Case 10. Putting Obstacles to Sunday Mass

Charles, a young Catholic, joins a cyclists’ society, or bicycle club, and is accustomed to leave home with his companions on Saturday afternoon in order to visit distant places celebrated either in history or otherwise, and to return home on Sunday afternoon. If there is a Catholic church in the place, Charles hears Mass; otherwise he spends the time going about the place. When, however, on a certain occasion he heard an instruction about hearing Mass, being moved by stings of conscience, he asked his confessor whether he had acted lawfully or not. Hence it is asked:

1. How do causes which excuse from a law and causes which exempt from it differ?

2. Is it lawful to place such causes in the way of fulfilling the law?

3. What is to be said concerning the case?

1. See this question answered, p. 80.

2. This question is answered, p. 81.

3. The case. Charles, a young Catholic, joins a bicycle club and is accustomed to go with other members of the club on Saturday afternoons to distant places of resort. They stop at the place for the night and return home on Sunday afternoon. If there is a Catholic church in the place, Charles hears Mass on Sunday morning, otherwise he spends the time in sight-seeing. An instruction on hearing

Mass puts a scruple into his head about this matter, and so he asks his confessor whether he had acted lawfully. Charles would have done wrong if he had chosen places of resort on account of there being no Church there where he could hear Mass. But this he did not do. The question for solution resolves itself into this: May a man for the sake of recreation put himself in circumstances in which he foresees that he will not be able to hear Mass on a day of obligation? Theologians answer that he may not do this on the day itself nor during the time when the law begins to impose an obligation to make ready to fulfil the law. It is difficult to determine the exact time when we are obliged to make preparations for, or not to put impediments in the way of hearing Mass of obligation. Some approved authors say that the obligation does not arise until a few hours before the day on which Mass is to be heard. Thus Génicot says: “It is lawful to undertake a journey even without a special cause, although it is foreseen that this will be an impediment to satisfying, after several days, the precept of hearing Mass. It is not lawful to undertake a journey merely for recreation when the hour for hearing Mass is now imminent. It would be lawful, from mere pleasure, to enter upon a journey which would impede attendance at Mass throughout the whole of Saturday up to one or another hour before Sunday.”¹ According to this opinion Charles did not commit sin in what he did, but he should be warned not to do it too often, and to take care not to become negligent about hearing Mass on Sundays.

1 Gury, vol. i, n. 111; Instit. Theol. Mor., vol. i, n. 116.