Vatican letter settles and raises questions about U.S. Mass obligation
Is December 9 a holy day of obligation? Looks like it.
A new legal clarification from the Vatican’s canonical department has raised questions about the U.S. bishops’ conference policy on days of precept — holy days of obligation when Catholics are required to go to Mass — in some circumstances.
A copy of a letter issued by the Dicastery for Legislative Texts, responsible for issuing formal interpretations of canon law, addressed to Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, surfaced online this week, addressing the obligation for Catholics to attend Mass when a liturgical solemnity falls on a Sunday and its celebration is moved to the day immediately before or after.
Standing USCCB policy has provided since 1992 that when certain feast days are transferred from a Sunday to the preceding Saturday or following Monday “the precept to attend Mass is abrogated.”
The U.S. bishops’ policy notwithstanding, Bishop Paprocki, to whom the Vatican letter dated Sept. 4 responded in his role as chair of the bishops’ committee on canonical affairs and Church governance, posed the question to Rome “If a Holy Day of Obligation in the Advent Lent or Easter season falls on a Sunday and the Solemnity is transferred to a Monday, does the obligation to attend Mass still apply?”
“As a matter of fact,” responded the dicastery’s prefect, Archbishop Filippo Iannone, canon law “establishes the feasts which must be observed as days of obligation.”
These are listed in the Code of Canon Law as the Nativity of the Lord, the Epiphany, the Ascension, the Body and Blood of Christ, Holy Mary the Mother of God, her Immaculate Conception, her Assumption, Saint Joseph, Saint Peter and Saint Paul the Apostles, and All Saints.
“The canon does not provide for exceptions. For those reasons, those feasts are always days of obligation, and so even when the aforementioned transfer of the feast occurs.” Iannone said. “Therefore, in that year, the feast must be observed as a day of obligation on the day to which it is transferred.”
While making clear the obligation to attend Mass remains in force in such situations, the dicastery’s letter also notes the legal principle that “no one is bound to the impossible” and that when individual “grave cause renders it impossible [for a person] to attend Holy Mass… a dispensation is not needed.”
The prospective inconvenience of attending Mass on a second successive day, or the ordinary difficulties of attending Mass during the working week are not usually held by canonical commentators to meet the canonical standard of “grave cause.”
While the dicastery’s legal reasoning and conclusion are clear in the letter, the reason for Bishop Paprocki having asked the question in the first place is not.
The bishops’ conference is competent to issue norms dispensing the precept for Catholics to attend Mass, and to regulate the transfer of the celebration of holy days of obligation. As such, the standing USCCB’s particular law for the United States would seem to make Paprocki’s general question to the Vatican about the universal law moot.
One possible explanation for Bishop Paprocki’s initial inquiry could stem from a gap in the USCCB norms, which do not appear to be reflected in the 2024 liturgical calendar for the United States, issued by the conference.
The 1992 norms state, after listing the days of precept under universal law, that “Whenever January 1, the solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, or August 15, the solemnity of the Assumption, or November 1, the solemnity of All Saints, falls on a Saturday or on a Monday, the precept to attend Mass is abrogated.”
Absent from the list of feasts for which the precept is abrogated when transferred to a Saturday or Sunday is the national patronal feast of the United States, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, properly celebrated on December 8, which this year falls on the second Sunday of Advent.
According to the USCCB’s own norms, while the feast of the Immaculate Conception is this year transferred to the Monday, December 9, the obligation to attend Mass is not dispensed. But despite that, the USCCB’s 2024 liturgical calendar lists the feast as “not a Holyday [sic] of Obligation this year.”
It is possible that either the USCCB calendar designation was made in error, or that there was an internal misunderstanding at the conference about the feast of the Immaculate Conception, the national patronal feast, having been excluded from the 1992 norm.
Sources close to the conference told The Pillar Wednesday that the origin of Bishop Paprocki’s dubium to Rome was a disagreement between the canonical affairs committee and the conference’s committee on divine worship, chaired by Bishop Steven Lopes.
According to some sources, Lopes’ committee contended that the obligation to attend Mass on the feast of the Immaculate Conception this year would be dispensed automatically by the universal law by virtue of the feast being transferred to a Monday. Paprocki’s committee reportedly disagreed and sought clarification from the dicastery.
Whatever the reason for the bishop’s initial decision to ask Rome for clarification, the dicastery’s response, read together with the USCCB’s own norms, would seem to make clear that the feast of the Immaculate Conception remains a holy day of obligation for Catholics in the U.S. this year, despite the listing in the conference calendar.
The USCCB did not respond to questions from The Pillar about the listing of the feast in the calendar, the conference’s standing norms, or the letter from the Dicastery for Legislative Texts.
“Make holy days great again”! It’s always struck me as a weak argument that it might be too difficult for American Catholics to attend Mass two days in a row. Let’s hope this clarification from Rome makes that silliness go away.
Something about this makes my blood boil. Perhaps it's the short notice. (I have tried to be careful with my understanding of the canonical norms regarding holy days of obligation and thought I had found a clear statement, though not directly from the Code of Canon Law, that transferred holy days were not of obligation.) Perhaps it's the way that the difficulty of attending Mass on a work day is discarded so casually, at least according to the summary here. The possibility of attending Mass on a work day you can't take off depends heavily on the Mass times provided by nearby parishes and on your work schedule, and "ordinary difficulties of attending Mass during the working week" can be substantial. Maybe for a bishop, playing hooky at the Dicastery isn't a big deal. For a professor or a doctor, the situation can be quite different. It seems like that should be a case-by-case question of conscience, not a blanket "no".