Money, Mass, and intentions - good and bad
The Vatican made new policies on Mass offerings Sunday. Here's why.
The Dicastery for Clergy issued a decree on Palm Sunday clarifying and revising the norms around offerings for Mass intentions.
The decree — which was approved in forma specifica by Pope Francis, giving it the full force of law — made some alterations to canon law about how and when Mass intentions can be gathered together and offered at the same time in a single Mass.
The dicastery also clarified where the Mass offerings are to be sent, and reiterated warnings about the strict limits on Mass offerings which priests can keep for themselves — suggesting the dicastery is worried about Mass offering abuses in some parts of the Church.
But what is the practice of Mass offerings all about, anyway?
The Pillar explains.
What’s new?
The Dicastery for Clergy’s April 13 norms made a few changes to canon law regarding the practice of Mass offerings, and specifically the practice of priests attempting to satisfy — through the celebration of a single Mass —multiple Mass intentions for which individual offerings have been made.
That practice has always been judged to be “contrary to justice,” as the dicastery put it, but in 1991 the same Vatican department acknowledged certain circumstances and strict criteria in which several Mass intentions, each with an individual offering, could be satisfied in the celebration of a single Mass.
Specifically, in 1991’s Mos iugiter, the dicastery explained that when there was a real difficulty — bordering on practical impossibility — for a priest to say individual Masses for all of the intentions he had received, he could seek the individual agreement of every person who had made an offering for a Mass intention, which would all the intentions to be celebrated all together.
But the circumstances had to be dire.
The dicastery was clear while “the faithful are always free to untie their intentions and offerings for the celebration of a single Holy Mass,” it also emphasized that “the case is quite different for those priests who, indiscriminately collecting the offerings of the faithful intended for the celebration of Holy Masses according to particular intentions, accumulate them in a single offering and satisfy them with a single Holy Mass.”
On Sunday, the dicastery added another issue that could be flagged as an abuse of Mass intention practices: “The replacement of the application promised in the Mass with the sole ‘intention of prayer’ during a celebration of the Word or with a simple mention in some moments of the Eucharistic celebration” — in other words, priests trying to satisfy Mass intentions without actually celebrating a Mass for the intention, but instead mentioning the intentions in the prayers of the faithful.
The dicastery acknowledged on Palm Sunday that the issue of too many Mass intentions to be actually satisfied individually is a real problem in some places, especially because it can give the appearance of trafficking in the sacraments for money.
For that reason, the Vatican said, there is a clear need for “adapting some details of the discipline, creating an exception to the universal law [banning the celebration of a single Mass for multiple intentions], precisely to safeguard everything that is essential.”
As such, the dicastery allowed this week for the bishops of an ecclesiastical province to issue decrees outlining the circumstances in which “priests can accept several offerings from different offerers, cumulating them with others and satisfying them with a single Mass, celebrated according to a single “collective” intention,” but the dicastery stressed, this can only ever be done “if - and only if - all the offerers have been informed of this and have freely consented.”
“This will of the offerers can never be presumed; indeed, in the absence of explicit consent, it is always presumed that it has not been given,” the new law states.
The dicastery’s new norms also reiterate that when a priest is celebrating a single Mass for a collection of individual intentions for which offerings have been made, he is only able to keep for himself the equivalent amount of a single Mass offering, with the rest of the money being put to a cause designated by the diocesan bishop.
OK, that’s what’s new. But why do people offer money for Mass — isn’t that trafficking in the sacraments? Where did this come from?
In a way, offerings for Mass are almost as old as the Church. Even in the apostolic era there was an offertory component to the Eucharistic celebration, through which some of what was collected went to the support of the apostles and elders, but with most of it being designated for the poor of the local Christian community.
From that, Catholics have developed the long-standing custom of offering priests stipends for Masses offered for their intentions — including and even especially Masses offered for the dead.
And for a long time in the Church’s history, Mass offerings were — and still are in some places — the primary source of income for a priest.
The amount for a Mass offering is supposed to be set collectively by the dioceses of a metropolitan province, in the United States this is usually either $10 or $15, though Catholics are always free to offer more.
At the same time, canon law prohibits “any appearance of trafficking or trading” in Mass offerings by priests.
As a result, the longstanding canon law has been that priests can usually only say one Mass each day, and receive only one offering per Mass.
Over the course of the 20th century, the Church — especially in the United States — noticed a problem.
In some dioceses, priests were receiving many more Mass offerings and intentions than they had the ability to fulfill under the canonical limit of one Mass per day.
After the Second Vatican Council, which introduced concelebration into the regular practice of the Church, several American dioceses petitioned the Vatican to permit concelebrating priests to apply different intentions during a single Mass, or to combine multiple intentions into a single Mass.
In response, Rome clarified that priests concelebrating Mass could each have a different intention, and allowed dioceses to grant priests permission to binate — celebrate Mass twice — on weekdays.
But the Vatican also held firm on the rule that priests could only retain one Mass offering per day — even if priests had permission to celebrate extra Masses in a single day, each with its own Mass intention, they could still keep only one Mass offering each day.
The Vatican said priests should give additional offerings to “purposes designated by the diocesan bishop.”
When it was promulgated, the 1983 Code of Canon Law preserved and clarified those rules and permissions.
But even with permission to celebrate Mass two or even three times a day, priests in many U.S. dioceses simply can’t say Masses fast enough to keep up with all the intentions requested by their parishioners.
In some places, the intentions — and the offerings — are transferred to priests in other parts of the world, often in poorer dioceses or mission territories, where the extra $10 of a Mass offering can make a real difference.
That seems reasonable. So what was the problem?
As is often the way, bad habits formed and illicit practices crept in. The most notorious of those was a longstanding tradition that sprang up around the feast of All Souls.
After the promulgation of the new Code of Canon Law in 1983 — even with the options to celebrate more than one Mass in a day, and to transfer extra intentions and offerings to priests in other places — some U.S. parishes took to offering Masses for a collection of intentions from the parish on All Souls Day.
In many places, parishioners added their own intentions for inclusion in the Mass, and gave Mass offerings for the priest — even though it was often made explicit that there would be one Mass said for the combined intentions.
Because Catholics were making their offerings freely and in full knowledge that they would be combined into a single Mass intention, Rome was asked to weigh in on the practice.
The result was 1991’s Mos iugiter, which made it clear that while it was OK for Catholics to agree, voluntarily, to combine their requested intentions into the celebration of a single Mass, it did not change the law limiting priests to keeping only one Mass offering per day.
But the decree left some priests with the wrong impression — that they could keep the whole amount offered for themselves as a single combined Mass offering — it even acquired the somewhat unpleasant nickname “Black Christmas,” with black referring to the traditional liturgical color of All Souls.
While Rome clarified, several times, that canon law provides that priests can only ever keep for themselves one Mass offering per day, even if they celebrate more than one Mass a day for more than one intention, clearly the Dicastery for Clergy felt the point needed to be reemphasized in their Palm Sunday decree this year.
Wait a minute, if all the Mass intentions are being collected and bundled together, and the priest is prohibited from keeping them for himself, where is the money going?
Every dollar above the one-offering-for one Mass amount goes, by canon law, to special projects or particular needs, which are designated by the diocesan bishop.
Those projects can include everything from general diocesan operating funds, to special charitable projects, or even to the upkeep of Catholic cemeteries, though in Sunday’s decree, the dicastery specifically praised the practice of designating for the needs of “other dioceses, especially in mission countries.”
In some places, the bishop lets the parish keep the extra funds to be used at the discretion of the pastor — just not as a “bonus” for the clergy.
Ironically, since Catholics are always free to offer an individual priest more for a single Mass intention, if they want, above and beyond the established recommended amount, the rules actually mean that priests celebrating combined intention Masses might get a smaller stipend than they would for celebrating Mass for one intention in particular.
But isn’t all this business about money and the Mass unseemly? Shouldn’t priests be celebrating Mass for their people’s intentions freely?
To be clear, the practice of Catholics making an offering to accompany the Mass is practically immemorial — and offerings for specific Mass intentions go back at least to the 10th century.
As the dicastery noted in their decree on Sunday, “by adding their own sacrifice and collaborating in the needs of the Church and, in particular, contributing to the maintenance of her sacred ministers …the faithful unite themselves more intimately to Christ who offers himself and are, in a certain sense, even more deeply inserted into communion with Him.”
“This use is not only approved by the Church, but is also promoted by her,” the dicastery noted.
But the risks of both abuse and creating a sense of trafficking around Mass intentions is a real problem. And the practice should never result in the exclusion of the intentions and needs of Catholics who cannot pay.
The changes on Sunday, and earlier in 1991, “were intended, precisely, on the one hand, to ensure justice, that is, the keeping of the word given to the offerers, and on the other to remove the danger, or even just the appearance, of ‘trade’ in sacred things,” the Vatican said.
And the dicastery also noted — as does the Code of Canon Law — that as old and praiseworthy as the practice of Mass offerings is, it should never become the focus of the Mass, nor should priests look on it as a way of generating cash.
In fact, they can never “ask for anything for the administration of the sacraments,” the dicastery reminded them, and in dealing with Mass intentions at all they should be “always avoiding that the most needy are deprived of the help of the sacraments because of poverty.”
“Also to be observed,” the dicastery noted, “is what is strongly recommended by [the Code of Canon Law] namely ‘to celebrate Mass for the intentions of the faithful, especially the poorest, even without receiving any offering.’”
I would point out that in many (most?) diocese in the United States, priests currently do not actually received the Mass stipend. It is considered part of the "salary" and the money itself simply goes to the parish. This can be different for retired priests, who strictly speaking, do not receive a "salary." So, in some places, if a retired priest "covers" a Mass, he would receive the stipend in addition as part of his reimbursement.
The diocese that I am familiar with tend to be rural, and the rules are perhaps different in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, etc.
I pretty much gave up on ever requesting Mass intentions at a parish, unless it's some parish in a poor area with few parishioners that might have a spot open on a random Tuesday three months from now if you request it in the first month the book is open. If it's your average well-off parish with 2000 parishioners and 3 priests, your intention is not happening unless you rush down there in the first week they have the annual intention book open.
I just send my money to some mission online and hope that Father Anonymous in Africa somewhere actually says the Masses I request.
I also have met Catholics who object to the Mass stipends/ intentions business entirely, so when they want to offer Mass for someone, they simply attend Mass and offer their own attendance and Holy Communion for the person. This seems like a good and practical solution so I now do it myself from time to time.