“Ring Those Bells” is a popular request at Christmas, but who wants to listen to church bells ringing day in and day out all through the year? Not Wolfgang Lassy. He lives near the New Cathedral in Linz, Austria, whose bells ring every quarter hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and he says he hasn’t been able to get a good night’s rest for years. He says he’s been trying for two years to get the church to stop ringing the bells during the night, but they have refused.

So now he has filed a lawsuit against the Catholic Church in Linz.

Lassy, an architect, told an Austrian newspaper that he bought his “dream home” near the Cathedral in 2004. In 2010, he started to suffer fatigue, and thought it was burn-out, but a doctor diagnosed a sleep disorder, and the bells were the culprit. He wants the church to stop ringing the bells between 10 pm and 6 am, just as the cathedral in Vienna, Stephansdom, does. His lawyer, Piotr Pyka, said the local church representatives would not stop the bells without a holy or judicial order to do so. Lassy filed his lawsuit in December, and also sent a letter to the Pope on February 4.

A hearing on his lawsuit was to begin on February 6, but both sides are scheduled to meet tomorrow to have a discussion through “non-judicial means.”

Unfortunately, sometimes it takes a lawsuit to get both sides to negotiate. Or perhaps the Holy Father will mediate?