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Gender edit
Is there an institutional preference for men to serve as eucharistic ministers instead of women ? I gather that some traditionalist churchmen have criticized the use of women as eucharistic ministers, because as in the case of altar boys and deacons, the minister is traditionally supposed to be a kind of priest in training, who is held to be a male because of the real presence of the man Jesus in the sacrament. ADM (talk) 07:42, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
The instructions allow both men and women to participate equally. The Church shows no preference in its documents. It is important to note that that the roles of deacon, altar server and EMHC are totally different. A deacon is in orders, so has to be a man. There are a number of reasons why some object to female altar servers - some of them relate to the idea of priests in training, but more generally these relate to the observation that female servers seem to result in fewer boys serving, thus reducing the number of potential "priests in training". I wont go into your final point about why the Church has a male-only priesthood - various opinions are easy to find.
Title edit
The title should be changed to "Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion" - this is the only proper title. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.141.181.161 (talk) 17:19, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
- I agree that, if anything, this article should be merged into Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion and not the other way around, thought this should be left as a redirect. --Glenfarclas (talk) 11:24, 3 December 2009 (UTC)