AND THEN THERE WERE NONE...

St. Thomas More Catholic Church in Montreal was a large concrete and stone building. It was not a warm and welcoming place. It looked nice when a lot of candles were lit…I had to go there every Sunday or face mortal sins condemning me to hell if I died before going to confession. There were priests and nuns all over the place, nuns holding rosaries clinking away as they moved around, almost appearing to glide as they walked around; you couldn’t see their feet as they watched and silently demanded silence of the congregation, especially children. Nuns were scary. They could scare the hell out of you simply by looking at you…In those days they wore habits with giant hats that flared out like airplane wings; have you ever seen the flying nun on TV? The hats made them look menacing.

As a kid I was an altar boy, from around the 4th grade until I went to high school…I don’t think they allowed teenage boys to be altar boys or maybe because the high school was not part of the same parish…but I remember kneeling at the altar during Mass mumbling out responses in Latin trying to be louder than the other alter boy. There was an air of discipline to what we did and there was a high level of precision. Some of us were just 7 or 8 years of age and exercising this discipline and precision for an hour or hour-and-a-half was all the more amazing. It also showed that such an age was not too young to learn discipline. The priest would give us the eye if we forgot our lines or if we were slow in responding. Nuns, priests and mothers were good at the eye thing. The reason altar boys were invented was to give wine and water to the priest and ring hand-held bells during communion time…the bells were the fun part.

I remember waking up very early on weekday mornings, putting on furry slippers before stepping on the freezing linoleum floors; nobody had wall to wall carpeting in those days…my Mom bought the slippers and as long as none of my friends saw them and they kept our feet warm it was OK…or home was heated with radiators that took hours to make the house warm. I doubt if thermostats had been invented yet. My Mom would make me warm breakfasts before I headed out the door and walked to St. Thomas’ to do my altar boy thing. I often wondered what would happen if I didn’t show up, if the priest would even care; I don’t remember ever attending Mass with my parents where there was only one altar boy…
If the other boy showed up the priest would have someone to pour wine in the silver chalice and water into a silver bowl to wash his hands so he could raise the host with clean fingers at communion time. But what if the other boy never showed up? Could the priest say Mass without altar boys? Could one of the ladies of the altar society help out with the wine and water? Probably not allowed. What would the parishioners do if no Mass was said that morning? Would they complain to the Bishop? Would they have to wait for the 8:00 AM mass? If they missed mass would they all go to hell? No, because going to a weekday mass wasn’t obligatory. Mainly old people and nuns went to that early mass. When Mass was over I walked to school three or four blocks away and waited for the first bell to start classes.

Meanwhile back in California when my parents were alive we’d take them to Easter and Christmas services at St Nicholas Catholic Church and I saw that women were active as altar helpers. I don’t recall seeing any altar boys. The day of the altar boy is probably over because unlike urban cities where the church was in a residential neighborhood the churches in the suburbs are miles from residential areas and the altar boys would need rides to church that would pose additional problems for parents…maybe that’s why older women are now altar boys…and because the mass is no longer said in Latin those ladies don’t need much training. There’s no more bell-ringing. The thrill is gone.