Multiple Masses per day in the Catholic Church

[Angel_Gabriel]

Not to mention the lack of priests to serve all these new parishes.

I’m a big fan of smaller churches but we need to fix the priest shortage before that can happen.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Where is that parish if you don’t mind my asking? That is incredible. I have never heard of such a large parish!

The question remains though why not build more Churchs if that is the case?

This is not unusual. There are at least two parishes in my vicinity that have several thousand members each.

The Church doesn’t build more churches because it’s an expense that becomes hard to justify and hard to get rid of the buildings when the demographics of an area change, such as the jobs disappearing from a region causing all the Catholics to move someplace else. Most dioceses right now are dealing with an oversupply of church buildings that they have to maintain because they overbuilt in the past, plus they do not have enough priests to send a priest out to staff all the individual churches. The trend is to consolidate several churches into one big church which will likely need several Masses every Sunday in order for everybody to attend, and close whatever church buildings are not absolutely necessary.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I am not kidding. I live in the Philippines which is an 85% Catholic country.
I live in Las Pinas and we have 15 Churches all of which are within 15 minutes drive from my house.
All of them have multiple Masses because of high attendance.

I live in the USA which is nowhere near 85% Catholic, but I live in an area where there is a traditionally high concentration of Catholics (Italian-American, Irish-American, and Latin American). There are about 10 churches within 20 miles of my house, all of them have to have multiple Sunday Masses for the same reason you said, and at least two of them are among the biggest parishes in the archdiocese.

 

[joeybaggz]

Please show me where Jesus Himself said only one memorial service a day. If you can’t, then it was left up to Peter (and his successors) to make the rules. Peter has. End of story.

Edited to say: I have to agree with the other posters who question the leap from celibacy to pedophilia, and why choosing a vocation other than the religious life is selfish. I think I make a better lay person than I ever would a priest.

 

[twf]

I’ll be blunt. The Orthodox Church, at least in Western countries, has a fraction of the population that Catholic parishes have. What you describe is ideal and rich with tradition and symbolism. But is it just to deprive tens of thousands of people of the Mass and communion? That’s exactly what would happen. The Catholic Church had to be pastoral to address changing needs of the people.

Yes, until the mid-20th century it was forbidden to celebrate Mass after noon. The Church has relaxed that law out of pastoral necessity.

Our cathedral has seven Sunday Masses (though mostly celebrated by different priests). What would happen if that was all compressed to a single Mass? You would have people all the way down the street for probably blocks.

 

[ConfusedLucy]

I’m sorry if this sounds negative but a large parish with multiple back to back masses must surely feel like a Eucharist conveyor belt. I do understand the logic of consolidation to save money but there must be loads of issues with cramming so many parishioners in one place.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I’m sorry if this sounds negative but a large parish with multiple back to back masses must surely feel like a Eucharist conveyor belt. I do understand the logic of consolidation to save money but there must be loads of issues with cramming so many parishioners in one place.

Apart from the parking lots tending to fill up for the most popular Masses, and some traffic jams getting in and out of the lot, it isn’t a problem. Nor does it feel like a conveyor belt. It feels like a full or reasonably full parish church coming together for Sunday Mass.

it’s certainly more pleasant and heartening to go to a Mass and see a lot of other Catholics attending than to go to one and see a mostly empty church.

 

[ShowersofRoses]

It feels like a full or reasonably full parish church coming together for Sunday Mass.

it’s certainly more pleasant and heartening to go to a Mass and see a lot of other Catholics attending than to go to one and see a mostly empty church.

Yep. It feels like healthy, thriving, growing church community, not a conveyor belt.

 

[mrsdizzyd]

No, Definitely not. At my parish there is about an hour between the end of one mass and the start of another. There is still time to greet the priest after service or to stay and say a rosary.

 

[HolySpirit]

I have heard that a Priest may have a mass up to 5 times per day.

 

[steve-b]

You are kidding me

Where is that parish if you don’t mind my asking? That is incredible. I have never heard of such a large parish!

The question remains though why not build more Churchs if that is the case?

We have 5 masses in our parish on Sunday, which is not unusual. We have the 5:30 p.m.Saturday evening vigil mass, that counts for Sunday, and 4 Sunday masses. We have 3000 families in our parish. Within a 20 mile radius there are 7 parishes, all about the same size, with 5 masses scheduled in each parish for Sunday. All have daily mass as well. During the week then, They all have the early morning mass AND 2 have a noon mass as well.

 

[dochawk]

As far as the number of Masses said, it’s a near-universal dispensation for multiple Masses per priest and multiple per church.

Some, not all, EC and EO have the one Eucharist/altar/dat rule.

Here in Las Vegas, the RC church up the street has, I believe, 12,000 families, while one in the northwest has 17,000.

I’ve been told that under general rules/guidelines, we should have 99 parishes here–but there aren’t a fraction that many priests in the diocese.

It really comes down to making the Eucharist available to everyone.

Given sufficient priests and funds, we could see smaller parishes again.

(My own EC parish is about 80 families).

hawk

 

[Deditus_Domina]

In my area the problem is that we have had a Catholic boom in an old area that used to be dominated by another faith. I have two parishes in walking distance - both full to capacity with 4000+ families and good size schools. The churches seat 700-800. One parish has 6 masses in 2 languages on Sunday with 2 priests , the other 8 masses in 3 languages and 3 priests. Masses are spaced an hour apart but it does quite often feel like “the next show”. It is a constant flow in and out, taking out and putting away, vesting and unvesting all day long. Here we go again.

 

[Maxwell03]

Hi

In the Philippines some priests hold around 32,000 faithful

 

[boclucky14]

You pretty much described my city I live in, and i am in the buckle of the Bible belt where the Catholic population is only about 3% in the youngest diocese of the US.

On top of the English masses, almost every Church here also has a very sizable Hispanic community.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I have heard that a Priest may have a mass up to 5 times per day.

I would hope the poor priest doesn’t have to say 5 Masses per day. He would be so worn out, especially if he had to travel between two churches.

I can see a priest saying a maximum of 3.

The parishes that I know that have 5 Masses in a day all have at least 2 priests (sometimes 3) and a deacon helping them out.

 

[ConfusedLucy]

It’s good to see such large numbers but it must bring it’s challenges. Not everywhere has the right infrastructure for large numbers of commuting parishioners. The priest could be spread pretty thin and the parish feel impersonal.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

The priest could be spread pretty thin and the parish feel impersonal.

I think both of these things happen very frequently, and this is probably a cause of many threads on here where somebody goes to church and doesn’t feel “welcomed”.

I notice that the people who don’t feel “welcomed” often haven’t been to Catholic church in many years, or they are new Catholics. In either case, they likely aren’t aware of the size of Catholic parishes or the fact that the priests are spread so thin these days.

 

[ConfusedLucy]

Also many will have had elderly relatives who used to know their priests personally for example. I don’t think the average person has an up to date idea of modern parish or appreciates how hard it is when there aren’t enough priests to go around.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

The elderly will often still know the priests personally. In many cases this is because the person has either been in the parish for many decades and makes a point of knowing all what goes on and are/ have been involved in ministries, with the school, with organizations etc., and also the elderly are frequently at daily Mass and the priests are seeing them over and over during the week. Plus, their name has often been on the contributor rolls for a long time. If you contribute a significant amount of money over time, the parish will know who you are (as bad as that sounds).