What Huerta88 said. As I mentioned, my brother-in-law has done this on many occasions, and, as he is about to be consecrated to a higher office in the Church, no one seems to have objected. So I suspect the permission of the bishop can be presumed.
Perhaps the bishop in his diocese trusts him to use his best judgment, and considers the question “is it OK if I celebrate the Mass at my mother’s house when I go there for dinner every Thursday?” to be more or less unnecessary.
In any case, I would not assume it wasn’t a Mass because it was celebrated in someone’s house rather than in a church - as mentioned, it happens all the time.
Thanks. That article suggests that smoking is not yet officially considered a sin by RC dogma, but just morally or ethically suspect.
Now I’ll go tease my better half about how his RC denomination is wussing out again compared to my Orthodox one… despite having no real idea what Orthodox thinking on the subject is.
I know I sound like a jerk, but wouldn’t his best judgment involve following Canon Law? I don’t see a “necessity” to have Mass in a private home? What am I missing?? I believe all of you, but honestly I have never heard of a full-fledged Mass (not prayers, not delivering already-consecrated Communion) in a private home, let alone reasonably frequently??
No, you don’t sound like a jerk, but I think canon law is concerned with public Masses, not “private” ones. And canon law says rather explicitly that the bishop of the diocese decides what is a case of necessity and what is not. And, far from getting into trouble, my brother-in-law is being consecrated as a bishop shortly, and his best judgment by definition is going to be correct, at least in his diocese.
My understanding is that priests are strongly encouraged to celebrate the Mass once a day at least. My brother-in-law is pastor of two churches, and a busy man (as well as a very good one). And often by the time he arrives at his mother’s house on Thursdays, he has not had a chance to celebrate the Mass yet. So he has what amounts to a private Mass. It’s him and his mother and sometimes other folks as well, if they are there for dinner.
Never struck me as a big deal.
Maybe that is the difficulty - I have seen it happening for the last twenty five years or so, since he was ordained. Plus I am Lutheran, and we do Communion anywhere. So it doesn’t seem unusual to me. I can remember when my back was out and I was not able to attend church one Sunday, and our intern came to our house and we had the Eucharist. Which was very nice, but not unusual.
It's certainly not unheard of - but it's not something the average Catholic would ever have experienced. It's not as if you could just call a priest and arrange for a private mass at your home whenever you feel like it. It's basically going to happen because the priest needs to say his daily Mass (it's not required , but is encouraged), and there are going to be times when not using a private home will be difficult or impossible - when he arrives at his mother's home at the end of a busy day, or while spending his vacation at a friend's mountain home, etc. Which means you'd have to have more than a priest-parishioner relationship to attend one. You'd have to be family or a close friend.
As far as Masses being celebrated outside of a sacred place, I'm sure that happens all the time in hospitals, nursing homes and other institutions. I know that I've been at a couple of outdoor Masses (we took along a priest when we took the parish Scouts camping- and I'm sure he got whatever permisssion was necessary)
Meant to mention that the student’s a big fan of Larry David, so I was glad to point out several LD backdrops and shooting sites around the neighborhood.
You don’t mention the communion wafers. It sounds like the priest brought hosts with him that had already been consecrated. I agree with smiling bandit. If the priest didn’t consecrate both the bread and wine together, it wasn’t a mass.
A priest at least all of them I know,(and knew) would not use consecrated hosts for a mass, They do have some in the tabernacle if they need more, but he can use wafers he brough or even bread, The main part of the Catholic ceremony is the consecration. And a full mass can and is done in a private setting. They do have relics of the saints to lay on a table or home alter, that makes it a sacred place. That is how it used to be and I never heard of it changing.
Monavis
The permission from the Bishop is to celebrate the Eucharist in an “irregular” place. For my First Communion, it was obtained as a “one shot” thing, the priests from the Mountaineering Club have it permanent. We needed the permission because going to a consecrated church would not, in theory, have been complicated (it would have been complicated by practical reasons); the Mountain Club, because if you’re going to be trotting up and down mountains for two weeks from a Base Camp that’s about two kilometers away from the road, not seeing another person except if you run into them along a mountainside, having to pile people up in a bus on Sunday does complicate things. And of course, as has been mentioned, priests who happen to be spending two weeks on mountainsides are expected to celebrate Mass daily as well, not to “go to a church and celebrate Mass.”
Of course, you can celebrate Mass anywhere so long as you have bread and/or wine (Communion can be done under a single species or both) and two people, one of them being a consecrated priest, and so long as there isn’t a better place available. Any Bishops who have a problem with a Priest consecrating Oreos and handing them out as Communion in a sinking ship are cordially welcome to argue about it with St Pete when their own time comes…
Going back for a moment to the OP line of thought, not only does the translation of the Seven Capital(*) Vices as “Deadly Sins” confuse things sometimes, but also remember that in Catholic theology there is also a difference between “Mortal” and “Venial” sin – felonies and misdemeanors, so to speak. In any case, many churches, not just the RC, had been moving away from the concept of exhaustive lists of “sins” and towards the broader concept of sin being whatever interposes itself between Man, and love of God and Neighbor, but have lately been forced to remind people that indeed this includes some common behaviors(**).
(*Good explanation, Nava – “capital” NOT in the sense of “death penalty” but in the sense of being at the head, and the risk of “going to your head” and leading you to serious trouble)
(**Because there’ll always be some joker who’ll say “if it’s not on the list it’s not sin, I’m OK to keep doing it”)
This leads to what my answer to the OP was going to be. I was raised Lutheran, not Catholic, but I remember my pastor (who had been a pipe-smoker) telling me that the sin of smoking was in the insidious way that addiction leads you to believe you NEED something other than God to get you through the day/hour/moment. In that way, he saw compulsive smoking as a violation of the first commandment: Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.
“debts” is used in both Wycliffe and the King James Version. Given the broad reach of the KJV in Protestant churches in North America, it’s easy to see why that form of the prayer is commonly used by North American Protestants.
But note that both versions also use the word “trespasses” in Jesus’ explanation of the prayer, in verse 14.
Thee term “trespasses” is used in the first (1549) Book of Common Prayer {pdf}. I would expect “trespasses” would be the more familiar term in the U.K. and in other churches influenced by the C. of E. (As a Canadian Anglican, “trespasses” is the term I would identify with.)
According to the wiki article, Matthew uses the term Greek term for "debt’, while Luke uses the Greek term for “sin”. Since the Aramic word for “sin” also means “debt”, that suggests that the prayer was first spoken in Aramaic, and then translated differently into Greek by Luke and Matthew.
Likely that he was not referring to smoking as an “official” Sin–many people (not just Catholics) call their smoking a “sin” because they know it is bad for them–hence, “sin taxes” on drinking, smoking, gambling, strip clubs, etc.
But the Eucharist is performed using unleavened bread made of water and wheat only, so it can’t just be any bread.
And Nava, on a sinking ship I’d be more concerned with Confession and some sort of last rites than Communion, which is heartily encouraged but not required even at your regular Sunday Mass. No need to resort to Oreos.
As I understand it; The practice of wafers being used was adopted many years ago for convenience, the last supper Jesus is said to break the bread and pass pieces to his Apostles. I will have to check with a Church historian as to wither it had to be unlevened, un leavened bread was used for the Israeites when in a hurry, but I do not think it was necessary for the early Christians.
