I see a lot of threads asking “why” it is a sin to miss mass. Sometimes they are in the moral theology forum, but other times I see them elsewhere. It’s not that I mind the question, but it is almost never posed as “uh, oh, I missed mass. Does this mean I am in mortal sin?” It usually is posed as, “I disagree that missing mass is a sin. Please explain why it is a sin.” This is why I have chosen to post in the Liturgy and Sacraments thread rather than moral theology. This seems to not be an issue of wanting to avoid sin, but rather an issue of wanting to have all the rights of being Catholic (able to take Eucharist) without the inconvenience of a demand on ones schedule. Why do you want to miss mass in he first place? Don’t you like mass? I love mass!
Please note, I am not directing this at people who want to go to mass but cannot. I am talking about people who frankly want to attend mass ONLY when they want to and do not want to be obligated otherwise.
Speaking as someone who’s “been there, done that,” there were several factors that went into why I seldom showed up for Mass for a long stretch of years. A big one was that I was very poorly catechized. Although my mother may have mentioned a couple times over the years that it was a sin to miss Mass, the most they told us at school was that we were expected to go each week. It being a mortal sin wasn’t something I knew until I started restrengthening my faith a few years ago. Something else I didn’t know until then was that we shouldn’t receive the Eucharist in a state of mortal sin, and that doing so was also a mortal sin. I was one of those who’d been taught that, outside of murder and adultery, there wasn’t much that counted as a mortal sin.
Another factor was that, since I didn’t have a full understanding of missing Mass being a mortal sin, I just didn’t see it as being that important. I’d try to get my wife to take our son, and we’d try to make it on Easter and Christmas, but outside of that I didn’t think much of it. I figured I was doing my part as a Catholic. I was a good person overall, I got my kids baptized, I sent them to Catholic school, said Grace before meals, watched The Ten Commandments with the family every Easter and usually made it to Mass at least once a year. I was certainly doing better than a lot of my peers. Heck, I even went to Confession when my kids had their First Communions, so that put me far ahead of all the other Catholics in my peer group, so why do anything different?
The biggest issue, though, was that I just didn’t feel like going. Why put my Sunday mornings on hold until 9:00, 10:00 or even noon when there was breakfast to be had, and hiking & shopping to be done. And back when I was still into sports, going to Mass would have interfered with getting ready to watch Game Day. As for Holy Days of Obligation, why on earth would I go during the week? It wasn’t a Sunday. This was even one of my biggest hurdles after I started reinvigorating my faith. I work nights so I certainly wasn’t going to lose out on any sleep on the weeks I worked Saturday nights, whether I went Saturday evening or Sunday morning. And if I didn’t get enough sleep the night before, that pillow was always so tempting. It took a big effort to start going every other week, and a complete shift in my outlook to start going weekly.
