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Our parish is in the middle of an issue that is heating up. Does the music director (choir leader, organist, and music teach for parish school) need to be Catholic? Put in your two cents.

"Should" - absolutely. But "need" - maybe not if you really have no qualified Catholic candidates.

I wouldn't think that it would be necessary, but it has the potential to increase the chance for any problems.

It would be preferable, but if a candidate is otherwise well-qualified and is willing to listen to guidance as needed, it wouldn't be a deal-breaker for me.

Structuring the issue seems simple. Set up the good ol' 2x2 matrix. Label the axes Catholic/Not Catholic and Qualified/Not Qualified -- giving you four cells:

Catholic/Qualified Catholic/Not qualified
Non Catholic/Qualified Not Catholic/Not Qualified

Ask yourself which characteristic trumps. If being qualified is more important, the answer is easy. If being Catholic is more important, the answer is easy. I doubt that even someone who demands a Catholic music director would be happy with a good solid Catholic who can't do the job (though I've seen it)

Moving back to reality, I assume that some who demand a Catholic music director will have no patience if no qualified candidates appear. That would be someone else's problem. I think that the deciding criterion is the one you presented: "...well-qualified and is willing to listen to guidance>"

Our Parish in Little Rock had a guy who wasn't Catholic as our music director.

Music was excellent and orthodox except for once a year, at Easter, when the baptismal promises renewal and sprinkling of water rite. They always sang the song, with a New Orleans Jazzy flavor, "Wading in the Water". Super cringe for me, but the congregation loved it, and it seemed to be a tradition going back long before we arrived.

Peetem wrote: ↑Mon Mar 03, 2025 8:02 am Our Parish in Little Rock had a guy who wasn't Catholic as our music director.

Music was excellent and orthodox except for once a year, at Easter, when the baptismal promises renewal and sprinkling of water rite. They always sang the song, with a New Orleans Jazzy flavor, "Wading in the Water". Super cringe for me, but the congregation loved it, and it seemed to be a tradition going back long before we arrived.

Do you mean "Wade in the Water"? That's actually an old African-American Spiritual. It was first published 125 years ago, but actually was associated with the Underground Railroad. Never heard it with a NO jazz flavor, only as a Gospel tune.

Here's how I'd sum up my choices: I would rather have a non-Catholic musical director with good taste who is open to direction than a Catholic director who is addicted to bad music and won't change.

This reminds me of a movement I was going to start. In the French Revolution, the partisans were distinguished by red caps, sans-culottes, and pikes. I'd like to show up at Mass with a pair of pliers. Guitar liturgy? Not today!

anawim wrote: ↑Mon Mar 03, 2025 12:33 pm Never heard it with a NO jazz flavor, only as a Gospel tune.

The two are not unrelated.

Riverboat wrote: ↑Tue Mar 04, 2025 1:37 pm This reminds me of a movement I was going to start. In the French Revolution, the partisans were distinguished by red caps, sans-culottes, and pikes. I'd like to show up at Mass with a pair of pliers. Guitar liturgy? Not today!

Guitar Mass > Piano Mass

That's such a weird hill to die on, a piano Mass is infinitely more reverant than a hippie dippie guitar mass, there is no other kind of guitar Mass, sorry, and the guitar is always being played (usually quite badly) by an aging hippie who is trying to be Bob Dylan (or whoever their early 60's folk musician idol might be).

I can't imagine peregrinator was being anything other than sarcastic.

No, I think he is serious, but I am not sure I remember the exact reasoning. I think it has to do with the piano being a percussion instrument thus unsuitable for Mass.

zeno wrote: ↑Wed Mar 12, 2025 1:24 am No, I think he is serious, but I am not sure I remember the exact reasoning. I think it has to do with the piano being a percussion instrument thus unsuitable for Mass.

I think that's it too. Presumably he would not prefer finger-tapping guitar.

It is supposed to be an organ instead of a piano, the problems with this are many:

Pianos are cheap and readily available, while organs are insanely expensive and difficult to acquire.

There are millions of piano players in the country, as many took piano lessons as kids, and pianos are very easy to learn to play. As early as the third grade, I knew multiple classmates who were taking piano lessons and had already learned to play multiple songs.


On the other hand, there are at most a few thousand organ players in the country, and playing the organ is extremely difficult and requires years of training, and probably a college degree. And the number of people who know how to do it is not exactly increasing.

So, while it is very easy to find someone in your parish who is willing to volunteer to play piano at Mass at least a couple of Sundays a month, finding a qualified organ player is very difficult, and since they probably get offers from half a dozen different churches in the area, a parish will have to pay through the nose to get one.


Unless you are a wealthy parish in a reasonably large in a reasonably big urban center, you're probably not going to be able to find an organ player.

zeno wrote: ↑Wed Mar 12, 2025 1:24 am No, I think he is serious, but I am not sure I remember the exact reasoning. I think it has to do with the piano being a percussion instrument thus unsuitable for Mass.

zeno wrote: ↑Wed Mar 12, 2025 1:24 am No, I think he is serious, but I am not sure I remember the exact reasoning. I think it has to do with the piano being a percussion instrument thus unsuitable for Mass.

If a piano is a percussion instrument, wouldn't an organ also be percussion? Not being a musician, I'm probably missing something.

No. Sound is produced in a piano by a hammer striking the strings which is why it is a percussion instrument. An organ produces sound by air flowing through its pipes thus it is a wind instrument.