Masses for One Deceased Person
Date: January 13, 2024
Author: Fr. Edward McNamara, LC
Question: Could you explain why the Church allows a Mass to be offered for only one deceased person? In my parish church, the list is so filled up even until next year. A very close relative died in another country, and my way of easing the pain is to have a Mass said for him that my friends and I could also attend, but my request was denied. I am aware that there are churches that I could send a stipend for Mass remembrances. -- D.B., Arvada, Colorado
Answer: I would first point out that the use of the word stipend to refer to the offering for a Mass is no longer found in canon law. Current regulations prefer to always use the term Mass offering rather than stipend, which is technically a payment for services rendered. The intention at Mass is not, strictly speaking, a service.
Second, the rule is not that a Mass can be offered only for a single deceased person but that the priest can only accept and keep a single offering for each Mass.
Thus, there is no difficulty in a priest accepting to offer the Mass for several deceased members of the same family, as well as for intentions regarding the living such as the healing of the sick. The point is that he cannot accept more than one offering for each Mass and keep more than one offering a day.
The reason why the priest can offer the Mass for multiple intentions is that the Mass, which makes present Christ’s eternal sacrifice, has an infinite effectiveness and hence can be offered for an infinite number of intentions.
That said, the Church wishes to avoid both the appearance and the reality of any commerce in sacred things, and so, canon law offers detailed norms regarding Mass offerings. To wit:
"Can. 945 §1. In accord with the approved practice of the Church, any priest celebrating or concelebrating is permitted to receive an offering to apply the Mass for a specific intention.
"§2. It is recommended earnestly to priests that they celebrate Mass for the intention of the Christian faithful, especially the needy, even if they have not received an offering.
"Can. 947 Any appearance of trafficking or trading is to be excluded entirely from the offering for Masses.
"Can. 948 Separate Masses are to be applied for the intentions of those for whom a single offering, although small, has been given and accepted.
"Can. 951 §1. A priest who celebrates several Masses on the same day can apply each to the intention for which the offering was given, but subject to the rule that, except on Christmas, he is to keep the offering for only one Mass and transfer the others to the purposes prescribed by the ordinary, while allowing for some recompense by reason of an extrinsic title.
"§2. A priest who concelebrates a second Mass on the same day cannot accept an offering for it under any title.
"Can. 953 No one is permitted to accept more offerings for Masses to be applied by himself than he can satisfy within a year.
"Can. 954 If in certain churches or oratories more Masses are asked to be celebrated than can be celebrated there, it is permitted for them to be celebrated elsewhere unless the donors have expressly indicated a contrary intention."
This is the overarching rule, however. Because of the infinite value of the Mass, and the increasing need to satisfy the spiritual requests of the people with a dwindling number of priests, the Holy See issued a new document in 1991.
This document, a decree called Mos Iugiter (AAS 83 [1991] 436-446), modified the strict rule of Canon 948 and allowed some use of so-called cumulative intentions under certain strict conditions:
-- The donors must be informed of and consent to the combining of their offerings before the Mass for the collective intention is celebrated.
-- The place and time of each Mass must be announced with no more than two such collective Masses per week.
-- The celebrant may only keep for himself one stipend and must send any excess intentions to the purposes assigned by the ordinary in accordance with Canon 951.
There is, however, another practice of frequent cumulative intentions which is found in some countries with many poor Catholics and very populous parishes such as in Latin America and Africa.
In such circumstances, so many faithful request Mass intentions that it is impossible for the parish to celebrate a single Mass for everybody. In making the request, the faithful do not seek an individual celebration but presuppose that it will be one of many intentions.
In other circumstances the faithful's economic situation does not allow them to make a monetary offering; instead, it sometimes is made with foodstuffs. I remember one visit to a poor parish in Africa in which the priest received a live goat. Such offerings make the transfer of the intention to other priests unfeasible.
To come to terms with this reality, certain novel solutions have been proposed. For example, one Mexican archdiocese established a fixed offering for individual intentions but a totally voluntary offering for cumulative intentions, according to the possibilities of those making the request.
The archbishop's decree implied that, although the community celebrations would be more than twice a week due to the large number of requests, the directives of canon law and Mos Iugiter should be followed with respect to any offerings over and above the standard offering.
It is quite possible that our reader’s parish does not face a problem of excess requests for Mass Intentions and so has no need to habitually use the faculties mentioned in Mos Iugiter. The law, however, would have allowed the parish to have solicited one of the parishioners who had already requested an intention to allow another intention to be added on a particular day.
This addition would in no way diminish the spiritual effectiveness of the Mass and would even offer an opportunity to exercise charity toward a fellow parishioner who had experienced a severe loss.
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