No Priest at Church yesterday - was it still Mass?

[plato3]

Pray for vocations. Volunteer to help at your parish. This is not an isolated incident. There are already plans in some areas to have traveling priests, doing what they can, covering more than one church. We need strong parishes with lay people ready to step up and help in any way that they have been gifted.

 

[Kielbasi]

After a short bit, they did the readings for the day, said the prayers, we stood & said the Our Father and then they did communion (without the wine of course.) Afterwards they said one more prayer, some announcements and then everyone got up and left. The whole thing lasted about 15 minutes. My question… did that fufill our Sunday obligation?

In my opinion, and from my understanding, is that if you show up to a scheduled mass on Saturday or Sunday, you’ve fulfilled your obligation.

Its outside of your control if they cancel the mass or substituted a communion service, or if the priest leaves town, or if the consecration isn’t valid, or whatever.

 

[Br.Rich_SFO]

mhansen:

Well, Br. Rich, it appears that the woman honestly didn’t know. Whether or not this makes her a “reasonable” Catholic in your eyes is something YOU’LL have to decide. As this situation is NOT the norm, and frankly, I’ve never had it happen to me in all of my 30 years, I wouldn’t expect everyone to know the intricacies of this situation.

The woman said she didn’t know. Shall we accuse her of lying as well as missing Mass? As for me, I’ll take her at her word.

Mike

I’m trying to respond to the circumstances not the person. I agree if they did not know then they did not know. When I speak of “a reasonable Catholic” I did not mean specifically the original poster, I meant simply that a Catholic in general should know this. Yes I will agree many RCIA and and catechetical programs do fail in this area. I personally think that the Deacon should have said this is a communion service NOT Mass. If you can possibly return for Sunday Mass tomorrow morning you should.

 

[SMHW]

Br. Rich SFO:

If this was Sunday your Sunday Obligation would automatically be excused because there was no Mass available for you to attend if this was the only Mass.

I assume that you mean 4 pm Saturday evening then everyone would have been obligated to return on Sunday morning for Mass.

The person should have made an announcement that Fr. was not going to be there that we would have a Communion service that did NOT satisfy the Sunday obligation and that everyone was expected back on Sunday morning for Mass.

It seems to me that whatever the obligation of the those who show up expecting to attend Mass might be, there is also a huge responsibility on the part of those who are in charge of deciding whether to hold a communion service or to just cancel. By going ahead with a communion service, they are in fact treating it as a replacement for Mass.

II respectfully question your assertation that a reasonable Catholic would understand that they ought to come back at a later time. In fact I suspect most priests or deacons would tell those who show up that they don’t need to come back. I don’t mean to imply that this is the way things ought to be; I am merely saying that a reasonably knowledgable Catholic of today is probably going to defer to the parish leaders.

I believe there has been some concern from Rome about holding communion services on weekdays for just this reason. I think bishops, especially in areas with priest shortages, need to offer more instruction about what it means to make a reasonable effort to attend Mass in their diocese.

 

[Br.Rich_SFO]

Kielbasi:

In my opinion, and from my understanding, is that if you show up to a scheduled mass on Saturday or Sunday, you’ve fulfilled your obligation.

Its outside of your control if they cancel the mass or substituted a communion service, or if the priest leaves town, or if the consecration isn’t valid, or whatever.

I’m going to jump into this because I feel strongly about this. If you show up for a Mass on Sunday morning that is cancelled AND there is no other Mass scheduled that Sunday you are excused from the obligation, you don’t fulfill the obligation.

If you show up for 8 AM Mass and it is announced that Father will be delayed until 9 AM. You cannot just leave saying well I was here but Fr. wasn’t therefore I met my obligation! No you must remain or return for Mass at 9 AM if nothing truly prevents you from doing so. The baseball game starting at 10 does not count.

 

[carol_marie]

Thanks for all the replies… I so appreciate that I can bring my concerns to this forum… Bless you all.

Follow up: I called my Parish and none of the Priests were available to answer my question. I then called my sponsor from my RCIA class & explained the situation to her. She reminded me that I have to have knowledge that something is wrong & then choose it anyhow for it to be a sin. I had no idea it didn’t “count” as my Sunday obligation… it was not my intention to miss mass. Had I known that I needed to go back on Sunday, I would have rearranged my day to do so. I know this & more importantly, God knows this. So threre was no sin. She said that since we did communion, she herself wasn’t sure if it “counted” either? So I suppose I’m not the only “unreasonable Catholic?”

At any rate, it’s over & done with. Hopefully the situation will not come up again but if it does - now I know I still need to go to mass - with a Priest.

And I agree with the poster who said we should all pray for more Priests. How truly necessary they are.

 

[Searching13]

My friend told me that a Priest told her that we are excused from 2 Masses a year if we are traveling.

Another Priest told me that I should confess missing Sunday Mass on a cruise, when the scheduled Mass conflicted with a tour I had planned before I knew the time of the only Mass.

(I did attend most of the daily Masses on the cruise, and my Pastor just looked at me funny-like when I asked him)

Different Priests will give different answers even though both are good priests.

I honestly believe that the service did count, but even if I am wrong, there was no sin, since there was a good intention to attend Mass, and you showed up for a scheduled Mass.

Pray–don’t worry

 

[otm]

carol marie:

Well if it didn’t count as “mass” I think they should have announced that because how is a new Catholic to know??? At that time rather than waiting around for it to start while the person went home for the “prayer book” we could’ve probably found another Catholic Church one town over and just been a bit late. What’s the point of a prayer service/communion if it doesn’t count as mass? At least give us the option of walking out if we want. (we were seated - all 10 of us in the FRONT row) and they told us to “sight tight.”

Also, at one point I turned around and asked the person behind me, “How will we do communion - I thought only a Priest could do the concecration?” (sp?) And she said, “Oh we have concecrated hosts… don’t worry…”

Honestly, if I had know it wasn’t a mass I would not have stayed. I have a hard enough time keeping all my kids good for mass - optional prayer services are not on our agenda.

Well, you had a chance to receive Our Lord in Communion. you had a chance to be fed by Him Who died for our sins. That is not thesame as being able to participate in the ongoing offereing He makes of Himself to the Father, as we do at Mass, but I would think, with Mass not available, it comes a pretty close second.

Perhaps another way of looking at it is this: for something to be a serious sin, 1) it must be a serious matter; 2) we must know that it is a serious matter, and 3) we must intend the wrong.

You seem cognizant of the fact that attendance at Mass is a serious matter, so 1 & 2 are fulfilled, but you had no intention of doing a serious wrong (at least, from your post that seems obvious), so you did the best you could given the circumstances.

Would it have been better to dismiss everyone and tell them to go to church somewhere else? That is a difficult judgement call. However, there are currently parishes which do not have a Mass every weekend; sometimes all they have is what you attended. Time, distance to another Mass, and availabilty of transportation, among other things, all weigh in.

Given what you knew then, it appears you did the right thing. You may not have actually been able to find another parish and arrive in time to attend Mass that evening, had you left; you would then have made a valiant attempt, but not only not attended Mass, but also missed Communion. Seems you did the right thing.

Next time, having been through this, you might have a different perspective, as you now have different knowledge. But that is something to be dealt with in the future. and with luck, it will never occur.

 

[otm]

Petertherock:

We had a similar thing happen about a month or so ago. Although the Communion service was more organized and lasted longer than 15 minutes. Our deacon who ran the service told everyone that this counted for the Sunday obligation.

The deacon was slightly incorrect, as where Mass is not available, no boligation exists, so nothing “counts” for the obligtion - there is no obligation.

 

[otm]

All of which brings up the interesting question, how do we decide what is “reasonable”?

This is something that makes a lot of people really uncomfortable, as they want some demarcation of what is and what is not unreasonable.

Is a Mass 5 miles away an unreasonable distance? 10? 20? 50?

Is an hour wait unreasonable? 2 hours? 8 or 9?

If you planned on going Sunday morning, and had dinner plans with guests at 5 with dinner at 6, the a.m. Mass is cancelled, and the only one available is at 6, are you required to cancel dinner? Does it make a difference that this may be the only time you can have these guest over? Or that the evening Mass is 5 (sor 10, or 20, 0r 50) miles away make a difference?

There are two difficulties. Once we start defining what is or is not acceptable, we open ourselves to legalism, similar to the old issue of “how late can I come to Mass, and how early can I leave and still make my obligation?”. The other side of the coin is to risk casualness about the whole issue, to the point that any inconvenience is a source of missing Mass.

Being adult, and being responsible is so interesting…