Delicate — that’s the word which first springs to mind whenever I think of Miss Mary Ford, one of the few utterly saintly persons I have ever known.
For many years Miss Ford was the lone catechist at Christ the King Parish in Hollywood, California, still located on a triangle of land just below Melrose Avenue, where the colorful business-oriented Vine Street rolls into residential Rossmore Avenue. The church stands in the less exclusive, northwestern side of the fashionable Hancock Park area.
Just a few streets to the southeast are housed many members of Hollywood’s old wealth, new rock stars, trendy actors, successful executives and venal politicians. They live in gorgeous, well-tended homes, many boasting stately brick, pillared, or Federalist facades. The mighty Ravenswood apartment building rises behind the church. There, for many decades, lived a number of Hollywood notables, including Mae West, whose home was a palatial, top-floor penthouse. You really did have to come up to see her sometime.
From the parish’s founding in 1925 until 1959, Christ the King had no parish elementary school. During the Great Depression, the founding pastor, Fr. Peter John Corcoran, worked out a unique deal with the Yellow Cab Company. Drivers picked up children of his parish each morning at their homes and took them to the neighboring parish schools of Blessed Sacrament, Immaculate Heart of Mary, and St Brendan. Taxis brought them home in the afternoon.
By March 1957, when, at the age of 7, I was ready for catechetical instruction, Miss Ford must have prepared some 1,500 to 1,600 children, instructing them in their catechism lessons before receiving First Holy Communion. The class met each Saturday and Sunday morning for two months.
Miss Ford was quite elderly. On Sundays, she was always fastidiously dressed in short often pink, jackets and matching, straight, hobble-skirts of uncertain vintage, always with short, white gloves and a matching pillbox hat. Her immaculately white, long-sleeved blouses had either starched pleats, or softer, ruffled fronts with lace at neck and cuffs.
I doubt Miss Ford reached more than five feet in height, or tipped the scales at more than 90 pounds. Always maintaining a dignified demeanor, Miss Ford had impeccable posture. She took small, precise steps in mid-heeled shoes, possibly reflecting a finishing school’s instruction from the 1890s about how a proper, refined lady walked in public. Her pure white hair was worn in a small bun, with tight curls framing the small oval of her face. Her lightly powdered, translucent complexion with its fine tracery of wrinkles, attested to her long life.
Miss Ford had small teeth behind thin lips, and a high, melodically birdlike voice. Her soft, dainty laughter seemed like the gentle tinkling of tiny ice cubes rolling in fine crystal. She wore wireless glasses with thick, rimless, tea rose-shaped lenses, behind which her eyes were a startlingly brilliant blue. As an altar server at Mass a few years later, I remember holding the paten under her chin as she knelt at the altar rail, her eyes alight with rapturous joy as the priest raised the Sacred Host before her. In many ways seeing her receive Holy Communion was more eloquent than anything she taught.
As I said, Christ the King had no school at the time, so my older brother Sandy and I walked east along Santa Monica Boulevard to Immaculate Heart. Named a domestic prelate in 1954, Msgr. Corcoran insisted that, no matter what schools his children attended, they would prepare for their first reception of Holy Communion at their own parish. Students gathered at the back of the church, where, by special license of the pastor, we were allowed to talk in church but only to ask or answer questions.
Miss Ford had a ready, gentle smile when passing on to us the teachings of the Church. There was something in her manner that kept students attentive as she spoke about Jesus; it precluded our playing pranks or joking around. Perhaps it was her delicacy that prevented disruptions. Perhaps it was her intense belief; she always reverently bowed her head at the holy name of Jesus and made sure we did as well.
By the way, when was the last time you bowed your head at the holy name of Jesus? It remains part of the instructions given for participating at Mass, you know.
Miss Ford lived on Ridgewood Avenue in a tiny bungalow tucked behind a front house. My parents often arranged to pick her up if we were going to the principal Sunday morning Mass at 8:30.
Other times, we might see her sitting on a bus bench on Melrose, and Papa would immediately pull over to invite her to join us for Mass and take her home afterward. Always cheerfully grateful, Miss Ford’s smile itself was a benediction. For a while she continued her duties as a catechist even after Christ the King’s elementary school finally opened. Disappointingly, I don’t know when she passed on to the Lord.
I was reminded of Miss Ford a few years ago in the wake of findings made by the respected Pew Survey of Religion in America regarding egregious problems affecting Catholics in the United States. According to the Pew Survey, Mormons and Evangelicals know more about basic Scripture and Christian beliefs than a great many Catholics do. To me, the big horse laugh of the survey was the finding that atheists and agnostics know more about Christianity than most Christians do.
The most glaring catechetical failure among Catholics was the survey’s disclosure that, when offered the choice between the survey questions, "The bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus Christ," or “The bread and wine are symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ,” fully 45% of Catholics rejected — rejected — the first option.
Belief in transubstantiation, that is, the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus residing in the Blessed Sacrament, lies at the heart of Catholic belief and is, necessarily, a cornerstone of Catholic teaching. If nearly half the Catholics in the United States don't understand that Jesus makes a gift of Himself when we receive Holy Communion, it very much explains why attendance at Mass has fallen so precipitously. Indeed, the Pew survey reveals the inferior catechetical training given two generations of Catholic students.
With the Solemnity of Corpus Christi occurring in June, we do well to remember St. Augustine’s beautiful contemplation of this wonderful Mystery:
"In His omnipotence God could not bestow more;
in His wisdom He knew not how to grant more;
With all His riches, He had nothing more to give than the Eucharist."
I am grateful to Miss Mary Ford for giving me and all the children in her care such firm footing in Catholic belief. I cannot imagine any child in her First Communion classes being confused about the Real Presence of Jesus in the August Sacrament of the Altar.
Sean M. Wright, award-winning journalist and Emmy-nominated television writer, is a member of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Santa Clarita, California. A Master Catechist for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, he replies to comments sent him at [email protected].
