Delta parishes may be small,
but parishioners have great faith (use arrow keys to navigate gallery)
By Fabvienen Taylor
GREENVILLE — It’s a little after 10 a.m. Sunday morning and Father Thomas Mullally is greeting parishioners as they exit Sacred Heart Church after the 9 a.m. Mass.
The pastor and members of his flock — all ages — shake hands, hug and some women even peck him on the cheek.
People and pastor are slow to part, taking their face-to-face time seriously.
And with good reason. Come the next Sunday, the flock will be the same but the priest will change.
Father Tarsisius Puling, associate pastor of the parish, will be the one greeting parishioners. Not long afterwards, he will prepare for the 11:30 a.m. Spanish Mass.
On that Sunday morning, Father Mullally will be in Indianola for the 10 a.m. Mass at St. Benedict the Moor Church.
Following that Mass, he will jaunt across Highway 82 for the 11:30 a.m. Mass at Immaculate Conception Church.
It will be his second weekend Mass at Immaculate Conception after having celebrated the 5 p.m. vigil Mass on Saturday.
After that vigil Mass, Father Mullally drove to Shaw and spent the night in order to celebrate the 8:30 a.m. Mass at St. Francis of Assisi Church.
In addition to the weekend Masses at the four parishes, they each, once a month, celebrate,Mass for the St. Dismas Community in Parchman (Mississippi State Penitentiary) and a Spanish Mass at Shelby St. Mary Church. And so it has gone for nearly a year as pastor and associate pastor rotate their schedules.
It’s a situation with unique challenges for the two Society of Divine Word (SVD) priests, who prior to coming to the Diocese of Jackson, both served at Notre Dame Church in St. Martinsville, La.
In the Jackson diocese, the majority of the 70 active diocesan/religious order priests serve at one parish and may have a mission parish. Several serve two or three parishes, some with missions.
A growing number of parishes/missions are led by lay ecclesial ministers (lem)/pastoral ministers or associates.
At St. Martinsville there are about 4,000 parishioners. The total number of people attending Mass at the four parishes Fathers Mullally and Puling now serve is about 300, or slightly more.
“Our biggest challenge, and I talked to Father T (Tarsisius) about this, is you are never in the same place every weekend, so you don’t get rooted, you don’t see the people every weekend. For me that is very painful.”
“At Notre Dame we had five Masses every weekend and we rotated. But at the Masses, even if I didn’t celebrate, I would be outside shaking hands.
“So I saw people coming, I saw people going. Here I can’t shake hands because I’m won’t be here. I won’t see the people here for another week.
“I’m a hands-on priest, I am an involvement person. I like to be at a place every Sunday, every Saturday. So personally it’s very painful for me,” he reiterated.
In not being able to rub elbows with parishioners, Father Mullally misses out on news, on gossip, on knowing who’s coming to Mass and who isn’t, he said.
Both priests were appointed to the four Northwest Delta parishes last summer.
On a related note, another SVD priest, Father Darrell Kelly, was also at Notre Dame before being appointed pastor of Holy Ghost in Jackson in June 2008.
With parishes in three different towns, becoming a part of the local community is tough, Father Mullally said.
“Sacred Heart, here in Greenville, is homebase but I’m only here half the time.”
He can’t attend all the home football games as he did at Notre Dame, or accept many invitations for meals, events, or other outings because he has to be in another parish.
The two priests go back and forth to the parishes on weekdays for pastoral council meetings, to visit the sick in hospitals and at home, for Bible study and other things.
“You do a lot of things over the telephone. I am on the telephone 10 times more than I was at Notre Dame,” Father Mullally said.
Building-wise they have four rectories, four parish halls, four churches.
“You have to call people, you have to get lay people to do things because you can’t be there,” he said. “You have to get people in the parishes, parish council presidents to work with you, or sometimes even the maintenance people.
He feels the “absence of being present to parishioners. And the people, they feel the absence of a priest, they want a priest present too,” Father Mullally said.
At each parish are parishioners, seasoned by years of active ministry, who are assisting their itinerate pastor and associate pastor.
Both priests are open to working with parishioners in all the parishes.
“Here at Immaculate Conception (IC) we have Beth (Johnson, ) and Mark (Atchley) and they really take care of the church,” said Father Puling.
Rosemary Miller, an IC parishioner for 37 years, is religious education coordinator who has taught all levels of students and is teaching again. The parish has gone through stretches without a resident pastor as well as years of inactivity for various reasons, not the least of which is fewer priests, diocesan and religious.
“We’ve had a lot of issues (over the years) and we lost the community we had built years ago. A lot of really good people in the church have moved away.”
But Miller sees a bit of fruit born of those lean times.
“I saw a blessing in all of that because I’ve seen our people coming together more and working together. I felt us pulling together. We had to.”
Over the last year the closeknit IC community is getting to know their peripatetic pastor and associate.
“Father Tom is a very passionate, holy man. I think everybody can see that,” she said. “I let him know as much about our community as I can.
“He’s getting to know us better and we want to help as much as we can. He is a wonderful man and we are blessed to have him and Father Tarsisius,” she said. When it comes to preparing the music for liturgy, Elizabeth Atchley, musician and choir director, keys into the priests’ preferences but also shares with them her knowledge of what the parishioners are accustomed to doing.
“Father Tom likes to sing a few more parts of the Mass so I give the people a chord for the response. Father Tarsisius has an unbelievable, beautiful voice and he really leads us well,” she said.
Atchley, a parishioner for 31 years, said the key to priests and parishioners working together is flexibility and openness to communication, on everyone’s part.
“As far as the music is concerned that has been a pretty easy transition with both of them. I try to make sure I do my part in trying to make the liturgy as beautiful as I can,” she said.
Across Highway 82 from Immaculate Conception is St. Benedict the Moor, whose parishioners may be fewer in number, said Father Puling, but they work closely with the two priests to take care of their church and its needs.
“Surprisingly enough,” said long-time parishioner Carver Randle, “things are going quite well. The parishioners at St. Ben think the priests are doing a splendid job.
“These priests are throwbacks to priests in the old days who not only said Mass but visited you in your home, almost unexpectedly sometimes,” said Randle, a St. Ben member since 1958, who has been active on both the parish and diocesan level.
At St. Ben, Randle said, the two priests just “blend in. And they do it I’m sure at the other parishes where they are welcomed. And the parishioners here at St. Ben have made them very welcome.”
One evening after Mass and a meeting, Father Mullally informed Randle he would be going home with him for dinner.
“It’s been years and years since we’ve had a priest who just makes himself comfortable in your home, doing whatever you’re doing, eating whatever you’re serving,” he said.
As for switching priests on the weekend, Randle said he’s found that most people like it.
“We like the variety. They have two different approaches which in turn expands us,” he said.
At Sacred Heart, Ann Littleton said some parishioners are concerned they are not getting to know their priests as well as they would like.
“Father Mullally is such a good leader. Parishioners are trying to do everything we can to make this work, to lighten his load. And we appreciate Father Tarsisius, who is doing a very good job,” said Littleton, who continues to be active in a number of ministries at Sacred Heart.
Littleton said having the two priests with four parishes really brought home to her what the shortage of priests means.
“I never thought this would happen. You take it for granted you will always have a resident priest.”
Most of their pastors over the years, she said, were “really good leaders. But these are making some extra sacrifices. I mean it’s a job with just one parish, with all the personalities.
“Now they have four parishes with different congregations — Spanish, black, Italian, old, young, parishes with kids, parishes with no kids. They are doing a wonderful job,” she said.
There is a move to get more parishioners involved in all ministries of the parish, including outreach to the surrounding neighborhood, she said.
Recently the parish expanded its vacation Bible school to include the neighborhood children, swelling its ranks to over 33, a hefty increase over recent years.
The parish social concerns committee, stimulated by Father Mullally’s full support and commitment, has beefed up its efforts to rid their neighborhood of trash and vacant unkempt lots by having clean-up days, calling on the city, absentee landlords, and local negligent businesses to better maintain their property to make the area better for everyone, said Littleton.
Father Mullally wants Sacred Heart to be “a beacon of hope to the people in the neighborhood.
“We need to let people know we care about them, even if they are poor, working class, unemployed, or elderly. We want them to know Sacred Heart cares about them,” he said. Littleton said some parishioners are always active in the ministries of the church. “But we need to be a more aggressive parish. We need more people active not only in social concerns but in missions, retreats, and in becoming more knowledgeable about their faith,” she said.
Littleton isn’t the only one calling for more education, more training in ministries and parish leadership.
“Florence Ouzts, pastoral minister at Shaw St. Francis,” he said is a tremendous help to him. Barbara Faccini works with Ouzts.
“She does the hard work for me. She makes telephone calls, organizes and prepares everything for Mass, for the music.”
“If I had someone like Florence at each parish things would be 10 times easier,” he said. “I could see having a lay ecclesial minister in each parish. ”
Preparing for a vacation visiting family in Michigan, Father Mullally said upon returning he is looking forward to meeting with the four parish pastoral councils to see what the people want in terms of ministry, education and training, how they want to be “fed.”
As Father Puling talks about his ministry, the people in the parish, the differences, and traveling from place to place, he never stops smiling.
“People are really great here in all these parishes,” he said after Mass at Immaculate Conception. “These are small parishes but the people have great faith.”
And so it has gone for nearly a year as pastor and associate pastor rotate their schedules.
The parish has gone through stretches without a resident pastor as well as years of inactivity for various reasons, not the least of which is fewer priests, diocesan and religious.
When it comes to preparing the music for liturgy, Elizabeth Atchley, musician and choir director, keys into the priests’ preferences but also shares with them her knowledge of what the parishioners are accustomed to doing.
parishioners may be fewer in number, said Father Puling, but they work closely with the two priests to take care of their church and its needs.
Littleton said some parishioners are always active in the ministries of the church. “But we need to be a more aggressive parish. We need more people active not only in social concerns but in missions, retreats, and in becoming more knowledgeable about their faith,” she said.
