Case XXXIX: A Mistake Regarding Mass Intention

Father N., according to the usual practise in his diocese, arranges every Saturday the intentions for the Masses during the ensuing week, enters them in his register, and announces them on Sunday from the pulpit. He is accustomed every day before beginning his Mass to look up in the register the intention assigned to that day. One day he opens the book at a wrong place, and reads the intention with which he had already said Mass on the same day in the preceding week. He discovers his mistake only after he has finished Mass. He consults several priests as to whether he is bound to say another Mass for the intention properly assigned to the Mass offered for a wrong intention, or whether he has fulfilled his obligation in spite of his mistake. The opinions of his confratres are divided. Some say that he must offer another Mass for that intention, as the second (erroneous) intention frustrated the original one. Others express the contrary view. Who is right?

Salvo meliori judicio, we believe Father N. not to be bound to offer another Mass for the one originally assigned to the day on which he made the mistake. The intention with which he offers Mass on any particular day depends upon his own decision. On the Saturday he fixed the intention with which he meant to say Mass on the day in question. This act of his will was certainly equivalent to a determination to abide by the intention unless he expressly canceled it. In the act of will is implicitly included the purpose not to alter the intention or substitute for it another, erroneous, one.

In other words: On that particular day when the mistake occurred, Father N. had two intentions, the one fixed on the preceding Saturday, and the other a wrong one. Which was the intentio praedominans? Certainly that which he would have chosen, had the two presented themselves to his mind at the same time. In this case he would undoubtedly have decided in favor of the intention selected on Saturday. This solution of the difficulty agrees precisely with Cardinal Lugo's words (De Sacr. Disp., 8, n. 121): "If today you wish entirely to apply tomorrow’s Mass for Peter, so that this application is from now on preferred to any application to be made through forgetfulness of this one—and all the more to an intention already fulfilled—but tomorrow you apply the Mass for someone else, today’s application will not be judged revoked, because it was more universal and revocatory of tomorrow’s."

Father N. is therefore not bound to say another Mass for the (apparently) neglected intention.—Dr. Johann Andlinger.