Music or choir director requirements

[Don9of11]

Are there any church documents that offer guidelines for choir or music directors? For example, is there any requirement that they should be catholic or at least baptized christian?

 

[TheMc]

Are there any church documents that offer guidelines for choir or music directors? For example, is there any requirement that they should be catholic or at least baptized christian?

Here are a few requirements I quickly found in De Musica Sacra.

Paragraph 65:
The musicians who play the instruments … should be sufficiently skilled in their art so that they can accompany the sacred chant or any other music…

Paragraph 97
Those who have a part in the sacred music -composers, organists, choir directors, singers, and instrumentalists- should above all be outstanding Christians, and give example to the rest of the faithful, conformable to their role as direct or indirect participants in the sacred liturgy.

 

[MarkThompson]

Are there any church documents that offer guidelines for choir or music directors? For example, is there any requirement that they should be catholic or at least baptized christian?

I think you will find that these requirements vary based on the diocese and, especially, the parish. To my knowledge, there’s no universal requirement on the issues you ask.

 

[TheMc]

I think you will find that these requirements vary based on the diocese and, especially, the parish. To my knowledge, there’s no universal requirement on the issues you ask.

Mark, please see my post above, post #2.

 

[MarkThompson]

Mark, please see my post above, post #2.

De Musica Sacra is from 1958. I don’t believe that provisions like the ones you quoted are generally understood to be in force. Anyway, as legal requirements they would, I believe, have been abrogated by the promulgation of the 1983 CIC, assuming nothing to the contrary therein.

 

[Joe_Kelley]

My wife has been a music director for many years. We are Catholic but know many music directors who are not. I have never seen a regulation on this.

 

[MissRose73]

My parents church has had people play the piano and organ, and cantor alone that were not Catholics but were still Christians.

Those who participate in any type of musical ministry at my parents’ church also belong there - instrumentalists, cantors, & choir members.

 

[The_Curt_Jester]

I know of a number of non-Catholic organists/music directors who play at a Catholic church. It makes it harder on us Catholics to find jobs…

One pastor at a church I worked chose to just have no organist for one weekend that I was away rather than have a substitute (Lutheran) fill in for me.