Church Bells Compete With Noise

September 22, 5:45 PMSouth St. Paul ExaminerRob Shirk

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Being relatively isolated from The Roman Catholic Church as I am, I have never understood the significance of the bells that peal from Holy Trinity Catholic Church. Curious times and sequenses can be heard.

There are bells that ring for 45 seconds, precisely, at 5:10 PM every day and signifies there is five minutes to Mass. The practice was originaly used, back in the day, to call the farmers in from the fields and the time spent ringinging the bells have always been up to the church. There are bells that are sequenses of three times three around the noon hour signalling The Angelus. Of course there are bells tolling the time of day and all the events are melodic.

As time passes the bells are less noticable, having weaved themselves into our collective audio personae and has become as much a part of our audio landscape as the freeway or the airport. There are times when I actually try to time myself for the chimes or else I may miss them entirely which would be a shame.

Whatever the bells mean they have been tolling in one way or the other since they rang for the men serving the Christian Crusades, an early form of the yellow ribbons we see today usually for those bearing arms far away for America.

Certainly Holy Trinity does not have ownership of church bells. My goodness, every church of all denominations have them. It's just that in my neck of the woods I happen to hear the ones from Holy Trinity and it makes our audio landscape deeper and richer than those who do not have the same option in their neighborhood.

We have the choice, of course, to concentrate to what a lot of people listen to, namely, the I-494 freeway, Fleming Field, or lawn mowers. The bells are a better way to go.