Altar Girls Quickly Gaining Acceptance at Catholic Masses : Diversity: Although two dioceses still do not permit them, there have been few problems elsewhere, priests say. The servers say they feel more a part of the church.

A young California girl who never wanted to get out of bed on Sunday mornings now loves going to Mass. A mother in Maryland gazes with pride at the altar as her daughter fulfills her childhood dream.

Altar girls--once a rarity found only in churches willing to defy Rome--have with the Vatican’s blessings in the past year quickly become part of the fabric of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, say priests, parishioners and altar boys and girls interviewed in dioceses across the country.

There are some exceptions; the dioceses of Arlington, Va., and Lincoln, Neb., have either banned or sharply limited the use of girls for fear they would discourage boys from altar service--one traditional path to the all-male priesthood.

But elsewhere in the nation, changes are under way in the 59-million-member church. They are changes both dramatic, as white-robed girls serve alongside boys at the altar on the holiest days of the year, and personal, in the hearts and souls of girls who feel more a part of the church.

“You feel you are up there really close to Jesus,” said Jolene Hite, 10, an altar server at Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Church in Land O’Lakes, Fla. “I always thought it would be something great and it is. You’re feeling pretty special when you are up there.”

The Vatican in April gave permission for diocesan bishops to permit female altar servers. The National Conference of Catholic Bishops in June endorsed the practice, and most dioceses implemented the change with little protest.

“It’s just kind of an easy transition,” said Father Philip Murnion, director of the National Pastoral Life Center in New York. “I think it was more curious why they weren’t accepted. Once they were permitted, it was more, ‘Why not?’ ”

On a recent Sunday morning at St. Matthew Roman Catholic Church in Phoenix, 11-year-old Louisa Canez reached for a white robe from the church closet and slipped it over her black jumper. She tied a purple braided rope around her waist and hung a gold embossed crucifix around her neck.

“It’s neat because I like serving God,” Louisa said. “It’s not fair for only boys to get to do that.”

Given the opportunity, girls and young women have flocked to the altar.

“When they said you can’t, I wanted to do it even more,” said Lisa Blum, 17, who became an altar server when the Diocese of St. Petersburg, Fla., cleared the way in July. “They are letting us do more in the church and I feel like I’m part of it.”

At the Church of the Nativity in Los Angeles, Allison Palacios, 11, did not even want to go to church before she became an altar girl.

“My grandma would wake me to go to church and I would say ‘No, I’m too tired,’ ” Allison said. “Now I love it.”

The Catholics who take the most pride in the changes sit in the pews: the altar girls’ parents, particularly mothers who never had the opportunity themselves.

“I was just very proud because when I was young, I wanted to be up there doing it,” said Rosemary Wernery of St. John the Baptist Church in Silver Spring, Md., the mother of two female altar servers. “I was really proud of them, that they didn’t feel intimidated.”

Out of the nation’s 188 dioceses, only two have publicly announced bans on altar girls in churches, say U.S. Catholic Conference spokesmen.

Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz in Lincoln, Neb., said he does not want to hinder boys’ aspirations for religious vocations and he is concerned about the “decorousness” of the liturgy if, for example, a boyfriend and girlfriend served together.

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In Arlington, Va., Bishop John R. Keating also believes serving at the altar should be reserved for young boys, who may go on to be priests.

“At this age, boys do not want to be associated with anything that seems feminine,” said Father Franklyn McAfee, chairman of the Arlington Diocese’s personnel committee. “Having a football player up there, as we do in our church, lets boys know that going to church is nothing to be ashamed of.”

The change has forced some adjustments among the corps of altar boys.

In a parish in suburban Boston, the boys grumbled some when their annual trip was changed from a college hockey game to a figure skating show.

And at St. Leo’s Church in Omaha, Neb., Father Pat McCaslin said when he asked a boy to be a candle bearer--a job often given to females as an alternative to being an altar server--”I got a look like, ‘What, you expect me to do the girls’ job?’ ”

In general, however, the boys say altar girls are a pretty good idea, and not only because adding more servers means more people to share the 6 a.m. services with.

“I don’t think it’s fair for the girls to be left out of the things boys do,” said Colm Murphy, 12, of St. Agnes Church in Arlington, Mass. “I think it’s mean.”

Father Tom O’Brien, the pastor at St. Pius X in Omaha, said it doesn’t make any sense to have women as extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist or lectors while denying young girls the right to be on the altar carrying a book.

“If you can look up at an altar and see men and women, and boys and girls,” O’Brien said, “then you have a sense that this is a church that has no reason to exclude anybody.”