{"id":351,"date":"2010-08-23T13:37:41","date_gmt":"2010-08-23T19:37:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/?p=351"},"modified":"2010-08-23T13:49:07","modified_gmt":"2010-08-23T19:49:07","slug":"declining-testosterone-levels-at-the-altar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/declining-testosterone-levels-at-the-altar-351.htm","title":{"rendered":"Declining Testosterone Levels at the Altar"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

The Pope welcomed a gathering of altar servers in Rome. As John Allen <\/a>notes:<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

First, for the first time this year, the female altar servers in attendance outnumbered the males. According to organizers, the balance was roughly 60-40 in favor of females. The official Vatican newspaper, L\u2019Osservatore Romano<\/em>, pointed to the turnout as a symbol of \u201cthe massive entry in recent decades of girls and young women into a role once reserved exclusively to males.\u201d<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This predominance of girls was predictable (anyway I predicted it in my book The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity<\/em>). Western Christianity has for a long time been regarded as unmasculine. It has been difficult to keep men, especially young men, connected to a church which seems to want to lessen their masculinity.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

If an activity is obviously and mistakably masculine (such as soldiering), opening it to women does not make it a part of the feminine sphere. But if a sphere is already regarded as feminine (and Western Christianity is), opening an activity within it to women will make that activity a feminine activity. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The 60-40 split in altar servers mirrors the female-male split in Catholic church attendance. As boys are busy establishing their masculinity at that age, I suspect that the proportion\u00a0of boy altar servers will decline further.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

In many mainline Protestant churches, including the Evangelical church in Germany, women are already the majority of seminarians, and the clergy is being converted into a feminine occupation, like nursing. There are male nurses, but they are rare, and someday we willl have to say male minister, as we now say male nurse.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

To further increase men\u2019s suspicions about Christianity, in some denominations, such as the Episcopal, the remaining men are often homosexual. The heterosexual, male minister will be a rara avis<\/em> in the not too distant future in the more liberal denominations.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 The Pope welcomed a gathering of altar servers in Rome. As John Allen notes:\u00a0 First, for the first time this year, the female altar servers in attendance outnumbered the males. According to organizers, the balance was roughly 60-40 in favor of females. The official Vatican newspaper, L\u2019Osservatore Romano, pointed to the turnout as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,60],"tags":[404,405],"class_list":["post-351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-masculinity","category-women-in-church","tag-altar-servsers","tag-feminization","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}