New Wine
Last week, we finally used up the large order of sacramental wine we made right before COVID. In the intervening years, Kaufer’s (the religious supply company in Seattle) was purchased by Catholic Supply of Saint Louis, which owns its own sacramental wine company. So we have switched brands, and are trying out a different variety.
New Organ
The short version is that we are getting a new digital organ up in the choir loft. The long version comes in many parts.
Our Current Organs
Right now, the church owns two organs. First, we have the original 1921 pipe organ that was installed when our church was built. It is a 2-manual, 17-stop organ, which is actually quite small, by modern standards, for a church of our size. Our organ was designed and shipped at the same time, by the same people, as the original organ in St. James Cathedral in Seattle. Unfortunately, because of its age and the rarity of its use since the 1980s, this organ is in need of significant repair work.
We also have a 3-manual, 59-stop digital organ downstairs (pictures of a similar instrument here). When our altar was moved to the center, the plan was to use the area between the altar and the cross for the choir, so this organ was purchased around the same time as the altar move. The speakers for this organ are hidden on a shelf behind the crucifix, except for the bass speakers which can be seen.
These are different instruments, and if you pay close attention, the organ music is different when Dr. Mabalot is upstairs versus when he is downstairs.
Large Gifts and Bequests
In 2020, we sold land on Ellis St. and reduced some staff hours in order to pay off our debt and balance our parish budget. One of the major tragedies of the debt-laden years of 1998 – 2020 was that whenever the church received a large gift or bequest, we often needed to use it to pay off debt or shore up our annual budget. This is not a formula to encourage large gifts in the future. Instead, if someone is contemplating a large financial gift to the parish, they are usually more excited by the idea that such a gift could be used for something new or impactful, for something that will grow the parish, not just maintain it. My hope post-2020 was and continues to be that our parishioners who are able to make significant gifts to the parish know and understand that the parish finances are strong enough now that we can use their gifts for growth.
(Speaking of – fewer people are including the Church in their will as of late, and that is really hurting our parish’s ability to take on growth initiatives, since Sunday giving is usually only able to support the status quo. If you would like to know how to include the Church in your will, the Archdiocese has created a new website to help explain the process. You can find it at https://archseattle.mylegacygift.org/.)
The Organ Gift
In this environment, a donor came to me in 2020 and again in 2021 wanting to make year-end gifts to the parish (which, in the end, totaled $132,000). My job in these conversations is to be honest about the needs of the parish, and to try to work collaboratively with the donor to find something that helps the parish and also fits with the donor’s desires and passions in regard to the faith. I try to steer them away from ongoing costs and towards one-time impacts, since this is only a one-time gift. At the end of our conversations, this donor decided that a gift enhancing the liturgical life of the parish would best fit their desires, and we together decided that a restoration and enhancement of the original 1921 organ would be the best balance of achievable and impactful, given the amount of the gift.
Complications and a Plan
Unfortunately, organs are complicated. When we finally found an organ technician to work with us (organs are rarer and rarer, and so are those who work on them), we learned that our original pipe organ is now in a condition that it really needs to be fully disassembled and parts of it rebuilt if we want it to work at its full capacity. (This was not overly surprising, as Mundelein seminary, built in the 1920s, had to do this for two of its organs while I was in attendance there.) In addition, because the organ was built during a time when congregational singing was not central to the Mass, our organ would need to be expanded if we wanted to use it to support a congregation not just a choir.
Long story short, and many meetings later, the organ technician, Dr. Mabalot and I determined to divide this project into three phases.
- Phase 1: Replace the upstairs console with a digital console. Ultimately, the console of our upstairs organ was going to need to be replaced during the renovation anyway, so replacing it with a digital console (with accompanying speakers) would give us a full-sounding, 3-manual, 51-stop organ upstairs. This will temporarily make the physical pipes unplayable, because the console will not be hooked up to the pipes, but the pipes will remain in place. This will require most of the original $132k donation.
- Phase 2: Restore the original pipe organ and integrate it into the new digital organ. Even though a digital organ upstairs gives us everything we need for liturgical enhancement (the original goal), I am also keenly aware of our responsibility to care for and maintain our building, which is architecturally one of the best churches in the Archdiocese of Seattle. There exist “hybrid” instruments which play both digital ranks and physical pipes, and we are ordering a digital organ that can expand into a hybrid organ. However, as you might imagine, completely disassembling, cleaning, and reassembling a pipe organ (even one as small as ours) is not an easy or cheap task. We will only undertake this if there is enough financial support in our community to restore the original instrument.
- Phase 3: Make the hybrid organ playable from downstairs. If we can successfully restore our original pipe organ and make it a digital/pipe hybrid, then the resulting instrument is going to be impressive. At that point, it would make sense to replace our downstairs organ with a console that is able to play the upstairs instrument from downstairs. This is a dream goal that we would only consider once Phases 1 & 2 are paid for.
Once we find a company to give us a quote on restoring our physical organ, I will let the community know the cost and will ask for donations. But we will always keep in mind that such a project is an enhancement to our parish, not mission essential, so this would be something for parishioners who want to give a little extra to fund a really cool thing. We will not take money away from our essential ministries for this project. I am happy to answer any questions that you might have. And thank you to this “organ donor” and to all who have chosen our parish as a recipient of their generosity!
Fr. Moore 