By Tom Mulvoy
Special to the Reporter

If there's one thing that Rev. James Larner appreciates, it's stability, and his way of life as a boy, man, and priest, is ready testament to that.

As a youngster living on Arbroth Street during the Depression in a home made warm by parents with a zest for life's possibilities, as a high school (BC High '48) and college (BC '52) student, as a seminarian (St. John's '57), and as a parish priest coming on 50 years of service, Father Jim has been a steadfast Dorchester man all the while.

In what is surely a rarity for a parish priest, he somehow has managed to hit a clerical trifecta of substantial local parish assignments -- St. Brendan's (1963-1977), St. Ann's (pastor, 1982-1987), and St. Gregory's (1989-today). That's 37 years out of 50 in Neponset and Cedar Grove with stops in Woburn (St. Barbara's), Plymouth (St. Peter's), Canton (St. John's, briefly) and South Boston (Gate of Heaven) along the way.

And the local beat goes on: This Sunday he will celebrate the 50th anniversary of his ordination by saying Mass at St. Gregory's at 10:30 a.m. with a reception to follow.

Although he has been slowed down by a nerve disorder in his legs that makes getting around on foot an exercise in determination, Father Jim is on the job daily helping Msgr. Paul Ryan and Father John O'Donnell keep up the pace at St. Gregory's. Recently, over coffee at Gerard's in Adams Corner, where he has long been a familiar presence, he talked about life at age 76 as a priest on the hometown beat:

"I still get out and around and do what I've always done on the altar and off, but there are things beyond me now; I'm not much help going out at night. Today, for instance, I'll be going down to 2262 Dorchester Avenue at Lower Mills to say Mass as I do the last Friday of every month."

When asked to comment on the changes the years have wrought on his parishes along the Neponset, the hefty, soft-spoken priest hesitated but briefly. "I've seen a lot of changes in the neighborhood since I was a boy in the mid-1930s running off to play ball at the parks, but there still is a certain stability here, something that stems, I think, from the sorts of families who have made their homes and raised their children in these parish surroundings over all these years."

James Larner comes from one such family. Thomas and Mary (Conway) Larner, both born and nurtured in Galway, met and married over here at the end of World War I and started their family in 1921 with the birth of John, who was followed by Thomas in 1923, Albert, who died in infancy, and, finally, James, on Jan. 3, 1931, 14 months into a Depression that still had a long way to go before its run was up.

"My father, who lived to be 94, had a bright mind, hardy constitution, and he was a good worker who found and kept a job with the city's Public Works Department," said Father Jim. "Like everyone else in the neighborhood, we didn't have much, but somehow we managed to get along."

For the youngest Larner, getting along meant attending parochial school with his pals at St. Ann's, where Sister Norena, of the Sisters of St. Joseph, had what he calls "a significant influence on me" as he kept up his studies between ballgames. It was the sisters who steered him to BC High and the Class of '48 by challenging him to attend extra classes to prepare for the entrance exam. The next move &endash; to the Heights &endash; was a no-brainer; it's what most BC High grads did at the time.

As he neared his graduation from BC, Father Jim slowly but surely came to realize he had a vocation to the priesthood and so, with his parents applauding in the background, he entered St. John's Seminary. In February 1957, he was ordained at Holy Name Church in West Roxbury by Bishop Jeremiah J. Minihan while over at Holy Cross Cathedral, Archbishop Richard J. Cushing presided over the investiture of another group of new priests.

"There were 57 of us, including two others from St. Ann's who are celebrating 50 this year, too: Tom Foley and Bob Pollis. In fact, there were 11 young men from St. Ann's in the seminary at all levels at that time. And if you count other ordinations across the state that year, the total was close to 75." By way of comparison, there are 42 men at St. John's Seminary today at all levels.

Those 57 priests of the Class of 1957 have ministered in a clerical world that has undergone enormous change, internationally and locally in the last half-century. Among them was Vatican II, which shook up the Roman Catholic Church in ways (liturgically and in its mind-set) that still vibrate in the pews, and the priest-abuse scandal that was first uncovered in Boston and which continues to roil many of the faithful.

Father Jim doesn't have much to say on either point. "The changes that came with Vatican II were tough on many of the older priests; for those of us just out of the seminary, it was something to adjust to, and deal with. As to the scandal, I'd rather not comment on it. It has been a tough time." Indeed, and emotionally painful, no doubt.

Back in 1957, when the newly ordained Father Larner arrived in Woburn on his first assignment under the Cushing regime, he found no church there; St. Barbara's was being built. "We held services wherever we could find the space. We performed baptisms in dining rooms and I heard many a confession across a kitchen table."

The scene speaks to the man and priest from Arbroth Street. You take your assignment and do what has to be done. And if you're lucky, you get to do it in Dorchester.