by Father Bob Bond

Father Larry Goulding

It's not often that one finds a priest who is script-writer, stage prop-builder, play director, and stagehand. Such talents are part of, and witness to, the imaginative creativity of Father Laurence Goulding, pastor of Saint Helen Catholic Church in Amory, Mississippi.

Each Christmas in eleven years of his pastoral ministry, Father Larry has transformed almost his whole congregation into play goers. Several of them become costume designers and assistant directors in the process. Once they have experienced the first one, his simple but insightful annual Christmas plays are a must. As Father Goulding put it: "The parents always request and appreciate it; it goes over all the time."

That's the main reason for continuing a tradition which he started the first year he was ordained. There are others. Father Larry wrote the first of his nine plays (he has repeated a couple in different missions) because he could not find any that were simple enough to involve all the children, even the very young. He wanted "to get little kids more involved in the church" and have them be an acknowledged part of the congregation. In some plays he has had as many as twenty-seven different speaking parts, plus preschool extras. The play is also for them - and the adult audience an unusual method of teaching the meaning of scripture.

"Besides all that," he said, "you got to do something around Christmas time. It gets a little action going around the place. It's amazing how people will come out to see their kids in a play, even if it's just five minutes, and the kid says only one line. It really gets all the parishioners involved. You can't beat that."

Father Larry gives the audience a brief introduction as the shepherds await their cue to begin the play.

Father Goulding admits that it takes his time - much of it in building the props. He spends several days planning and painting the two background scenes, building the crib, and helping parents creatively use sheets and towels and bathrobes as costumes. In a 1979 letter to Father Bob Berson, Glenmary president, he wrote: "A point I keep in mind while writing a play is to think big on scenery."

Two years ago Father Larry got some unexpected help. As he tells the story: "The parish decided to sponsor a Vietnamese refugee family. They arrived the week before Christmas. They were supposed to come in October, but in typical government style, they didn't get here until December. Without warning, there was a guy, his wife and three kids, and I had to come up with housing. I moved them in with me until I could find them an apartment. They couldn't speak English. The mother was busy enough with the kids. I put the father to work on the floor painting scenery. This Buddhist did a marvelous job on a Christian theme. Then he kept painting pictures of everything; I couldn't get him to stop once he got started. It kept him out of my hair for a while anyway."

Directing happens at practices during Sunday religious education class and sometimes on one Saturday. There's nothing fancy about the procedure. As the ex-Marine described it: "I usually get it so I can just line the kids up. They move on stage one right after the other. They always have only one line at a time. You have to keep it simple or it isn't going to work. There's no way I could get them to do anything else. I holler - real loud; that gets them moving."

Father Larry and Pete Richardson have the stable background attached to the clothespin and are steadying it for the next scene.

Saint Helen's has no parish hall; the rectory is used for social gatherings, but no room is large enough for a play. The Big Event last year, "Christmas Changes Things," took place in the sanctuary of the church. The furnishings were moved aside. The backdrop was ingeniously steadied by a piece of wire and a clothespin. It was rotated for each scene. The right mood was achieved physically and emotionally as stagehands, Father Larry and Pete Richardson, Glenmary seminarian, turned the twelve-foot scenery around. All smiled at their part in the play.

A mission parish, like a person, goes through stages of growth. A missioner and a small congregation must accommodate especially to meet the demands of its infant stage. The parish received its first resident priest in 1973. Only three people in the small congregation are older than the fifty-one-year-old pastor.

Father Goulding has seen the scene and obviously satisfied one of the needs of the young parents, older children who narrate or sing, and all the pre-teen children, individually and together as the local Catholic community.

Father Larry concluded the interview: "My tendency is to go the hectic Christmas route. This play is something you kind of squeeze in between everything else. I make the same mistakes every year every day. Every year I ask whether it's worth it. When it's over, I know it is."

Father Larry and Pete Richardson have the stable background attached to the clothespin and are steadying it for the next scene. Father Larry gives the audience a brief introduction as the shepherds await their cue to begin the play.