074
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

GIRLS KEPT FROM ALTAR SERVICE

Marguerite Carroll of Alexandria has raised her young daughters in the Roman Catholic church, knowing that certain roles were off limits to them because of their sex.

But when Pope John Paul II ruled last spring that girls can be altar servers - youngsters who assist priests during Masses and other rituals - she believed her daughters would gain a role that traditionally has been the domain of boys.

Last week, Carroll discovered that even the permission of the pope will not be enough to let her children serve at the altar. In a ruling that has stirred deep and emotional divisions among Northern Virginia Catholics, Bishop John Keating said the Arlington Diocese would continue to use only boys in most services, a position taken so far by only one other diocese in the nation: Lincoln, Neb.

``I was totally shocked to see him make that decision,'' said Carroll, 39, who attends Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Mount Vernon. ``I thought all along that this diocese wasn't using girls because they didn't know if it was allowed. Since the pope had clarified it, I definitely felt that it would happen.''

Diocese officials say the order is not designed to keep girls from assisting priests at Mass, but to recognize the strong role played by altar service in guiding many boys toward the priesthood. The Arlington Diocese, which has nearly 300,000 Catholics, has been one of the nation's most successful in nurturing candidates for the priesthood.

``We're trying to stress the vocational aspect,'' said the Rev. Robert Rippy, chancellor of the Arlington Diocese. ``We've found that 85 percent of our priests were altar servers at one time. This is definitely a place where the seed can be planted.''

Rippy said that allowing girls to be altar servers might not only deny the opportunity to some boys, but create frustration as well. ``If a girl were to serve, she might think she was having her vocation to the priesthood being nurtured, when that's not going to be a possibility. We wouldn't want to give girls false hope of becoming priests.''

by CNB