Following the successful test of the new emergency alert system which caused half of the country’s population to leap several meters in the air, the Catholic Archdiocese of Luxembourg has announced it will switch to a similar system for the ringing of church bells.
“For years, the Church has been the leader in the hey-you-wake-up market,” said Father Joe Klackespill, a spokesperson for the archdiocese’s bell program. “Sunday mornings, Saturday mornings, weekday mornings, and every fifteen minutes.”
Fr. Klackespill says that due to the preponderance of new technologies that also disturb people – waking them in the middle of the night when they forget to silence their phones, rousing them with notifications early on weekend mornings – the Church has decided to modernize.
Starting next week, residents of Luxembourg will receive loud mobile alerts that sound like the ringing of church bells, every hour of every day, starting at seven in the morning.
“In terms of decibels, for most people it won’t be any different,” Fr. Klackespill says.
Despite the efforts put into making the sound agreeable and even inspirational, not everyone believes that church bells still hold a place in contemporary society.
“Grrr,” said Monique Townsend, a resident of the capital who lives next to a church and claims she has not had a full night of sleep in years. “Mphf.”
As it turns out, the history of complaining about church bells is as old as the history of church bells itself.
In 1248, a foreign-born farmhand named Casmir who had relocated to Luxembourg commented on a village community scroll – a sort of proto-Reddit where peasants and merchants alike could share news and engage in discussions – that the bell ringing was intolerable.
Rather than offering him sympathy, other contributors to the community scroll wrote that Casmir should get used to it or leave, with one writer referring to Casmir as a “Caryn.”
“The Church has taken a firm stance: bell ringing in the Grand Duchy is here to stay, both as a vital way to know when it’s three quarters past the hour and thus time for a sweet biscuit, as well as a reminder of religious life,” said Fr. Klackespill.
“Thomas Aquinas expressed it succinctly in his 1264 letter ‘De Rationibus quare campanae ecclesiae magnae sunt,’ which basically means ‘why I like church bells,’” he continued. “I’ll read you an excerpt.”
“‘Ding, dong, bong, bong-bong, bong, ding-dong, bong,’” he added.
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Originally published by RTL Today
