DIFFICULT MORAL QUESTIONS

Question 10: Must one participate in questionable Sunday celebrations in the priest’s absence?

Where we live there are not many Catholics and even fewer priests. The priest who takes care of our parish also has three others. Usually he is at each of them only every fourth weekend. (On Christmas and Easter, and now and then at other times, he or another priest says Mass at two of the parishes, and then almost everyone makes it to one or the other of them.) Anyway, most weekends we do not have Mass at our parish. Instead, Sister Bernice, who runs both our parish and the one nearest us, does a “Sunday celebration,” though it actually is Saturday evening every other weekend, since Sister alternates Sundays at the two parishes.

Everything is exactly the same as Mass through the collection after the prayers of the faithful; then Sister skips to the Our Father, and everything is the same as Mass right to the end. Sister and three women, friends of hers, do everything: lead the hymns, give out hosts Father consecrated the last time he was here to say Mass, and even take up the collection. Sister wears an alb and a stole—though, for some reason, she wears it over one shoulder and tied at the opposite hip—and the other women wear cassocks and surplices, like altar girls. All this is pretty obnoxious to my wife and me, and we also do not care for Sister’s sermons, which are awfully long-winded.

We have been told that going to this celebration “fulfills the Sunday obligation.” But I do not see how that can be, since I thought the Sunday obligation was to hear Mass, and this celebration is not Mass (as Sister Bernice says every time before the opening hymn). If I am right, I do not see that we need to go to it at all. We could as well watch a Mass on television. I asked the priest about this the last time he was here, but he just said the Sunday obligation isn’t eliminated because he isn’t here to say Mass and this is the best they can do.

Analysis:

The question is whether Catholics ought to attend Sunday celebrations in the absence of a priest. The Church’s law requiring Sunday Mass attendance does not exhaust Catholics’ obligation of Sunday worship. When one cannot participate in Sunday Mass, it is appropriate to join in a Sunday celebration, especially one including holy Communion. Sister Bernice apparently leads the Sunday celebration as a deacon would rather than as a layperson should. The questioner should ask her and/or the pastor to correct this abuse, and, if necessary, should petition the bishop to do so.

The reply could be along the following lines:

You say your wife and you find Sister Bernice’s Sunday celebrations “obnoxious” and apparently you feel some resentment toward her. In the situation you describe, negative feelings are natural enough. But in trying to deal with the situation, you must guard against acting on resentment or other hostile feelings. Your sole aim should be to try to improve matters, not only for your own family and other parishioners but for your pastor and Sister Bernice. Assume that they mean well. Ask the Holy Spirit for the light and love you will need, and strive to build up and heal their relationship with disaffected parishioners. If your efforts seem fruitless, try to be patient, and, when you can participate in a Mass, offer this and all your sufferings along with Jesus’ sacrifice.

I shall attempt to respond to your question, but you also might profit by studying the relevant documents of the Holy See and of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.³⁶ Even though your parish’s Sunday celebration involves certain abuses, I do not agree that you “could as well watch a Mass on television.” I shall try, first, to clarify the Sunday obligation of Catholics whose parishes have a Sunday celebration authorized by the bishop when no priest is available to offer Mass. Then I shall make some suggestions about dealing with the abuses.

To understand the Sunday obligation, one must bear several things in mind. All human beings, as rational creatures, owe God worship. In revealing himself, God established the weekly cycle for work and worship, so that all who accept God’s revelation in the Old Testament should set aside one day each week primarily to worship him. At the Last Supper, Jesus commanded his followers to do the Eucharist in memory of him, thus specifying the central act of Christian worship. Since he rose from the dead on Sunday, Christians from the beginning recognized that day, rather than the Jewish Sabbath, as appropriate for their regular celebration of the Eucharist (see LCL, 146–47). So, although the Church’s law reminds Catholics of their Sunday obligation (see CIC, c. 1247), this obligation would exist even if there were no such law regarding it. Therefore, the law should not be read legalistically as if it exhausted the obligation.

When possible, Catholics should gather together on Sunday to celebrate the Eucharist by participating in a complete Mass. The Mass makes Jesus’ sacrifice present in order that his disciples may join him in it, and thereby realize and experience their communion with him and one another—a communion that begins in the Church’s eucharistic worship but is to be perfected in unending heavenly communion. When no priest is available to say Mass, the Sunday gathering of the parish community to listen to the day’s readings from sacred Scripture and receive holy Communion is appropriate for two reasons. First, under these circumstances this fulfills as well as possible the obligation to worship—an obligation incumbent not only on individuals but on the community, whose duty it is to form and actualize a church, that is, a portion of Jesus’ body. Second, by worthily receiving holy Communion, one is bodily united with Jesus and shares in his resurrection life.

It is better for Catholics who cannot come to any sort of communal celebration on Sunday to watch a Mass on television than entirely omit worship, since thereby they listen to the day’s readings and are helped to lift their minds and hearts to God in personal worship. Still, watching the Mass on television hardly is adequate for those able to participate in a communal celebration, since people watching television do not thereby come together as a church or receive holy Communion. Therefore, although there can be exceptions, Catholics who cannot participate in a Sunday Mass generally should participate in a Sunday celebration authorized by the bishop if one is available.

Do the faithful have a legal obligation to do so? Strictly speaking, no. The relevant provision of the Church’s law is:

 If because of lack of a sacred minister or for other grave cause participation in the celebration of the Eucharist is impossible, it is specially recommended that the faithful take part in the liturgy of the word if it is celebrated in the parish church or in another sacred place according to the prescriptions of the diocesan bishop, or engage in prayer for an appropriate amount of time personally or in a family or, as occasion offers, in groups of families. (CIC, c. 1248, §2)

At the same time, the Congregation for Divine Worship strongly urges the faithful to adopt the latter option when “a celebration of the word of God along with the giving of holy Communion is not possible” and observes that in such circumstances the televising of liturgical services can be helpful.³⁷ This suggests that in a situation like yours, where a celebration of the word with holy Communion is available, it would be inappropriate to use the option of worshipping in the family or group of families, or to watch a televised Mass instead.

It appears from your description of the arrangement for Christmas, Easter, and some other times that, on at least some Sundays when there is no Mass in your own parish, it would be no great hardship for you to go to another parish where Mass is offered. If so, should you? Certainly, you may, but I do not think you must. By authorizing a Sunday celebration in your parish, the bishop implies that he judges going elsewhere to Mass too difficult for members of your parish considered as a whole. Therefore, as part of the parish community, even those who could go to Mass elsewhere may worship with their fellow parishioners so as to maintain solidarity with them and help sustain the parish as a worshipping body. However, you can fulfill that responsibility to your parish not only by participating in the Sunday celebration when you cannot get to Mass elsewhere but by contributing generously to other parish activities, such as catechetical programs.

At the same time, in many situations the faithful should, in my judgment, be willing to make greater sacrifices to gather for Mass, so that Sunday celebrations without a priest would seldom if ever seem appropriate to a bishop. As the numbers of ordained priests decline, the faithful also should be prepared to accept the combining of parishes and closing of churches. Under persecution, the faithful frequently have taken great risks, even to life itself, to hear Mass and receive holy Communion. So, people in your area should consider traveling the required distance every Sunday, as they do on Christmas and Easter, to obviate or, at least, reduce the need for Sunday celebrations without a priest, and they should consider asking the bishop to reorganize the four parishes into two, at each of which Mass could be offered at least every other Sunday.³⁸

Meanwhile, however, the Sunday celebrations in your parish present a problem. How serious is it and how should you deal with it?

Sister Bernice appropriately makes it clear that the Sunday celebration she conducts is not a Mass, and she rightly skips from the collection after the prayers of the faithful to the Our Father, omitting entirely the central parts of the Mass—the preparation of the gifts, preface, and eucharistic prayer—which can be carried out only by an ordained priest. However, she should not be wearing a stole, which is reserved to those who have been ordained and which, according to your description, she wears as deacons do. Also, if you are correct in saying she does everything through the prayers of the faithful and from the Our Father on, “exactly the same as Mass,” she is inappropriately doing other things proper to a deacon or priest, such as using forms of greeting and blessing reserved to them, and using the presidential chair. For Sister Bernice and her three friends to monopolize ministerial roles also is questionable, for it is appropriate that even the ordained who preside invite and encourage other suitable members of the congregation to serve by turns as lectors, altar servers, leaders of song, and ushers. If her sermons are homilies provided by the bishop or pastor for her to read, it is right for her to read them. If she has been delegated by the bishop to preach, she “may give those present a brief explanation of the biblical text, so that they may understand through faith the meaning of the celebration.”³⁹ But if she gives her own homilies, in this respect, too, Sister Bernice is assuming a function reserved to the ordained.⁴⁰

While these abuses do not negate the celebration’s essential value as worship, they are serious. What might you do about them?

Since your parish’s community already is weakened by not having a full-time pastor, I would be cautious about discussing the abuses with other parishioners lest the parish be divided into factions. Still, by means of discreet conversations with a small number of devout and sensible parishioners on good terms with the pastor, you might try to enlist the cooperation of three or four in an effort to bring about the abuses’ correction. Without the support of such a group, your concerns are more likely to be ignored or rejected as the complaints of a persnickety conservative. Accompanied by a few others of the right sort and reinforced by their testimony, you are more likely to obtain a serious hearing and favorable action.

You could begin by gently questioning Sister Bernice about the matters that have concerned you, and you also could provide her with copies of the relevant documents if she does not already have them. If the abuses are not corrected, you could next discuss them with the pastor. If both of them ever are at the parish at the same time, it probably would be best to try to see them together.

If such efforts do not lead to appropriate changes, you should call the matter to the bishop’s attention. You could write to him, carefully describing the way Sister Bernice conducts the Sunday celebration and briefly summarizing your conversation with her and/or the pastor. In speaking with the pastor and writing to the bishop, do not judge and condemn what Sister Bernice has been doing. Instead, question its conformity to relevant Church norms, its suitability to the spiritual needs of parishioners, and the likelihood that it will sustain their solidarity. Moreover, in communicating with your bishop, show the respect you would show to Jesus, in whose person the bishop leads the Church in your region. If he approves some of the things to which you object, accept his judgment in a docile spirit. However, if he does not respond to you within a reasonable time, or seems to tolerate recognized and admitted abuses, or promises action but fails to bring about reforms, you should communicate with him persistently, as children with a serious problem do with a distracted parent whom they expect to respond with faithful love.

If nothing is ever done about the abuses, you probably should put up with them and continue to participate in the Sunday celebration at your parish except when you can go to Mass elsewhere. Even though you could worship within your own household, or with one or more neighboring families, that would both deprive you of holy Communion and further weaken the parish community. Nevertheless, if the Sunday celebrations become intolerable—for example, through the introduction of more serious abuses—never neglect Sunday worship. On those Sundays when you cannot go elsewhere to Mass or a properly conducted celebration, carefully plan and carry out Sunday worship with your own family and, perhaps, some others. Its suitable elements might include the offices of readings and/or morning prayer from the day’s Liturgy of the Hours (for some families, the devout recitation of five decades of the rosary with meditation on the glorious mysteries), reading and discussion of the Scripture passages assigned for the day in the lectionary, recitation of the Creed, petitions for various needs, and spiritual communion—that is, an act of faith in Jesus’ bodily presence in the Eucharist together with appropriate meditation to elicit the desire actually to receive him.

If your diocese has a program for the permanent diaconate, you might ask the bishop whether he would appoint a deacon to preside at the Sunday celebration if a deacon were available. If he says yes, you might look into the diaconate program and consider whether you might be called to serve the Church in this way. You also should encourage men you know, who might be called to this service even if you are not, to consider the possibility that they have this calling. Finally, if you are not already doing so, you should pray for an increase in vocations to the priesthood, and should encourage and support anyone who seems to have such a vocation in pursuing it.

36. Congregation for Divine Worship, Directory for Sunday Celebrations in the Absence of a Priest, approved and confirmed by Pope John Paul II (21 May 1988) and issued by the Congregation (2 June 1988), Origins, 18:19 (20 Oct. 1988): 301, 303–7; Bishops’ Committee on the Liturgy, National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Gathered in Steadfast Faith: Statement on Sunday Worship in the Absence of a Priest (Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1991); Sunday Celebrations in the Absence of a Priest: Leader’s Edition, approved for use in the dioceses of the United States of America by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (New York: Catholic Book Publishing, 1994). There may be additional binding diocesan norms about this matter; you can write or call the office of the diocese and ask whether such regulations exist and, if so, how to obtain a copy. If supplementary norms have been issued, they specify the responsibilities legislated by the universal Church and ought to be taken into account in considering the advice offered in this response.

37. Directory, 2, 32 (emphasis added), Origins, 306.

38. Archbishop James Keleher of Kansas City and the other bishops of Kansas issued a joint pastoral, “Sunday Eucharist: Do This in Memory of Me”—see “Kansas Bishops: Policy Restricts Sunday Communion without Mass,” Origins, 25:8 (13 July 1995): 121, 123–24—in which they explained (123) that “holy communion regularly received outside of Mass is a short-term solution that has all the makings of becoming a long-term problem” and that it “has implications that are disturbing”; they therefore established a policy restricting Sunday celebrations without a priest, and added: “We recognize that this policy calls some of the faithful to sacrifices and hardships that match those of our ancestors in the faith.” James Dallen, The Dilemma of Priestless Sundays (Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 1994), argues against forgoing the Sunday Eucharist; though I do not agree with everything Dallen says, his main argument seems sound and compelling.

39. Sunday Celebrations in the Absence of a Priest: Leader’s Edition, 121.

40. See CIC, c. 767, §1; Congregation for Divine Worship, Directory, 3, 43, Origins, 306.