Local Church Reclaims the Tried and True

​BY MATTHEW MERITT

Volunteer labor from common folk built some the centuries-old cathedrals in Europe and, in a way, something similar is going on in one Chemung Valley spot today.
 
Though dedicated in 1870, building continues at St. Mary’s Church in Corning, where parishioners are drawing on tradition to shape a couple of important ministries – vital ports in the storm for many amid a culture hostile to faith and families.

Tradition at the Altar

One is the altar server program, in which I enrolled both my sons. When I took them to the first of two training sessions, it soon became clear the boys were to work on much more than carrying out simple tasks. 
 
Acolyte Gene Beecher instructed the group of nearly 20 boys, addressing them casually but in a man-to-man style, with no pandering to keep attention.

“I try to make sure they are comfortable so they can receive any guidance that God wants to impart in them,” Beecher says. (Editor’s note: at least a couple of girls joined for later sessions.) His approach let the servers know they were to be involved in something sacred and serious – the highest prayer of the Church.
 
“This is the moment when cosmic reality and all of time meet with the Eucharistic sacrifice,” explains Michael Plagerman, All Saints Parish Director of Liturgy and Music. “They are within the very real presence of Christ and the post-resurrection holy of holies.” 
 
As cassock- and surplice-garbed representatives of the laity, Plagerman adds, the servers “are on the altar handling the sacred elements, serving the priest who, in that moment, is acting in persona Christi (in the person of Christ).”
 
With this openness to rediscovery of the sacred in a culture unmoored from the hard-won wisdom of the past, these young people will commit to supporting a message that speaks from eternity to the soul and offers a solid, time-tested morality. Beecher imparted this, saying he tries to emphasize reverence and “love of the Eucharist and the Mass." 
 
I had expected to see a few who didn’t want to be there among those who turned out. But all looked to be engaged, with the younger boys seemingly taking their cues from their older peers. 
 
Plagerman thinks nurturing such an atmosphere during regular training will help establish a setting for fellowship where “the core of our faith is the topic of discussion.”
 
In what I thought was a particularly important interval, Beecher encouraged the boys to pray, linking the benefits they get from their service to the time they spend in prayer at home and before the Blessed Sacrament. 
 
“We encourage the boys to actually begin their service prior to ever entering the church,” Plagerman says. “The prayer that they engage with on a daily basis is in fact part of their preparation to serve at the altar.” 
 
I see this as a good way for young people to link their weekdays to their Sundays and – as most churchgoers would like to do themselves – to integrate faith and life.  
 
Basics Training

The parish’s Sunday family catechism program offers something similar, with instruction for children by age group in classrooms while parents assemble in the church. 
 
The approach in constructing the program was “that all ages would be getting the same information so that families would have a common religious theme to discuss, as a family, after class,” says Nicolette Butler, who teaches the adult section. 
 
That information comes from The Baltimore Catechism, which Butler says reaches back to a time when “people knew their faith well,” while “providing the truth with clarity and simplicity.”
 
Frequently changing education fads have made their way into churches, Butler said, obscuring the basics, which speak to timeless and intriguing questions. The question-and-answer format of The Baltimore Catechism sparks discussion and provides parents the tools to “be their children’s first teachers,” which the Church calls on them to be.
 
This 19th-century text starts with questions that would draw in any thoughtful person, not just Christian believers: Who made us and why are we here? I found the adult session elicited many worthwhile insights from participants. Butler said the class will also encourage Bible reading to show the Scriptural grounding of traditional Church teaching and morality.
 
“How can people learn their Catholic faith if they never learned the basics?” Butler wonders. But that’s exactly what happened to her and others over recent decades, and she only discovered what she had missed when she began preparing herself to homeschool her children. 
 
In fact, the Good News of the Gospel answers man’s most angst-filled question: What happens to me after I die? So The Baltimore Catechism hits the right notes. The Church is uniquely suited to answer that question, particularly in the midst of the COVID nervousness. 
 
It’s easy to wonder whether Church leaders nationally have been drawing on the Good News to quell this discomfort. In cases where they haven’t, the faithful may call to mind a reflection by the Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen, who was bishop of Rochester for a short while.
 
“Who’s going to save our Church?” Sheen asked. “It’s not our bishops, it’s not our priests and it is not the religious. It is up to you, the people. You have the minds, the eyes and the ears to save the Church. Your mission is to see that the priests act like priests, your bishops act like bishops, and the religious act like religious.”
 
In restarting and reinvigorating the altar server and religious education programs after the COVID hiatus, it seems that All Saints Parish has in Fr. Matthew Jones a Sheen-style priest who is making a way for laity to do what the archbishop suggests, encouraging them as they support him in return, with all seeking to grow closer to God and get to heaven.

A Note on The
Baltimore Catechism
Originally the "Catechism of Christian Doctrine, Prepared and Enjoined by Order of the Third Council of Baltimore." It was the Plenary Council of 1884 that authorized this manual, first published in 1885, after a committee of six bishops were entrusted with the composition. The question of a uniform textbook of Catholic doctrine had been considered by the American hierarchy since their First Provincial council in 1829, but it took fifty years to see the project to completion. After the catechism was issued, various editions were published, with word meanings, explanatory notes, and even different arrangements, so that in a few decades there was great diversity in the books that were called the Baltimore Catechism.
​Source: catholic culture.org