Holy Days, Catholic guilt, and Italian lawyers

I promise I'm not trying to make up excuses to skip Mass...

Oct 16, 2024

I just noticed a letter posted on X from Archbishop Filippo Iannone, Prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Legislative Texts, addressed to Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, the chairman of the USCCB’s Canonical Affairs Committee. The letter addresses the question of whether the faithful have an obligation to go to Mass when the date of a Holy Day of Obligation changes and the feast is moved from Sunday to Monday.

According to the letter, Paprocki asked the dicastery, “If a Holy Day of Obligation in the Advent, Lent or Easter season falls on a Sunday and the Solemnity is transferred to Monday, does the obligation to attend Mass still apply?”

Where’s this coming from?

It seems strange that Paprocki asks this question so broadly, because in the United States (that I can think of, anyway) the only case when this question ever applies is the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, which normally falls on December 8. When December 8 falls on the Second Sunday of Advent (as it does this year), the feast of the Immaculate Conception is transferred to Monday, December 9, but typically the obligation to attend Mass is abrogated.

For example the Archdiocese of Boston’s list of holy days for the calendar year 2024 says (emphasis added), “December 9, 2024 (Moved from Sunday, Dec. 8, 2024; Mass obligation abrogated) – The Feast of the Immaculate Conception.”

Now, I’m not writing this in order to wriggle my way out of going to Mass on December 9. I’d planned to go anyway. The last time the feast of the Immaculate Conception fell on Monday, December 9, was in 2019. I remember because that was the day my mother died. This date, therefore, is very meaningful to me.

Why ask Rome?

The reason why I’m writing about this is because the Vatican’s reasoning does not appear to take into account the rules decreed by the USCCB back in the early 1990s.

Archbishop Iannone’s letter to Bishop Paprocki says (emphasis added):

We will only give a few clarifications below since the canonical norms relating to the subject are clear. As a matter of fact, can. 1246, § 1, establishes the feasts that must be observed as days of obligation. 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. Therefore, in that year, the feast must be observed as a day of obligation on the day to which it is transferred. … It is in this sense that n. 2181 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) states that the faithful are obliged to participate in the Eucharist on days of obligation, unless excused for a serious reason (for example, illness, the care of infants) or dispensed by their own pastors (for a just cause)

It may be true that “The canon does not provide for exceptions.” But for over three decades, the US bishops have provided for exceptions (with Vatican approval) regarding three holy days of obligation. In December 1991 the NCCB (which later became the USCCB) made a decree concerning holy days of obligation. It was approved by the Vatican in 1992 in conformity with canon 1246. It went into effect on January 1, 1993. Regarding these exceptions, the decree states:

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.

It seems likely that when the prefect wrote “those feasts are always days of obligation” in his response, he failed to consider the (admittedly complicated) norms in the US. According to the rules set by the US Bishops, when certain holy days fall on certain days of the week, they are not always holy days of obligation.1

It seems odd that Bishop Paprocki would ask Rome’s Dicastery for Legislative Texts this question, given the unusual norms in effect in the US. If this was a question requiring a solution for the entire US Church, why not deal with it in the same way it was handled in the early 1990s — by drafting a proposal, seeking the agreement of the body of bishops, and then sending it to the Vatican for approval according to Canon 1246. §2.2

The inevitable fallout

Archbishop Iannone signs off his letter with the words, “With the hope that this response may be useful.” Unfortunately the good archbishop, who is Italian, likely didn’t account for the uniquely American form of religious scrupulosity and Catholic guilt that leads countless among us every week to worry about whether we’ve committed a mortal sin because we received Communion only 58 minutes after swallowing the last of our Cheerios.

In his letter, Archbishop Iannone does mention, “The situation in which a grave cause renders it impossible to attend Holy Mass.” But that could make it even worse. Many of us read “grave cause” as, “I have open heart surgery scheduled for Monday and if I try to squeeze in the 6:00 am Mass at St. Dymphna’s on the other side of town I won’t be able to get to the hospital in time to be intubated.” And some of us only consider getting to church as “impossible” if we made a good faith effort to drive to Mass during an ice storm and didn’t survive the trip. (It’s more of a past-tense thing.)

Irish Solution

I wondered about how other countries handle this sort of thing. I asked a friend from England, and he said he thinks all the holy days were relegated to Sunday there. The feast of the Immaculate Conception can’t move to Sunday because it’s always in Advent, so there is no obligation to go to Mass for that Solemnity.

I spoke with an Irish friend about what happens in his country when March 17 falls on a Sunday. The feast day of their country’s patron, St. Patrick, always happens during Lent and is a holy day of obligation there. He said he wasn’t sure, so he pulled out his copy of The Liturgical Calendar for Ireland 2024.3

Bishops, trolls, and bishoptrolls

Thanks to Bishop Paprocki’s dubia and Archbishop Iannone’s response, I can already imagine the chaos that will ensue over this in the first week of December on Catholic X and Facebook. I can only imagine the confession lines the following Saturday, filled with Catholics feeling guilty for accidentally committing a mortal sin4 earlier in the week.

Another friend of mine, a non-Italian living in Rome, once tried — by way of analogy — to illustrate the difference between the way Italians approach rules and the way Anglophones understand them. I’ve fleshed the analogy out a bit:

A grassy plot of land in the middle of an Italian city has a sign that says, “Keep off the grass.” A security guard stands near the sign, looking very grim and serious.
"Please Keep Off the Grass" (CC BY 2.0) by Editor B
An American approaches him, explaining that he is late for a meeting and urgently needs to go to the building on the other side of the grass. He asks the guard if it would be possible to make an exception, just this once, because it’s an emergency. The security guard says no, there are no exceptions to the rule.
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Frustrated and growing visibly nervous — but trying to remain as courteous as possible — the American asks the guard if he knows how long the sign will be up, and when it might be possible to walk across the grass. The guard shrugs his shoulders and says he does not know, but that the he is free to call the company responsible for the sign and ask. But, no, the guard doesn’t have their phone number.
Still desperate for permission to cross the grass, the American then asks the guard if there is perhaps a weekly schedule or online calendar listing times when crossing the grass is allowed, maybe after hours or when there is less foot traffic.
The guard doesn’t answer this time, however. Instead he has broken into a broad smile and is waving, shouting “Buongiorno” to a fellow Italian who has begun to walk across the grass — the twentieth Italian to do so since the conversation began.