How valid is...

[Zabby]

Okey, so I’ve kind of been wondering this for a while, and I figured this is a pretty good place to ask it because everyone here that I’ve talked to/ read seems really knowledgeable.

So, my question is how valid is skipping the Nicene Creed during a Mass? My pastor has, in the past (not very often, but it has happened) skipped the Nicene Creed because he felt like things were taking too long, and went straight on to the prayer of the faithful. I understand the reasoning behind not saying it after a baptism happens in the Mass, but under normal circumstances, should it ever be skipped?

 

[Br.Rich_SFO]

Okey, so I’ve kind of been wondering this for a while, and I figured this is a pretty good place to ask it because everyone here that I’ve talked to/ read seems really knowledgeable.

So, my question is how valid is skipping the Nicene Creed during a Mass? My pastor has, in the past (not very often, but it has happened) skipped the Nicene Creed because he felt like things were taking too long, and went straight on to the prayer of the faithful. I understand the reasoning behind not saying it after a baptism happens in the Mass, but under normal circumstances, should it ever be skipped?

Not on Sundays or Holy days. It is never appropriate for a celebrant to re-arrange the Mass at will beyond the options provided in the text.

 

[japhy]

So, my question is how valid is skipping the Nicene Creed during a Mass?

It doesn’t change the validity of the Mass (which is dependent on a valid consecration for the Eucharist), but it is an illicit (illegal, unlawful) act.

My pastor has, in the past (not very often, but it has happened) skipped the Nicene Creed because he felt like things were taking too long, and went straight on to the prayer of the faithful.

No one can just cut things out of the Mass because it’s “taking too long” or you have something to do later. The Creed can be omitted if another rite is taking its place (like a renewal of baptismal promises, or one of the Lenten scrutinies, I believe) but it can’t be omitted otherwise, on Sundays and other solemnities.

The Mass I attended last Sunday, at my wife’s family’s church, was a 40 minute Sunday Mass. I was “warned” ahead of time that the Masses were shorter in the summer because they’d made a couple shortcuts. Well, I don’t know the exact reason, but the priest (using a binder and not the actual Missal) tried to go from the Penitential Rite (form B, which is supposed to be followed by the “Lord, have mercy / Christ, have mercy”) to the First Reading! Then he caught himself, and said the opening prayer… forgetting the “Lord, have mercy” and the Gloria!

And his homily was about 2 minutes.

 

[benedictgal]

The only time that the Nicene Creed is omitted is if the faithful are renewing their Baptismal Promises (Easter Vigil). This takes the place of the Creed.

Although RS doesn’t specifically address the ommission of the Creed, as I read it, it says something general that covers this problem:

11.] The Mystery of the Eucharist “is too great for anyone to permit himself to treat it according to his own whim, so that its sacredness and its universal ordering would be obscured”.27 On the contrary, anyone who acts thus by giving free rein to his own inclinations, even if he is a Priest, injures the substantial unity of the Roman Rite, which ought to be vigorously preserved,28 and becomes responsible for actions that are in no way consistent with the hunger and thirst for the living God that is experienced by the people today. Nor do such actions serve authentic pastoral care or proper liturgical renewal; instead, they deprive Christ’s faithful of their patrimony and their heritage. For arbitrary actions are not conducive to true renewal,29 but are detrimental to the right of Christ’s faithful to a liturgical celebration that is an expression of the Church’s life in accordance with her tradition and discipline. In the end, they introduce elements of distortion and disharmony into the very celebration of the Eucharist, which is oriented in its own lofty way and by its very nature to signifying and wondrously bringing about the communion of divine life and the unity of the People of God.30 The result is uncertainty in matters of doctrine, perplexity and scandal on the part of the People of God, and, almost as a necessary consequence, vigorous opposition, all of which greatly confuse and sadden many of Christ’s faithful in this age of ours when Christian life is often particularly difficult on account of the inroads of “secularization” as well.31

[12.] On the contrary, it is the right of all of Christ’s faithful that the Liturgy, and in particular the celebration of Holy Mass, should truly be as the Church wishes, according to her stipulations as prescribed in the liturgical books and in the other laws and norms. Likewise, the Catholic people have the right that the Sacrifice of the Holy Mass should be celebrated for them in an integral manner, according to the entire doctrine of the Church’s Magisterium. Finally, it is the Catholic community’s right that the celebration of the Most Holy Eucharist should be carried out for it in such a manner that it truly stands out as a sacrament of unity, to the exclusion of all blemishes and actions that might engender divisions and factions in the Church.32

Simply taking a shortcut to reduce Mass time is not licit. As japhy noted, it doesn’t affect the validity of the Mass, but, it does make the practice ilicit, therefore, abusive.