Chapter — The Casuist
Case LXXI: Parochial Mass or Sick Call
Sempronius, a parish priest, without assistant was just starting from his house one Sunday to say the parochial Mass, when he received a message asking him to go at once to administer the last Sacraments to a certain Paula, who had been ill for some time and had suddenly had a stroke. The congregation had assembled to hear Mass, and the sick woman's house was so far away that the people would have had to wait a very long time before Sempronius could return, if he went to her before saying Mass. A sick call could not have come at a more inconvenient moment. One fortunate accident seemed to offer him a way out of the difficulty in which his conflicting duties placed him. He had been to see Paula five or six days previously and she had then received Holy Communion ex devotione. Sempronius now thought that this Communion might serve temporarily as her Viaticum, so he said alow Mass in the church and then set out at once to administer the Viaticum, ritu praescripto, to the sick person in danger of death, orat least Extreme Unction, if it was no longer possible for her to receive any other Sacrament. However he was too late; she had died not long before his arrival.
Two questions are asked regarding this occurrence.
(1) Should Sempronius have allowed the Holy Communion that Paula had received five or six days before to be her Viaticum?
(2) Was he right under the given circumstances in deferring the administration of the last Sacraments until the end of Mass? Ought he to have gone at once?
Ad. 1. Various answers have been given to this question. Schüch says (Handbuch d. Pastoral-Theol., 10th Ed. p. 700): " If a person has communicated ex devotione one or two days previously, he may receive the Viaticum, should danger of death occur, but is not bound to do so, if the danger (as in the case under consideration) is a consequence of the disease previously existing, i. e., at the time when he communicated ex devotione." Lehmkuhl (Theol. mor., II. n. 140, 4) and Noldin (Summa Theol. mor., III. n. 143) even consider that no obligation, or no certain obligation, to receive the Viaticum exists, when a person has communicated ex devotione within a week or " circiter una ante hebdomada," "since she has already satisfied the precept, especially if the danger has increased from the illness, because morally the danger was then already imminent; or, as Lugo judges, because it suffices to receive Communion at the end of life or a little before death" ( Noldin, /. c).
According to these authors Paula was not strictly required to receive the Viaticum, and consequently Sempronius might allow the Communion she received shortly before to reckon as her Viaticum, although of course he was bound to administer the last Sacraments if Paula asked for them.
Ad. 2. We may assume that Paula, knowing her dangerous condition, in spite of having already received Holy Communion, certainly expressed a desire for the Viaticum, and therefore Sempronius was bound to administer it. If he did not think it necessary to do so at once, he cannot be accused of neglecting what was his real duty as priest in charge of souls, since he might rationabiliter assume that the sick woman had no grievous sin on her conscience, because she had so recently received the Sacraments. Moreover, a considerable postponement of the parochial Mass could not fail to cause incommodum. If Paula had not communicated very recently, Sempronius ought of course to have taken her the Viaticum at once, and should have put off saying Mass, and even should have interrupted it, if he were already saying it. The same rule would apply, if he only could have administered Extreme Unction, if the dying person was no longer able to receive the Sacrament of penance and the Viaticum. If this had been the case, and Paula had been in statu peccati mortalis, the administration of Extreme Unction would have been a duty binding sub gravi, and it would have admitted of no delay, since in hoc casu the dying woman's salvation might have depended solely upon her reception of this Sacrament in good time. Under other circumstances, according to the sententia communior (St. Alphonsus, 1. VI. n. 733; Lehmkuhl, Theol. mor., II. n. 578), there is no obligation sub gravi to receive Extreme Unction, and there was none in Paula's case, partly because, as we have seen in considering question 1, the Communion received a few days previously might be regarded as her Viaticum, and partly because there was no reason for fearing that she was in a state of mortal sin.
If Sempronius had gone to administer the last Sacraments, as soon as the message reached him, Paula might at least have received Extreme Unction, even if it had been impossible to give her the Viaticum. Under the given circumstances, however, it can not be maintained that she was strictly bound to receive either the Viaticum or Extreme Unction, and any considerable postponement of the parochial Mass would certainly have caused serious incommodum to the people intending to assist at it. Hence we cannot blame the parish priest for not going to administer the Sacraments to Paula until after he had said Mass. The case would have been different if Paula had lived near the church, so that there need not have been a long postponement of Mass, or if Sempronius had held the usual and longer Sunday service in spite of being summoned to go to her. In either of these cases he would at least have to submit to the reproach of having acted injudiciously.