Is it ok to miss mass?

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Is it permissible to miss mass if you are sick/having a terrible migraine/throwing up and/or the roads are bad and there is inclement weather in the forecast? Asking for a friend…
 
And bad weather qualifies. And dangerous roads qualify.

Heck, being farther from church than a fifteen minute donkey ride qualifies, if all you have is a donkey.

Be prudent. Go when you reasonably can, do not endanger others, and save the heroics for when we’re getting persecuted.
 
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Mintaka said:
Heck, being farther from church than a fifteen minute donkey ride qualifies, if all you have is a donkey.
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I think that would depend on how hard it is to go more than fifteen minutes. If it’s half an hour to church but a half-hour donkey ride (or a half hour walk) is no more than inconvenient, then you have a duty to go.
On the other hand if a half hour walk leaves you trembling in exhaustion or cramped up with leg pains, that’s a different matter.
 
Italian mountains, dirt road. It is a classic example from St. Alphonsus Liguori’s Moral Theology.

There is a range of stuff that is “Do not go” (like doing something stupid that endangers others); and a range of things where you are excused if you need it, and you should be prudent about it.

Parents with small kids can always be excused from Mass if they want to be, because taking care of kids is in that range where you can make your own prudent decision about whether to go to Mass or not. The difficulty is there, and the Church acknowledges it.

But the Church also does not order parents not to go to Mass, because it is in that range where it is okay either way.
 
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The Catholic position is that Catholics have a serious obligation to go to mass on Sunday, though reasons like those the opening poster gave excuse a person from going to mass.

The “Catechism of the Catholic Church” explains that Catholics have an obligation of going to Sunday mass, but that they are excused from going for a serious reason. Here is what the Catechism says:

[2180] The precept of the Church specifies the law of the Lord more precisely: "On Sundays and other holy days of obligation the faithful are bound to participate in the Mass."117 "The precept of participating in the Mass is satisfied by assistance at a Mass which is celebrated anywhere in a Catholic rite either on the holy day or on the evening of the preceding day."118

2181 The Sunday Eucharist is the foundation and confirmation of all Christian practice. For this reason the faithful are obliged to participate in the Eucharist on days of obligation, unless excused for a serious reason (for example, illness, the care of infants) or dispensed by their own pastor.119 Those who deliberately fail in this obligation commit a grave sin.

Next, the Catholic manual “Moral Theology,” by Father Heribert Jone, explains that “any moderately grave reason suffices one from assisting at Holy Mass, such as considerable hardship or corporal or spiritual harm either to oneself or another.”
“Therefore, the following are excused: the sick, convalescents, persons who cannot endure the air in church (e.g. certain neurotic persons and sometimes pregnant women in the first or last months of pregnancy); those who have a long way to church, people hindered by the duties if their state” (besides other such reasons also given by this manual.)
 
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@camoderator Can you check out this guy? “ @God_Is_So_Great “ he keeps posting anti Catholic material on posts. I’ve flagged him, so has edward_george1.
 
What do you think Luke 14:33 means? How about Luke 12:33? Or John 6:27? Matthew 6:24?
 
The heuristic I’ve been told is that if it’s bad enough to miss work, it’s bad enough to miss mass.
 
God_Is_So_Great said:
What do you think Luke 14:33 means? How about Luke 12:33? Or John 6:27? Matthew 6:24?
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2 Peter 1:20
But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation

2 Peter 3:15-16
…Just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.
 
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Maybe you’re the one who is distorting the truth? Again, what do you think the four Scriptures I quoted mean? I understand they are not a matter of one’s personal interpretation. Still, they do have a true meaning, of course. What do you think the true meanings are?
 
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The Church doesn’t expect you to go to mass if you are ill. If God sends inclement weather then you are excused from the obligation to attend mass. The Church expects the reasonable, not the impossible.
 
You already started a thread to bait people with your anti-Catholic videos. Stop posting them on every other thread that catches your eye.
 
God_Is_So_Great said:
Maybe you’re the one who is distorting the truth? Again, what do you think the four Scriptures I quoted mean? I understand they are not a matter of one’s personal interpretation. Still, they do have a true meaning, of course. What do you think the true meanings are?
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It doesn’t matter what I think. It is not my place to interpret scripture my own way. Scripture says so, clearly. We need an authority and that authority is the church Christ Himself founded, the one holy Catholic and apostolic Church.

That is the trap that many people fall into. Therefore, using scripture to play gotcha will not work here.

As for your references - based on that authority, it is clear that Jesus simply said to give up our attachment to our earthy possessions and follow Him. To love God above all else and recognize that earthly possessions and wealth is just transient and has no value in Heaven. This is why the Rich Man was sad and turned away from Jesus’s call as he was attached to his possessions, they’re what made him.

Jesus was also rejecting the idea from this “personal interpretation” of passages like Psalms 128:1-2 and Is 3:10 that wealth and goods are a sign of God’s favor and a claim to Heaven. That was the point of why he said these things.
 
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