Although we have a pretty conservative parish, in most respects, there are some liberal practices we don't always agree with occuring. The altar server program is pretty dismal with lots of untrained children invading the altar and providing distractions not help to the celebrating priest. My husband trained altar boys (no girls allowed at our former parish!), for twelve years and he always emphasized that if the congregation notices the altar boys, they aren't doing their job! Given that this has gone on for a long time, it would seem to be difficult for a new pastor to even know where to begin to effect any kind of change to the good.
My son serves Mass six days a week. He usually wears some dressy, brown sneakers. Not my first choice but the fact that I have a seventeen year old that wants to serve, I haven't bugged him on this subject. Today, as he processed in with the other server, I was surprised to see him sporting shiny, black dress shoes. It's been so long I hardly even remembered he had such shoes in his closet.
After Mass, I was about to compliment him on his footwear when our pastor came up, nodded to my son and said, "Thank you!" I thought the pastor was referring to my son having served Mass for him until my son said, "Yeah, I completely forgot I had black dress shoes but found them in my closet this morning!"
Father went on to mention that, although he doesn't reprimand his servers, he does make gentle requests he expects to be followed. He also ran into an altar girl only problem when he said the girls asked if they could wear open-toed shoes! He kind of shook his head and said, "I told them, 'no'."
A lot of real battles are won once you break down the foundations and rebuild. Guess he couldn't get more down to earth on changes then beginning with shoes. Small, careful steps may take longer but they do get there!
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