Spread the table
Broderick, Bill
THE LAST WORD SPREAD THE TABLE Bill Broderick More than three years ago, in courageous defiance of Vatican guidelines, our dio-cese decreed that girls would not be allowed to serve at the altar....
...It was, in actuality and in retrospect, an enriching and faith-strengthening experience...
...Our instructor was Sister Mary Geralda, a young, vivacious nun, with whom we all fell in love...
...Some were world-class in speed, and we took up the challenge, mangling the prayer, which of course, we were saying on behalf of the whole congregation...
...Our pastor was Father Halfpenny, an elderly gentleman who quietly gave financial help to many parishioners hit by the Depression...
...That year pretty much ended my altar-boy career, except for an occasional opportunity in high school and again as a soldier in Italy...
...It seemed to me to be a curious time to get married, and only later did I learn the reason for those dawn-patrol nuptuals...
...Another diversion from school was to travel by city bus to pick up a supply of unconsecrated eucharistic hosts...
...wedding Mass...
...Following funerals, the priest would often take the altar boys with him to the cemetery for the burial ceremonies, giving us a nice break from diagramming sentences...
...That, of course, was of less interest to us than missing a half-day of school...
...It did not, however, in my case or in any of my boyhood compatriots, result in a call to the priesthood...
...We learned later that making the hosts wasn't the primary function of this institution, which was referred to as a home for wayward girls...
...For if girls are permitted to be altar servers, some of them, too, might find they have a vocation to the priesthood...
...In that era, all games were in the afternoon, so we got out of school early...
...The diocesan vocations director observed that altar boys are a fruitful source of vocations to the priesthood and "a two-thousand-year-old tradition" in the church...
...Then I began to reflect on my own experience as an altar boy in the 1930s...
...It was a lot longer in Latin because we confessed to a lot more saints than we do now—to Mary, John the Baptist, Peter and Paul, Michael the Archangel, and then to all the saints— and finally, as we entered the home stretch following the "mea maxima culpa," we besought the same saintly crowd again to pray for us sinners...
...And then where would we be...
...Sister Geralda also taught us the timing of the various moves required by the rubrics: when to transfer the missal from one side of the altar to the other, when to bow to the priest, when to genuflect, and when and how to ring the bells...
...No doubt, in some cases being an altar boy did contribute to decisions to enter the seminary...
...Perhaps his own children or grandchildren...
...We altar boys shared in the general belief in his saintliness, for each Saturday he would give the week's four servers a dollar to divide...
...The response that most lent itself to this technique was the Suscipiat (in English, "May the Lord accept...
...Normally, we had our servers' assignments a week in advance...
...Our first stage was to memorize the Latin responses...
...The English conclusion—"for our good and the good of all his church"—lacks the lyrical and rhythmic roll of "ad utilitatem quoque nostrum totiusque ecclesiae suae sanctae...
...This set me to wondering who might have been the altar boys for Saint Peter...
...And there was an even bigger challenge once we began serving, for in those days no priest ever said the Confiteor slowly (let alone reverently...
...Commonweal 3 I March 26,1999...
...God, being omniscient, no doubt understood us and, being merciful, forgave us...
...But there, in the eye of our diocesan vocations director, is the rub...
...It began in the fourth grade when six of us were chosen to be trained as servers...
...To relieve the monotony of committing the Latin prayers to memory, some of us would begin to recite them in exaggerated sing-song fashion...
...And we got out not only for ball games...
...By the time I reached thirteen years of age, I was a veteran server and helped teach the newcomers how to comport themselves on the altar...
...These were collected from a rather formidable-looking establishment known as the House of the Good Shepherd...
...He also had a cousin who owned the Detroit Tigers, and periodically we got passes to Tigers games...
...As you can imagine, this was pretty challenging stuff for fourth graders...
...Bill Broderick lives in Arlington, Virginia...
...In those days, Mass began with the "prayers at the foot of the altar," the longest of which was the Confiteor, or "I Confess...
...Occasionally, however, my brother and I would get a phone call to come in the following morning for a 6 a.m...
Vol. 126 • March 1999 • No. 6
