Holy day Catch 22 HELP!

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Incorporated in the Church through baptism, the faithful are destined by the baptismal character for the worship of the Christian religion… Taking part in the Eucharistic sacrifice, which is the fount and apex of the whole Christian life, they offer the Divine Victim to God, and offer themselves along with It.
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Lumen Gentium 11

I do not honestly see any isolation of the individual from the whole Body in Church teaching, assuming that is what you are saying. The faithful worship, and offer themselves along with the priest. They do not do this not only because the whole Church does it, they do it by joining their worship to that of the priest. IOW each celebrates.

This is not a misunderstanding, as you claim. If it were you would back up your claim. Every individual, when they gather for the Eucharist, joins themselves to the priest, and in that sense exercises the priesthood of Christ that they joined at Baptism. They celebrate as the whole Church celebrates.

Anyone who does not recognize their role in the Eucharist is missing out on the most important part of the sacrament. Their presence at mass culminates in Communion, but this is almost anticlimactic alongside the celebration with Christ of our redemptive sacrifice.

IOW, if you think you are just a ”congregant” “attending” you are missing something. That language is inadequate, and needs to be replaced.
 
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If you read a little more, you will discover that “791. The body’s unity does not do away with the diversity of its members.”

But if you look at the table of contents you will find a section called “Who celebrates?” Whose final paragraph tells us:
1144 In the celebration of the sacraments it is thus the whole assembly that is leitourgos, each according to his function, but in the “unity of the Spirit” who acts in all.
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I notice that when we pray the Eucharistic Prayer, we pray it “Through Christ, with him and in him.” Our prayer is not just in him or through him, but also with him. Just because we pray in him, we cannot exclude that we pray with him. Just as drops of water form the Body of Christ, so each of them is wet.
 
You can (and must on holy days of obligation) attend mass even in an unworthy state to receive the Eucharist.

You could even do what I’ve done in the past, showing up early and asking the priest to hear my confession right there. Most of the time they will agree if there is time. Then you will be in a worthy state and receive the Eucharist at the mass.
 
I charge extra for grammar lessons.

“ it is thus the whole assembly that is leitourgos, each according to his function”

the closing phrase, “each according to his function” specifies that the ‘whole assembly’ is a collection of individuals acting individually, though not to the exclusion of them being united as a single body.

Each is leitourgos, a priestly minister, as well as all collectively. Since this section is entitled Who celebrates?, we can take this as meaning each celebrates according to his own function.
 
Who celebrates?..
The celebrants of the sacramental liturgy
1140 It is the whole community, the Body of Christ united with its Head, that celebrates…
1141 The celebrating assembly is the community of the baptized…
it is the whole assembly that is leitourgos, each according to his function…
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I do not know how you can read this section in the way you do. Do you think they just forgot to answer the title question? Did they really introduce leitourgos to refer to something tangential to the title?

Reread the whole page, and tell me what is the answer to the question Who celebrates? Where do they say “the priest celebrates” except in a context of one among several ministering?
 
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You misunderstand.

Where in this passage does it say “a priest celebrates”? Or “an ordained person celebrates”?

Wouldn’t those words appear if “celebrate” were specialized language for what a priest does? If anyone really believed only a priest celebrates, wouldn’t they answer “Who celebrates?” by saying “the priest”?

They do not say that. Instead they say “the whole assembly, each in his own way…” The whole assembly, not just as a whole assembly, but as individuals, each in his own way.
 
Back in the old days, laypeople would say that they “assisted” at Mass. “Attending” was a Protestant way to put things.

Obviously, this thread wants to go back to the old Catholic way of saying it. 🙂
 
So I feel like this whole thing was started by a typo/miss-used word. In my original post, I wrote “abstain from celebrating mass…” I shouldn’t have used a term that is commonly reserved for the priestly function, which lead to this whole confusion.

I think we all agree that there is only ONE celebrant. The priest alone fulfills that specific function/role within the context of the mass. BUT that doesn’t mean congregants aren’t celebrating within the confines of their own specific roles. One may even be able to make the argument that just as the Passover celebration was a perpetual ratification of God’s covenant that required the consumption of the paschal meal so to the mass really is not complete (or properly celebrated) unless the host is consumed and the new covenant ratified.
 
I do not agree “that there is only ONE celebrant.” Unless you mean Jesus, with whom each of us celebrates according to our function. It is a core element of our Christian identity that we all celebrate.

There is a convention that uses “celebrate” to refer to a priest’s participation in a liturgical celebration, but it should never be taken to exclude individuals from their participation ib Christ’s priesthood. I find (name removed by moderator)’s distortions of the Catechism to be bizarre.

And I am sure he thinks the same about my explanations. So I repeat:

(name removed by moderator) can be a congregant who attends mass.
I will be there celebrating, as the Church teaches.
 
The priest unites in the communal celebration by leading the service.

Laity unite in the communal celebration by their own functions.

Each and every person celebrates with Christ.
 
Respectfully, you. I’ve been reading this dialog between you two for the last 15 minutes and I agree with Doveskin. We all go to Mass to celebrate (celebrate is even used for the Good Friday Liturgy). We are all celebrating Mass with the main celebrant being the priest. In some churches, like mine, the priest is titled, “Presider.” Actually, resources that I have, including missalsettes mention, “Priest Celebrant,” or “Presider.”

Presider and celebrant are synonyms for the person who offers the Mass. Thus, only a priest or bishop can be a presider or celebrant. Presider is a newer term that generally indicates that the priest takes the lead in offering the Mass. Celebrant is of older vintage and connotes that the priest is the person who primarily celebrates the Mass. In recent times presider has become preferred by some as a means of indicating that the congregation should take an active role in (the celebration of) the liturgy, proper to their status as laity. Either term is correct.
 
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(name removed by moderator): With all due respect, by what authority do you say this? I don’t want to sound mean or disrespectful, mainly because I do not believe you are, but it really sounds rather arrogant. Sorry, but it does.

From a Priest’s viewpoint on his blog:

frpaulsblog.wordpress.com

Why the Priest at the Eucharist is not the ‘Celebrant’

When I first came to Montreux and began producing booklets for the orders of service, I changed the name of my role from ‘Priest’ or ‘Celebrant’ to ‘President’. …
frpaulsblog.wordpress.com frpaulsblog.wordpress.com
 
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In contrast, Fr Paul says:
it became a misnomer to call the one who presided over the Eucharist the ‘celebrant’
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To say you agree with Fr Paul seems far fetched. You are able to agree to the point of “the whole church united as one in Christ celebrates.” But then you inject “that is a privilege conferred upon the priest” which Fr Paul calls a misnomer.

To me, both the catechism and Mediator Dei make that clear. The priest is celebrant within the context of all celebrating together, each in his own proper order. Mediator Dei was groundbreaking in calling for all to become actively involved. It is a beautiful portrait of how to participate. It does not say “congregants attend.”
Let the faithful, therefore, consider to what a high dignity they are raised by the sacrament of baptism. They should not think it enough to participate in the eucharistic sacrifice with that general intention which befits members of Christ and children of the Church, but let them further, in keeping with the spirit of the sacred liturgy, be most closely united with the High Priest and His earthly minister, at the time the consecration of the divine Victim is enacted, and at that time especially when those solemn words are pronounced, “By Him and with Him and in Him is to Thee, God the Father almighty, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, all honor and glory for ever and ever”; to these words in fact the people answer, “Amen.” Nor should Christians forget to offer themselves, their cares, their sorrows, their distress and their necessities in union with their divine Savior upon the cross.
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If you agree with Father, do you then agree what he says here, or are you treating his statement as a buffet where you pick and choose what you like? He states:

"This means that the whole congregation is not the recipient of what is offered by the clergy or the ‘celebrant’ but that the whole congregation is the ‘celebrant’ with a task to do: ‘to proclaim the mighty acts of God and represent light rather than darkness.’

So the movement of responsibility for the conduct of the worship shifted from the clergy out into the whole congregation. This movement reached its official high point with the second Vatican Council. There, the whole congregation was called into ‘…full, conscious and active participation’ in the Eucharist." (bold mine)

Those who celebrate by definition are celebrants.

BTW, no need to apologize, but nice nonetheless.
 
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Inconsistent? As you say, you have been remarkably consistent. No matter what you read, you still maintain the same position!

I do not think I said or implied you were inconsistent. I have thought it, so I may have said something. For instance, you cite the absence of “each celebrates” in the Who celebrates? section of the Catechism but ignore the absence of “the priest celebrates.” That is inconsistent, but not in the way you are talking about consistency.

In any event, my apologies if you were offended. I think you are consistently wrong. I am sure you think the same about me. But I cannot find any way to address the issue.
 
My position is that we pray
  1. through Christ, who alone redeems us
  2. with him, as individuals joining with him
  3. in him, as part of his body, the Church.
We cannot set these against one another.

More importantly, we can be congregants who attend, but we are called to a more active participation as individuals offering oursleves with Christ.

And this is critical to the OP’s question. Telling a sinner he may attend is a lot different from telling him to participate as fully as possible in offering himself to God. Even if he does not receive communion, he still participates with Christ and the Church.
 
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