As my associate pastor says often, "Nothing is too good for God." He makes a good case for worship being our top priority and the best thing we can spend our money on. If your church doesn't buy into this, you may get lucky and find a good volunteer. Then again, you may get exactly what you are paying for.

I'd suggest cutting the church repair stipend instead. Surely there's a parishoner who can get up on that steeple and do what needs to be done.

I recently was quoted a price for a cantor (from Lyric Opera) of $350 to sing Pie Jesu on Good Friday and 3 others selections (Abide With Me, OSacred Head and Were You There) for a 1-hour prayer service.

I would love to see more paid musicians in the service of the church. In particular, full time Music Directors and semi-permanent choral scholars.

But I have a hard time with the notion of a jobbed-in singer.

Maybe it's just me, but- it seems to me that music ought to come from the community itself. I don't mean just volunteers. I mean that hired musicians ought to hired (ostensibly) long term and become a part of the community. The practice of hiring a singer for one special Feast Day liturgy promotes a culture where trained musicians flit from place to place and have trouble calling one particular parish "home."

I know this is like "beating a dead horse" but, Why is that protestants don't need cantors?

The question of course is why Catholics do. The answer I've been given is that pews are not "another suitable place" for the 4th reading to be proclaimed from.

Unfortunately, I have inherited a Parish that has not paid cantors in a very VERY long time, if ever. I wholeheartedly believe that what the people demand to hear demands a degree in vocal performance (or at least, a sensible amount of vocal study.) A degree in vocal performance can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. I have one very professional cantor who has a degree in vocal performance and have persuaded the church to pay her as our "Cantor Coordinator" so that she is mainly responsible for training volunteer cantors, giving masterclasses, scheduling cantors (and handling conflicts with scheduling), and filling the cantor role when no one else is available. She is paid roughly $200/month for the Cantor Coordinator position. In addition, she holds right of first refusal for all weddings and funerals which guarantees payment for every funeral/wedding for which she is available regardless of her involvement in the actual ceremony.

Now, though, we don't have any volunteer cantors. In fact, the pastor asked me to "fire," for lack of a better term, one of our volunteer cantors because he saw her as unfit for the ministry (which, in all fairness, she was.) Any other cantors that parish had before I started have either stepped down for personal reasons, or left the parish altogether because they don't appreciate that I don't cater to egos. In light of this, our "Cantor Coordinator" has morphed more into our "Cantor" for almost every Mass.

Not having a paid cantor places restrictions on the quality of the Ministry. I often find myself needing to plan music around the cantors' ability (range, musicality, etc.) rather than fully realizing the ministry's potential. Lenten chant and Introits? Forget it unless I have the professional cantor. (Unless I am able to spend additional hours each week preparing the volunteers which, frankly, I'm not. And, before you ask, no, the cantor coordinator's job description does not include rehearsal with the cantors.)

For the benefit of everyone, and out of respect for the money professionals have invested in their skill, AND in the interest of offering the BEST to the Lord.... cantors ought to be paid.

Now, down the street at the other parish our pastor runs, they pay $100/Mass for a cantor at two Masses.

In my own experience, I have been paid $50, $65, and $75 in different parishes as a cantor.

Oh, congregational singing goes back earlier than that. Fr. Ruff has written about congregations singing vernacular adaptations of the Easter sequence in the 1100s or so.

But there is a place for cantors: not for leading hymns, but to sing the propers in place of a choir. In Protestant communions lacking any tradition of liturgical propers, it is no wonder that they do not retain the use of a cantor.

Actually, I'm finding the use of the "Responsorial Psalm" increasingly common among protestant churches. Whatever one may think of that.

Actually, I'm finding the use of the "Responsorial Psalm" increasingly common among protestant churches.

Indeed, but Lutheran congregations (as well as Methodist) have the pointed text in the hymnal and, even when there is a cantor or choir, sing the Psalm verses antiphonally on their own (this is what makes playing a service on the Lutheran seminary's Spanish one-divided-manual instrument such a workout!). If GIA had been willing to spend on the extra ink for punctuation marks my Catholic congregation would by now own more than just the reponsorial refrain.

I am DM at a small parish, but we still pay $50/mass for a cantor. But, most of the parishes in my area are paying $35/mass. My parish is further away from the main city area and, therefore, we include travel in our stipend.

Our former director had no music training at all. She was a "good singer" and the former pastor hired her based on a concert he had gone to where she was singing. Forget about conducting. Her arms waved in every direction known to man without any rhyme nor reason. If you sat in the front row, you would often times be slapped from all the arm flinging. But, because she wasn't the organist, she was able to lead the congregation in song. That's the big problem I have right now. Being hidden behind the console, the choir can barely see me, let alone the congregation, who definitely needs direction. It's amazing to me that easy traditional hymnody seems so much more difficult for them to sing than contemporary music with changing meters and verses that are different. I can't figure that out.

But, because she wasn't the organist, she was able to lead the congregation in song.

Whoa, Nellie! Did an organist write that? If so, is he or she perhaps admitting that he or she has not received training in how to lead hymn singing? If so, the solution is: get the training.

I see that the church needs to pay it's bills and the first thing they will do is look at this $4,000 dollars a year being spent and say "well that can go toward something else more needed in the church!".

More needed?!

More needed?!

Waterheater, airconditioner, fans, plumbing, tiling, carpeting, resurfacing, cleaning, replacing, repainting, paper, pens, desks, photocopier... It's all a matter of opinion I guess.

They need somebody immediately in front of them, waving their hands.

I would... dispute this.

Well, Musicteacher56, we'll just have to disagree on this issue. I do not believe that a song leader (and that's actually what we're talking about here since it is a matter of "leading" congregational song, rather than chanting the verses of a psalm [the role of a "psalmist"] or the verses of a refrain and verses song [the role of a "cantor"], is ever needed when there is a competent organist. In the past, whenever I was the "cantor/psalmist" at a Mass, I never stood before the congregation when a strophic hymn was sung; the organist was the leader and the congregation understood that.

Musicteacher56, I apologize for any offense I caused you. You're right. I do not know the peculiarities of your parish and should not have assumed that all parishes are able to address a particular musical issue in exactly the same way. My prayers for you as well.

I"m willing to believe that people at 56's parish need the song leader. But that sort of conducting (if that's what it is) can be phased out over time.

they don't follow you because they don't want to

That.

Charles has a point. Perhaps the problem is in just being obstinate to change. In the meantime, the Lord has given me a challenge that I'm finding difficult to meet at times. The silver lining is that the Bishop complimented the music at Confirmation this year. I had three singers and a cantor, the congregation barely sang at all, and the Confirmandi didn't sing the music they requested. A small parish means too many cooks in the broth all the time, with a lot of "parking lot" conversations going on.

Why do parishes put confirmandi or first communicants on display to sing when they are not used to it and have not volunteered for such a role?

I didn't mean that the Confirmandi were "put on display". Quite the contrary. In my opinion, that's part of the "music for entertainment" mindset I'm so against. What I meant was that in their preparation, they had requested certain music for their mass (with my approval) and then didn't sing it from the pews with the rest of the congregation (who didn't sing a lot either).

Thanks for all the comments, but please let's leave it alone now. The fact remains that some parishes are larger than others, have bigger music programs, more advanced singers in their choirs, and congregations that are large enough where no one group dominates. Unfortunately, that is not my case in my parish. At any given mass, we only have about 150 people, most of which are extremely opinionated, and never a weekend goes by without some kind of comment (good or bad) about the music, the priest, and the liturgy itself.

I am not American and I need to be instructed on this. I have been told that cantors were brought in to encourage congregational singing. It has been 40 years. Has it been successful? I have worked and studied in many different places, Leipzig, Winchester Cathedral, Princeton etc and I have seen and heard wonderful hymn singing without cantors. A parish would invest $100 per mass for a cantor. 4 masses could pay for 4 paid section leaders.

"I have been told that cantors were brought in to encourage congregational singing. It has been 40 years. Has it been successful?"

NO.

"I think the notion that they're forced or coerced to be put on display is at least a cynical imposition."

My first communion was about 20 years ago. My "cynically imposed" memory is that I hated it, and all of my friends hated it. If we had the option (and I think I recall that I asked), we would not have done it. I'd call that force or coercion.

My hypothesis as a churchman observing such carryings-on is that kids enjoy having a role at church, but they don't enjoy having a show made of them. Yes, there's the ones that just love to get up there and cut up, or wave at mom and dad, or play pop star, but isn't that the kind of behavior that should have been discouraged by... say, when they first receive Holy Communion?