You believe the drop in church attendance is caused by organ music?  Seriously?  The cause may be, in part, caused by organs, but not the ones you're talking about.  America is going the way of Europe, where churches are, by and large, museums, relics of a past never to be reclaimed.  Sure people still use churches as one stop shops for social rituals (baptisms, weddings, and funerals) but, except for the bible belt, even that will pass in a generation or two.

It is waymore complicated than that.

Say what?  Moral hypocracy is more like it.

The organ in the Episocal Church is a critical part of the liturgical experience of worship.  Where prayer, the homily and the lessons give us a way to bring God into our lives, the music adds to the experience, and makes us FEEL closer to God.  Substituting the organ with guitars and tamborines diminishes the whole experience of Sunday worship, in my opinion.

One of the parts of church that I love is the continuum of the practice which dates back hundreds of years, including the organ.  Change for the sake of "modernizing" goes against this.  There are times in my church when the music is altered, to include other instruments.  But the pipe organ is always the standard, and always should be.

To save The Boston Globe, please stop printing columns advocating the destruction of finely crafted musical instruments because the writer associates their sound with her suffering through mass and horror films.  I suggest the writer seek counseling and desensitization therapy to help her recover from organmusicphobia.

Let's do the world a favor and dump the church and save the organ.  The organ at least serves a useful purpose.

I'm with Attaturk.  Organs are fantastic instruments.  Not so sure about the usefulness of church, though, aside from the music.

"Who plays the organ anymore when they are not trying to scare someone?" Indeed. You miss the point, My Dear Jennifer, they ARE trying to scare you! Everything they do, and have been doing for years, is about mind control, brainwashing, and scaring you to death. Think of all the tools they use to accomplish this brainwashing...using sight,sound,and smell...that have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH GOD.....that is to say, the loving,simple, pure God of the Bible. The churches...majestic spires to the heavens, stained glass windows with colors galore; statues, plaques, and icons all with white, kind, blue eyed, ski-jump nose expressions. The music that you speak of...mournful, "scary" music that speaks to fear and damnation. Clergy....all dressed up in every manner of outfit, colorful, bright patterns, made of silk all designed to designate rank, and relative closeness to God, with The Pope being in pure white, which is the closest apparently; all manner of hats..pointed, fat and tall, to little beanies with propellors (little humor there), all in various bright colors. Smell..incense to overpower your ability to think in favor of your sense of smell. (just think of how powerful it is for a woman or a man to smell the opposite sex's perfume or cologne). What has all this got to do with God?? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! All of this sensory stimulation overload, with the backdrop being their threat of you burning in hell forever, if you don't abide by the rules is all deliberately designed to brainwash. Please dear, you and all the other Catholics, open your eyes and see the brainwashing you have been getting for centuries. All of this pomp and ceremony is designed to give the illusion that preists, bishops, cardinals, and the pope are gods here on earth...nothing more...nothing less. It is a power they love and ctave and they will do anything to keep it. By the way, this is also what facilitated the molestations, in case you want to know. Please...open your eyes.

wow.  this is moronic.

I never liked going to Mass as a kid, but once while visiting relatives we went to a church where they were doing a folksy, acoustic guitar accompaniment, and I liked it even less.

Ms. Graham's children have already learned to dislike attending Mass, not because of the organ, but because of her own attitude towards it.  Perhaps the issue is not the instrument, but the choice of music.  I strongly suggest that Ms. Graham voice her opinions on her parish's music with the pastor and music director and then actively get involved with changing it.  If that doesn't work, she should find a parish (there are still many) with liturgies that speak to her.  And I wonder if she'll be satisified to attend a child's wedding with the bride walking down the aisle to the accompaniment of a mandolin and not a roof-rattling 400-pipe organ.

I realize that Ms. Graham's columns are sometimes tongue in cheek, but really? Driving people away because of organ music? I happen to agree that it is dreadful, but I don't think that is what is causing a decrease in church attendance. Do you really think that people who actually want to go to church won't do so because of organ music? A thoughtful analysis of the issue would probably show that those people you call the "drifters" (the ones who are too tired or busy to go to church on Sunday) return because of the comforting rituals they find in the religion of their childhood--whether it be baptism or a wedding. I would imagine the mass with the organ music is probably one of those things that bring some of those drifters back. I would think that the church's authoritarian stand on many social issues; their paternalistic approach to these social issues; and the fact that less and less people rely on the magical thinking that many religions require are more likely to be the causes of decreased church participation.

I gave up on making sense of this one when I hit the Darwinian evolution of instruments...

The Follen Unitarian-Universalist Church in Lexington has a glorious organ and a gifted organist and music director (Thomas Stumpf). I can't speak for the author's church, but at Follen, the glorious music is a reason many people attend, not a barrier that keeps them away. 

As a baptized and confirmed former member of the Catholic church, let me explain that,a.) Church was always something I was forced to participate in against my will, and, b.) The organ may have been the only interesting part of the whole experience. Where else do you get to hear this enormous, hauntingly beautiful sound? Also, as someone who chose to stop attending church as soon as I was presented the option, let me explain that the church is failing because of it's archaic and non-sensical approach to MODERN social issues that were not even part of the collective human consciousness when the Catholic church was established. It sounds to me like the Catholic church is trying as hard as it can to dress up it's archaic messages and trick people into attending. Further, the organ is one of the most difficult musical instruments to master. I know the writer is trying to be funny and lighthearted, but this is lame. And the objections that people have against the Catholic church are truly of a much more serious nature.

This angers me. I, too, was forced to go to church as a child, and was repelled by it. But, the organ was was of its few redeeming characteristics. A church without an organ is just a fancy meeting hall. I am sure it is acceptable to practice Christianity without an organ, but the organ represents part of the Caholic cultural history - and your call to destroy organs is an assault upon my culture and It will be resisted.

I was surrounded by classical music as a child, due to my father's love of it, and my growing up in Lenox where the Boston Symphony Orchestra's Tanglewood performance center dominates the town. As a small child, there were works I liked and one's I didn't (What boy doesn't like Tchaivoksky's 1812 Overture, with its cannons?). As a teenager, I shunned the music of my father for more modern and popular music, but found my music tastes were still different than my peers as I liked less of the rock/top-40 and instead liked the goth and Alternative culture bands, and here diverged from the popular culture.

Yet, gradually, as I grew older, I became more interested in the music of my childhood, the classical, and my trips abroad have allowed me to experience the music in its orginal theatres. I have enjoyed it greatly, with all of its pipe organs, and the old churches with their stained glass and uncomfortable pews, and it brought back to me all of the suffering which the Catholic Church seems to keen on. it's there, in my head, no longer subscribed to as a moral leash, but as a guide. If your children don't appreciate the music or the church, then perhaps it is merely because they haven't matured to the point where they see the grand flow of history and their part in it. Maybe they never will, and that's too bad. But to dumb-down, to adapt, these great instruments to the likings of children...is simply not acceptable!

Just as I would scream if you were to start knocking down the churches we use and start replacing them with new, modern music halls with auditorium seating and proper acoustics, I shout down your call for smashing organs.

Perhaps those who appreciate these organs have never considered the idea that there would be those opposed to them, and have therefore never had to congregate, organize, and defend their organs. Perhaps that time has come!

For The Boston Golobe to put this on the front page of their website is exactly why we still need a paper edition. What a ridiculous article. Why not literally tear down all of the churches and replace them with iPads and video games? WAY COOL!!

"127guy"  wrote, "How about we dump the secular press also, comrade?"

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To be anti-instituionalized religion is to be a communist?  Are you kidding.  I must assume you are a big time
 worshipper, which is cool.  In fact I have no problem with "institutionalized religion" as long as it stays out of my face out of the public sphere and keeps its myths to itself.  Don't be oppressing woman, telling me what's moral, or what God thinks, and you can be as Churchy as you want.  The problem with you guys is you think you know what God wants, you think your mythology is truth.  All fine just keep it to yourself. 

The only way I know to keep you out of the public sphere is take down the institution and keep the organ.  Now if you folks had any real faith you wouldn't need the Church, but instead of faith, you find safety and security and the only way you keep it is by bugging the rest of us.

So no, I'm not a communist.  But yes, given the opportunity I'd make you take down the institution and instead have a little faith, if you truly believed.

– to blame the lack of attendance on the existence of a pipe organ is ridiculous. The children may be scared of many things about the church, but the organ is not one of them. Shall we burn all the violins because you heard someone with a scratchy instrument play something you didnt' like?

I thought Shaugnessy was rock bottom for stupidity.  He's been replaced.  What a waste of electrons this turned out to be. 

This illiterate article shows that the author is unacquainted with both church music and what was actually done by the Second Vatican Council.  It does not contain an ounce of scholarship.  Yes, it is always amusing to see a secular newspaper try to write about religion.

And, I must say, it is equally amusing to read the comments about religion in general.

I read your opinion piece on my coffee break today. I work at C.B. Fisk, Inc. in Gloucester, MA. We are pipe organ builders and I'm proud to say our shop is among a few of the most respected and well regarded builders in the world.

Each paragraph of your article set off a mental litany of rebuttals. It occurred to me that your opinions and observations of the organ are probably the result of encounters with crappy instruments and uninspired organists. Rather than write you a cranky letter I would like to offer a challenge:

Come and visit our shop. Learn a little of what the instrument is really about. Let us show you the new Fisk Opus 139 at The Memorial Church at Harvard. I'm guessing that you are smarter than you pretend and I think I can can change your mind.

I find it amusing and a little scary that the author thinks that just because SHE doesn't like organ music that all the world's organs should be "killed." I certainly hope this article was written with her tongue firmly tucked in her cheek. Otherwise, it betrays a frightening level of ignorance about the role of music, no matter what instrument is used, in worship and other inspirational settings. How about if I say I don't like the author? Should she also be killed, along with the world's organs. I say we keep both and see if we can work something out.

"127guy"  If anybody would be afraid of black helicopters you'd be the guy.  You apparently see commies under your bed.

"HHK" is exactly right, it is a bit of a childish comment expressed apparently by someone who knows very little about communism, socialism or for that matter black helicopters.  Your comment implies paranoia. 

Speaking of horror films, here is a pipe organ experience I'm sure you would enjoy-

A screening of the film Dr. Jekyll & Mr Hyde with live accompanyment by Peter Krasinski on CB Fisk opus 97. Peter is an incredible improvisor and is well known for his accompanyment of silent films such as Fritz Lang's Metropolis, The Phantom of the Opera and Buster Keaton's classic, The General. You'll have a great time.

Sat. 10/7 at 7:00pm

St John's Church, 48 Middle St., Gloucester, MA 

stjohnsgloucester.org

Let's just kill the moronic editorial writers instead.  I'd argue the point, but arguing with a fool is a fool's errand.

I think the most ironic part is that this is printed in a newspaper...something that will fizzle out long before the pipe organ does.

What a great puddle of fatuous ignorance is this column. Organ is a fantastic instrument -- in the right hands and with a good instrument, absolutely thrilling. I challenge Graham to hear Balint Karosi play at First Lutheran, or Ross Wood at Church of the Advent, or Peter Sykes. Fantastic, dramatic musicians all -- a good reason to show up for a service.

And really ... there aren't more compelling and proximate reasons why the Catholic Church is losing parishoners?

Ms. Graham: Take the CB Fisk fellow up on his offer to go hear some awesome organs. Mind will be blown.

Charley -- Your first two sentences are the best critique of this column that I've read so far.

There is no other instrument that I could describe as majestic.

This is a mound of rhetorical detritus. Maybe you haven't visited the right churches; maybe you are listening to organists bang on the keys and stomp all over the pedals in stilettos instead of organ shoes. But I urge you to go back and read John Dryden's "A Song for Saint Cecilia's Day," which, by the way, is coming up on November 22:

But O, what art can teach,

What human voice can reach

The sacred organ's praise?

Notes inspiring holy love,

Notes that wing their heavenly ways

To mend the choirs above.

A final point, I would take the melifluous tones of the organ over the din of your turgid prose. 

Jennifer, I have 147 organ "songs" (14 hours) on my Ipod.  You therefore lose your bet.