I am watching the wonderful Cinderella Man and thinking of a friend, AF.
There are a few inaccuracies, but I find a lot to appreciate in this film.
I wonder if we won’t be hearing about similar stories, living similar stories, in the years to come.
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Real good movie.
Max Behr was not really that crass and uncouth in real life though.
We need a Catholic heavyweight champion again with a set of cajones like Braddock.
I heard that the only thing that kept that movie from being a blockbuster was the title. I think that certainly hurt it, as it didn’t sound like a very interesting movie. However all my friends said it was extremely good.
Thank you Father for a very unique set of methods to assist us in the Mass.
We have the Ancient Mass now weekly in the Des Moines diocese (Iowa)
at 8:30 am each Sunday. The Mass is offered at St. Anthony in the crypt
chapel (lower church). St. Anthony’s is located at 15 Indianola Rd.,
Des Moines, Iowa, 515-244-4709. The first Mass was Sept. 16th.
On Christmas Day, the Ancient Mass will be in the main church at 9:00 am.
We are in need of young altar servers. Right now we have four “adults” who
were trained in the 60’s and we appreciate the opportunity to once again
assist the priest but we need to attract some 8th grader boys to teach.
Do you have any recommendations to help us increase our altar boy
reserves?
Father, the movie was filmed here in Toronto. The Church in which the scene with the people gathered
to pray during the fight is Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Catholic Church. It was originally known as
Anglican Church of the Epiphany until bought and consecrated by the Maronite community about thirty
years ago…just a little trivia.
A very good movie, but I was a bit put off by all the swearing, especially by all the taking of the Lord’s name in vain.
Stephen,
One idea would be to start a sodality of altar boys. One that was popular (and is gaining some modest popularity with the EF) is the “Knights of the Altar.”
The handbook for the Knights as well as other resources for serving are here: http://www.sanctamissa.org/EN/serving/
Others more familiar with such sodalities would certainly be able to give better information. (I’m only aware of them but have never been involved in one.)
Our parish has over 100 altar boys. We start them in the 5th grade, which seems to be just the right age — old enough to take the job seriously (though there are some exceptions), but not yet suffering from the cynicism and self-consciousness that hits the middle-school group with a vengeance. By the time they are in eighth-grade, they are real polished pros, and a half-dozen of the high school juniors and seniors are “master servers” who can easily and reverently handle any task usually entrusted only to seminarians or MCs. Our young men have been serving at “High Masses” (first English, then Latin Novus Ordo, and now the TLM) for 6 or 7 years.
It’s much harder to start with 8th graders, at least in our experience, especially if they have never served before.
I think that the key to attracting boys and young men to altar serving is to help them see it as something manly. That means restricting service to boys, and finding ways to retain the older teenage boys by accommodating their school and sports schedules, and putting them in positions of responsibility. It means that the priests should take the lead oar in training servers, rather than delegating this task to others.
I forgot to mention that those running a successful altar server program will take a pro-active approach to recruiting. Instead of assuming that interested boys (and their parents) will step forward and volunteer, it’s important to reach out to potential servers (and their parents) with invitations to become part of the program. As with any program involving volunteers, a surprising number of folks are actually waiting to be asked. For any number of reasons — inertia, shyness, genuine ignorance of the program — these people aren’t coming forward on their own, but are more than willing to become involved on the basis of personal contact and a friendly invitation. In our parish, virtually all of the servers came from the parish school, where altar service was part of the 5th – 8th grade curriculum. The boys who were not attending the school were essentially overlooked until several CCD teachers made a concerted effort to personally invite the other parish boys to participate.