Organist practicing during confession time

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Unbelievably, today our organist picked the 45 minutes of the week during which confessions are heard to practice on our church’s extremely loud organ. I swear, one of these days the windows are going explode outwards from the racket this monstrosity makes.

After I made my confession and said my penance, I went over to the guy and, with as much Christian charity I could muster, I told him his practicing was audible inside the confessional and was very distracting. He looked a bit perturbed, but actually thanked me and said he would try to play more quietly. What I wanted to tell him was he shouldn’t even be playing, but I didn’t want to press the issue too much. And this was after one of the priests confronted him about practicing during confession! Some folks…oh well. Also it wasn’t exactly easy to concentrate on prayer either with DO DEE DO DO DAH DAH DO DEE ringing in my ears.

Anyhow, would you have done the same thing? Normally I am a pretty reticent individual, but I thought practicing during this hour was rather thoughtless. Any thoughts or comments?
 
Obviously, you’re not a lover of organ music as I am! 😉 I have several thoughts:

The music would cover up the sound of your confession so no one outside could hear, a good thing unless it is so loud you can’t hear yourself and the priest.

Many organists are volunteers, or part time employees who must practice when their schedule allows. If they’re coming to play the Saturday vigil Mass, and Confessions are held an hour before Mass, practice time and Confession time may well coincide unavoidably. Be glad he’s practicing at all! Imagine if he didn’t!

Your organist did say he would play more softly - a reasonable accommodation. This is always possible, unless he’s in the process of choosing a registration for the organ. It is also possible to use the keyboards with no sound at all, but then you don’t catch your mistakes.

If it were me (and I realize this probably only applies to me!), I would think of the music as my own little reward for coming to Confession, but then, I’m an organ music lover, as I said. 🙂

Betsy
 
In this day and age churches are often locked when not it use so your organist may not have any other opportunity to practice.
 
I guess it would depend on the organist. I really love organ music, but we have a sometime organist that also practices very loudly before mass, which really bothers me. If they are determined to practice, it could be done quietly, so as not to distract everybody.
 
Wow this response is great. I half expected no one to post at all. 🙂 Thanks for all your comments.

Well, the man runs the whole music “ministry” and I hate to say it, but he’s not a very good organist. In fact one of the main reasons I don’t go to Sunday Mass at my own parish is because the music is so bad.

As far as I know the church is always unlocked. In fact a couple weeks ago I tried to pray before the Blessed Sacrament on two separate occasions but had to leave because someone else was playing the organ. Bad luck I guess.

This was the first time I ever experienced this, so I was a little miffed. :rolleyes:
 
Better before confession than before mass. Some folks come a little early to pray before mass. In some churches the choir practice their singing before mass.

God comes to us in the silence of our hearts.
 
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ktm:
This was the first time I ever experienced this, so I was a little miffed. :rolleyes:
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We all have little things that happen that miff us whether in church or not - so you’re not alone

I don’t know your organist or the type of music he was playing.

We have confessions before Mass every Sunday. We pray the rosary and after that the organist starts playing to make sure nothing in the Confessional can be heard. I personally love the music to accompany my prayers up to heaven. Of course if the music is distasteful I can see how it would be a distraction, I can not imagine praying while songs like “I am the Lord of the Dance” or “We are one in the Spirit” are playing. I would think the equivalent would be listening to the radio and trying to pray at the same time.
 
some churches have great accoustics… it’s probably a good thing to cover the voices… 👍

if not the statement from the priest…**YOU DID WHAT?.. ** :eek:
 
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