Ministers (lay and ordained) charging for their ministries

[JW]

There has been a topic about paying organists - many are paid, many are not. Recently a topic on a Guild of St Stephen sidetracked into the question of payment for a choir. The alter servers in my parish (including 2 MCs) do not charge. Priests make quite a comfortable living from their ministry and I believe the Church wants priests to have a similar lifestyle to those they serve (assuming they have the basics). Some bishops live simply, others may not. How simply does the Pope live. What about non liturgical ministries? I would guess that a gardener might be paid but a hospital visitor might not be. To pay for lay ministry would impoverish parishes. However, the labourers are worthy of their hire.
Any views? Does the church have a stated position on this?

[asb]

There has been a topic about paying organists - many are paid, many are not. Recently a topic on a Guild of St Stephen sidetracked into the question of payment for a choir. The alter servers in my parish (including 2 MCs) do not charge. Priests make quite a comfortable living from their ministry and I believe the Church wants priests to have a similar lifestyle to those they serve (assuming they have the basics). Some bishops live simply, others may not. How simply does the Pope live. What about non liturgical ministries? I would guess that a gardener might be paid but a hospital visitor might not be. To pay for lay ministry would impoverish parishes. However, the labourers are worthy of their hire.
Any views? Does the church have a stated position on this?

I am just about to edit my post in the other topic mentioned. I haven't looked yet, but I obviously worded it badly - it was the choir's (prefessional and qualified) organist who wanted a fee - not the choir. Apologies for any confusion.

[JW]

Nevertheless, ASB, the point still remains - some choirs do get paid today for regualar service work today. I remember in their early days, Polyphony used to sing the weekday Eucharist at St Stephen Walbrook - knowing Stephen Layton (their director) at the time was employed as assistant organist at Southwark Cathedral, I bet they were paid. I assume most choirs would expect payment for weddings and perhaps funerals. Most choirs at weekly Mass would not contribute to the collection, so perhaps are paid in that way.

As an organist, I charge for weddings (except for friends) but not funerals (I will only play for close friends). A professional musician who is not an organist who we are trying to encourage on to our wedding organ roster has asked me to put up my wedding fee by 50% so he can charge the same and be properly paid for his time - I have no objection to that, once he starts playing for us! Although I have Grade 8 organ and a joint honours in Applied Social Science and Music I do not work in music and so consider my playing for weekly Mass as a hobby and do not charge. I know of organists less qualified who charge, rightly so where they are professional musicians, and need to earn their living from their music. I do sometimes wonder whether not charging somehow lowers peoples' perception of my ability/status - you value what you have to pay for - but actually if that is an issue, it's not my problem, it is theirs.

I do think that the Church has a responsibility to value and look after all of us who 'work' for it in whatever capacity (including teachers in Catholic schools) and I am not sure that this has been happening everywhere over the past 50 years or so.

This was meant to be a brief post but I got carried away - over to someone else!

[docmattc]

Most choirs at weekly Mass would not contribute to the collection, so perhaps are paid in that way.

I'm not sure how true that is as a generalisation. The collection plate doesn't come the way of the choir or organist (which is how I sometimes try to persuade people to join ) but I know a good proportion of my choir (including myself) have envelopes or direct debits to the parish, or of course a husband/wife in the congregation past whom the collection plate does travel.

[oopsorganist]

The priest makes a living, in our area it is not that comfortable and would not support more than one priest.

Actually we had a letter read for Homily last week about the priest hood, heard it called a rewarding and satisfying job as PP follows Bish. lead to try and encourage vocation.... I was thinking, what the Church needs a bit urgently is lots of Deacons who can lead parishes in the absence of young Catholic Priests. Or ..... but those things would be too radical, but we do talk openly about this in our parish, but not when PP is around. Ooo, I'm right off topic.

My view is that musicians and other roles in parish if they are making a living in other ways should not expect payment, but lots of thanks and some encouragement from others would be really nice. And the tools to do it well, that would be nice too, not long battles to get hymn books, or struggles with the PA system, and there are often things that you buy, for the music that help (thinking books or instruments) that mean that some are disadvantaged, if they cannot afford to do this because of low income...... some help with that might be needed. Recognition that you do do something else when not torturing the organ would be nice, that you might be stressed, or have backache, and do not exist in a vaccuum when not in the church building, that would be nice, sort of, how was your week?, that would be nice, but a tin of toffees once a year will have to do instead. You would not get pay for doing the readings. So do some parishes have a budget for music I wonder, that would be a way forward, of acknowledging that there is a price for services and that you get what you pay for.

We get paid in sweets in our parish. In fact, the readers don't get sweets. But the flower arrangers do. But not the people who clean the church. If you get a tin of sweets then you have really made it in the world.

But if an organist or such is Professional and lives by their music, then they should be paid, and paid at the proper rate. I won't do weddings, because there are organists who live by weddings so it is not fair to do their trade ( plus the wedding march is really too hard).

[lesley wright]

Oops, can I move to your parish? A tin of toffees once a year sounds like my kind of place. I only got a Cadbury's creme egg at Easter (everyone at Mass on Easter Day got one) because I happened to be coming off the sanctuary at the point when the chap who doles them out was coming back into church, otherwise I wouldn't even have had that (plus I do have a standing order in favour of the church). Mostly, even though the organ console is located on the sanctuary (to one side, admittedly), I seem to be invisible and most of the congregation don't know I exist. But I wouldn't want to be paid on a regular basis (weddings and funerals of people I don't know are a different issue) because it would no longer feel like I was doing it to give praise to God. Is that naive of me?
Lesley

[contrabordun]

Readers, MC's EM's etc don't have to pay to learn the ropes of their ministries. Apologies if you've read what follows before - I posted it last time this subject came up - but I spent upwards of £10k between the mid 90s and the mid 00s on organ lessons, plus another £6k on a digital instrument for practice. My current organ teacher charges (quite rightly) £40 for an hour's tuition. The diploma I will be taking in December will cost >£100 to enter and of course I have to buy organ music. I have spent hundreds of hours acquiring a level of skill which allows me to turn up to a church and be taken for granted.

There is a related but separate question of whether organs are wot we want*, but if we do, then the church needs to accept that organists need to be trained and that this costs time and money. Most people in my position are quite happy to contribute the time, but that's quite a lot of money.


Actually, that's not really up for debate: http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19631204_sacrosanctum-concilium_en.html para 120

[oopsorganist]

Lesley I did not get a cream egg this year!

And I agree it feels like doing your bit.

But then Contrabundum is right too, good standard of music training is costly. ( Luckily my piano lessons came from the Heath Govt. otherwise I was not of a class to afford music lessons to any good standard). And Contra would get paid and do well in another denomination. So a need for supported music training, glaring really. Not least because organists are getting older just like priests. And organs, they're getting older too. Both are forms of lack of investment. Expenses should be paid but I bet most people just sort it themselves.

The other issue raised is that volunteers which is what we are, are voiceless (well, not literally during hymn singing) or powerless. Unsackable. Unmanageable sometimes. And an old fashioned concept really. Vluntary activity can be just on the edge of things. I can't explain this properly. That is still unclear, never mind, I am off to write the obvious for the uninterested or Planning as it is called, before I find arguments that any kind of volunteer work is unacceptable.

[Southern Comfort]

I was thinking, what the Church needs a bit urgently is lots of Deacons who can lead parishes in the absence of young Catholic Priests. Or ..... but those things would be too radical, but we do talk openly about this in our parish, but not when PP is around. Ooo, I'm right off topic.

To continue off-topic, lots of deacons is precisely what the Church doesn't need. While there are some excellent deacons out there, a significant proportion give the appearance of being jumped-up altar boys or surrogate priests. No sense of the Ministry of Charity which is one of the three aspects of diaconal ministry (and in my view the most important), and because they can't preach to save their lives not much evidence of the Ministry of the Word either.

There has been much debate in recent times about exactly what it is that a deacon can do that a lay man (or, more importantly, a lay woman) cannot. The answer is - not a lot. What we do see, though, is deacons taking over sacramental preparation programmes in parishes, pushing trained lay catechists aside who may have been doing things very well for years, when they (the newly-ordained deacons) have absolutely no grounding in catechetics. We also see some deacons poncing around in fancy vestments, and a lot more who have no idea how to move around on a sanctuary and whose knowledge of liturgy is minimal.

I think we should have a national moratorium on diaconal ordinations until the Church in this country has worked out exactly what deacons are for. Do we really need any more?

[lesley wright]

Gosh, sounds as though Southern Comfort has had dreadful experiences of diaconal ministry! My experience is limited to two, one at Summer School and another in my son's parish, but based on that I'd be all in favour of deacons. I can see how S.C.'s example might arise though, so do many people share S.C.'s experience?

[alan29]

Gosh, sounds as though Southern Comfort has had dreadful experiences of diaconal ministry! My experience is limited to two, one at Summer School and another in my son's parish, but based on that I'd be all in favour of deacons. I can see how S.C.'s example might arise though, so do many people share S.C.'s experience?

Permanent deacons are a very clerical response to the problem of parish leadership. Find a layman with some sort of gifts and turn him into a petit-priest. Much better, surely to encourage strong lay leadership.
Payment - if someone is a highly qualified musician, should they be seen in the same light as someone who struggles to play 3 chords on a guitar?
Alan

[oopsorganist]

I don't know much about Deacons, Summer School is about all and that was OK. What's the alternative, Parish Councils, but we don't really do them well, our chair of PC is out of the country for most of the year! Strong lay leadership oo er............how would that happen?

My kids say what we need is a parish Mum. And if women were in charge, then they would make everyone sing, by telling them off.

Alan if both qualified musician and struggling guitarist are volunteers and leading the music, well yes, they are the same value! How could you doubt that? Widow with the small coin and all that.

[presbyter]

Just to lob in a bit of Canon Law here:

Can. 231 §1. Lay persons who permanently or temporarily devote themselves to special service of the Church are obliged to acquire the appropriate formation required to fulfill their function properly and to carry out this function conscientiously, eagerly, and diligently.

§2. Without prejudice to the prescript of ⇒ can. 230, §1 and with the prescripts of civil law having been observed, lay persons have the right to decent remuneration appropriate to their condition so that they are able to provide decently for their own needs and those of their family. They also have a right for their social provision, social security, and health benefits to be duly provided.

(Canon 230 concerns admission to the ministries of lector and acolyte)

[contrabordun]

Payment - if someone is a highly qualified musician, should they be seen in the same light as someone who struggles to play 3 chords on a guitar?

Chicken, may I introduce you to Egg? Egg, this is Chicken...

[musicus]

Well, I don't know. You turn your back for a couple of hours and all this off-topic diaconal stuff comes along... Folks, please feel free to start new threads at any time. Going OT makes it very difficult to stay focussed or to find anything retrospectively. Thank you.