Miss Ford’s Catechism Classes

An older woman reading the Bible with a young teenage girl. (Pexel/Andrea Piacquadio)

Delicate — that’s the word which first springs to mind whenever I recall Miss Mary Ford, one of the few most utterly saintly persons I’ve been graced to know. For many years, Miss Ford, a member of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, was the lone catechist at Christ the King Parish in Hollywood, California.

Well-informed catechists are vital to the spread of Catholic faith. At the very beginning, St. Philip the deacon eagerly spread the Gospel in Samaria and explained how Jesus fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah to an Ethiopian eunuch before baptizing him (Acts 8:4-8; 26-39). Miss Ford continued that tradition.

The church is still located in 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. Behind the church rises the mighty Ravenswood apartment building. A number of Hollywood notables lived there, including Mae West. A member of the parish, her home was a palatial, top-floor penthouse. You really did have to come up to see her sometime. Yet, from its founding in 1926 until 1959, Christ the King did not have enough children within the parish to sustain an elementary school.

Miss Ford was quite elderly. On Sundays, she was always fastidiously dressed in short, often pink, jackets and matching 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 lbs. 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 youthful, 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 as eloquent as anything she taught.

As I said, Christ the King had no elementary school, so my older sister and brother, Helen and Sandy, walked east along Santa Monica Blvd. with me to school at Immaculate Heart Parish. Named a domestic prelate in 1954, Monsignor Corcoran insisted that students would prepare for their first reception of Holy Communion at their home parish, even if they went to school at his parish.

Miss Ford must have prepared nearly one thousand children by March 1957 when, at the age of seven, I was ready for instruction. The class met each Saturday and Sunday morning for two months in the back of the church where, by special indult, we were allowed to talk in church, to ask or answer questions.

Miss Ford had a ready, gentle smile as she relayed to us the Eucharistic teaching of the Church. Something in her manner kept students attentive as she spoke about Jesus; it precluded our playing pranks or joking around. Perhaps it was her delicacy which prevented disruptions. Perhaps it was her intense belief and interior sanctity. She always reverently bowed her head at the holy name of Jesus and made sure we did as well.

Miss Ford lived on Ridgewood Ave. 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, Miss Ford continued her duties as a catechist 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 years ago when the respected Pew Survey of Religion in America surveyed problems affecting Catholics in the United States. It showed that atheists and agnostics know more about Christianity than many Christians. The most glaring catechetical failure among Catholics was their lack of Catholic Eucharistic theology.

The survey disclosed that, offered the choice between the 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 percent of Catholics rejected — rejected — the first option.

A very few years later the same survey demonstrated how only 30 percent of Catholics believed in the reality of the presence of Jesus in Holy Communion. After these startling findings, U.S. bishops called for better teaching, emphasized Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, and brought about the recent “Eucharistic Revival.”

Belief in transubstantiation lies at the heart of Catholic belief. It is a necessary cornerstone of Catholic teaching. If two-thirds of Catholics in the United States don't understand that Jesus makes a gift of Himself when we receive Holy Communion, the precipitous decline in attendance at Mass becomes more readily understandable.

I am grateful to Miss Mary Ford for giving me and all the children in her care such a 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.

Pray God the grace of the three-year-long Eucharistic Revival and its culmination in the great Congress of 2024 will remain with those given the task of catechizing children. Let us hope they will be inspired by St. Augustine’s beautiful contemplation of the Sacrament of the Altar:

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.

Sean M. Wright, an award-winning journalist and an Emmy-nominated television writer, is a Master Catechist for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. He is a member of Our Lady of Perpetual Help parish in Santa Clarita, CA and responds to comments sent him at [email protected]. Find more of his columns here.