I wasn’t going to post again before Christmas—but having already seen numerous notices, emails and social media posts from Catholic parish pastors telling their perfectly healthy and capable parishioners to stay home and away from the Sacrifice of the Holy Mass on Christmas, or watch it on television and computer screens instead, my conscience is compelling me to speak out.
Tomorrow is Christmas, but this applies to all days of holy obligation. You have a duty and obligation under the Third Commandment to worship God properly. The fact some bureaucrat at the health department tells you or your pastor that you are not allowed to worship God (as they allow everyone without limit to shop at Walmart and Target for Christmas presents) is completely, and totally irrelevant when it comes to YOUR duty and obligations to God.
What Does God Say?
God knows your heart. He knows you can find a way to go to Mass and worship Him reverently one way or the other. Television doesn’t count. I mean in person, on your knees, in complete awe of Christ Himself as he makes Himself present to you physically under the veil of the Holy Eucharist. He knows if you are hiding behind an illegal command from your pastor or bishop to stay home because of a cold virus with a 99% survival rate. For the same reason God knows when you are truly sick and do not attend Mass to avoid getting others sick (which is legitimate), He also knows when you are perfectly healthy and still refuse to worship him because someone else gave you pseudo-canonical cover. Christ the King, the ultimate judge, is NOT a pharisaical legalist.
The Third Commandment is quite clear:
“Remember that thou keep holy the sabbath day. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy works; but on the seventh day is the sabbath of the lord thy god; thou shalt do no work on it, neither thou nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy beast, nor the stranger that is within thy gates. For in six days the lord made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them, and rested on the seventh day; wherefore the lord blessed the seventh day and sanctified it.”
The Catechism of the Council of Trent then reminds us:
“This [third] Commandment of the Law rightly and in due order prescribes the external worship which we owe to God; for it is, as it were, a consequence of the preceding Commandment. For if we sincerely and devoutly worship God, guided by the faith and hope we have in Him, we cannot but honour Him with external worship and thanksgiving. Now since we cannot easily discharge these duties while occupied in worldly affairs, a certain fixed time has been set aside so that it may be conveniently performed.”
With respect to observances made to satisfy our duty owed to God on Holy Days, the same Catechism goes on to state:
“The pastor should also not omit carefully to teach what works and actions Christians should perform on festival days. These are: to go to church, and there, with heartfelt piety and devotion, to assist at the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass; and to approach frequently the Sacraments of the Church, instituted for our salvation in order to obtain a remedy for the wounds of the soul.”
Do you see any exceptions in the Commandment itself or the infallible teaching the Church? There is no excuse or exceptions for health department mandates or media created public panics. There is no excuse for pastors wanting to desperately please Karen, the clerk at the local health department, who happened to decide that only 80 people can sit in your parish church if the congregants social distance by 6 feet. The reality is that if your pastor keeps you from Mass to maintain social distancing guidelines, they are doing it because THEY CHOSE TO DO IT.
And whatever happens, do not let the pastor pass the buck off on their bishop or threat of government punishment. There is no reason they can’t open their doors to all of their parishioners, however and whenever they want. What’s the worse thing that can happen? The police come in and arrest everyone inside on Christmas Day? That’s a possibility in the near future, but unlikely to happen to now. Most law enforcement detest the idea of doing such a thing. Maybe the heath department fines your pastor. Great, is there any faithful group of parishioners who would not chip in to pay off such an unlawful and egregious penalty? They should.
The biggest and most real threat, sadly in today’s Church, is that the Bishop punishes the pastor. But again, will any faithful parish sit back and let the Bishop do that? Any pastor should be honored to fall on that sword for Christ, and a good parish will back up their pastor.
But, what about being charged with disobedience? A common tactic used to emotionally manipulate the average Catholic who finds himself confused and torn in these evil times. Rest assured; any charge of disobedience for wanting to attend Mass on a Holy Day is a false one in this situation. St. Thomas Aquinas addressed this directly:
“Laws framed by man are either just or unjust. If they be just, they have the power of binding in conscience, from the eternal law whence they are derived, according to Proverbs 8:15: ‘By Me kings reign, and lawgivers decree just things’…laws may be unjust through being opposed to the Divine good: such are the laws of tyrants inducing to idolatry, or to anything else contrary to the Divine law: and laws of this kind must nowise be observed, because, as stated in Acts 5:29, ‘we ought to obey God rather than man.’” Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 96, a. 4.
Aquinas’ distinction between just and unjust laws is the key to understanding our duty of obedience. None of what we are facing today is necessarily new. Sure, COVID-19 itself may be new, but Catholics have been put in the position of having to choose between being obedient to God and their superiors since the beginning of the Church.
The bottom line is that your Bishop, your pastor, even the Pope is given a wide range of authority to deal with situations in the course of earthly events. Indeed, part of their job is to exercise judgment and provide guidance when applying the divine or natural law to particular situations that may arise. But they can never transgress God’s law when doing so.
Those to whom you owe obedience, whether it be a spiritual or secular authority, can never command you to violate God’s law or even the infallible teaching of the Church as it has been handed down to us over the course of 2000 years. They are bound to God’s laws as much as we are.
What so many pastors and Bishops are doing to the faithful at this time is unconscionable. They are forcing us to choose between obeying secular authorities (by granting cover to those commands with their own spiritual authority) or following God’s law. The lay faithful (or even clergy) should never be put in that situation in the first place. Yet—here we are.
Practical Suggestions for Attending Mass
I believe the answer is simply to do what we know is the right thing. And that is to attend Mass and offer God the proper worship we owe Him as He commanded us to do. I recommend the following if you are wondering how to do this practically:
- Look for a parish that offers Mass (preferably the Traditional Latin Mass) that does not have restrictions and actually invites the faithful to worship, even during times of alleged pandemic. I am blessed to have found such a parish. I no longer attend a novus ordo parish that is currently cowering to unjust health department laws.
- However, if no such option exists for you, show up to your local parish and attend Mass anyway, even if you did not sign up or get prior permission. Remember, you don’t need prior permission to attend Mass. Just do it. Chances are, no one will say anything. Many pastors feel the need to go through the legal “hoops” of asking for sign-ups just to show their attempted compliance.
- If you get asked to leave the Mass because you did not sign up or were not otherwise welcome, stand outside the parish while Mass is going on, get on your knees and pray during the entire Mass. Don’t be afraid. If it is freezing cold outside, even better. Your witness will a good one to those who did sign up and have to walk by you to get inside.
- If the pastor has really dug his heels in and feels the need to call the police to keep people away from worshiping God, then pack up and go to the next closest parish and try again. Don’t waste your time arguing with some police officer who is forced to work on a day when he would probably rather be standing right next to you in Mass if he could.
You see, there really is no need to accept anything less than what God wants you to do. And you don’t even have to get arrested to do it. There is nothing wrong with being assertive and zealous while wanting to worship on the Feast of Christ’s Nativity. I’m confident, Christ the King, the ultimate judge, will find this meritorious when you stand before Him one day and He asks, “what did you do to honor and defend me in your life?”