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A
PASTORAL LETTER FROM BISHOP MARTINO
September 15, 2005
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
During this Year of the Eucharist, I
have been praying in thanksgiving to God for
the wonderful gift of His Son’s real
presence among us who are privileged to
celebrate and adore the Most Holy Eucharist.
As your Bishop I am deeply consoled by the
devotion that so many Catholics have to the
Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and by the
generous zeal with which our priests feed
your souls with the Bread of Life.
Yes,
we are richly blessed, and our Diocese of
Scranton has not yet felt the more painful
effect of the sharply declining number of
priests that has already deprived thousands
of our fellow Catholics throughout the world
of even a regular Sunday celebration of Holy
Mass. And so, above all, we must pray to the
Lord of the Harvest to call young men to
serve His Church as priests, and all of us,
but especially parents and family members,
must encourage sons and brothers to listen
for God’s call and respond to it
generously when it comes.
One
of the reasons why we have not yet seriously
felt the pinch of the shortage of priests is
a relatively hidden one, and it is the
purpose of this letter to bring it into the
open for your prayerful consideration and
understanding. That reason is that our
priests are very often celebrating several
Masses on the same day. It is the Church’s
ancient discipline and practice that, except
for very special occasions like Christmas
and All Souls Day, her priests celebrate
only one Mass a day. So august is God’s
gift of the Eucharist, so important is the
spiritual preparation for it, so careful and
attentive must its celebration be, and so
essential the thanksgiving to be made
afterward as priests carry forth its grace
to the rest of their ministry, that the
multiplication of this central act in a
priest’s daily life runs the risk of
diminishing the value he places on it. Such
a danger imperils the whole community of
faith along with its priest. The law,
therefore, is not an arbitrary one. It
provides an essential means of fostering the
holiness of the Church’s faithful.
And
yet the Church, ever solicitous for the
spiritual needs of the faithful and mindful
of the shortage of clergy, gives its bishops
the authority to permit priests, for a just
cause, to celebrate two Masses on weekdays
and, for a true pastoral necessity, even
three Masses on a Sunday or holy day of
obligation. Our priests have had this
permission and they now have it from me.
However, I cannot allow the limits of this
permission to be exceeded. As your Bishop, I
must ask you to accept the decision of your
priest when he tells you that he cannot
offer another Mass on a particular day.
Appeals
to practicality, convenience, or long-term
contrary custom must not be allowed to
derail this effort. All of us – but I,
especially, as your Bishop – are gravely
obliged to be stewards of the Church’s
mysteries and the age-old discipline that
has been fashioned to preserve them.
Saturdays
present us with a special challenge in this
matter. Since it is a weekday, each priest,
even with the special permission, may
celebrate only two Masses. Parishes will
therefore be obliged to rethink their
priorities. Should the Saturday weekday
morning Mass be eliminated in favor of a
Saturday evening vigil Mass? Can nuptial
Masses be scheduled on Friday evening
instead of Saturday? Need every Church have
a Saturday vigil Mass? Can neighboring
parishes cooperate in the design of Mass
schedules that will provide reasonable
availability of Mass for all living in a
particular area?
To
allow sufficient time for prayer,
instruction, and planning, I am delegating
to the Vicars General and the Episcopal
Vicars, the extraordinary faculty to
dispense from the law in individual cases of
the greatest necessity so that a priest may
offer an additional Mass to what the Church
law allows. This faculty will expire on December
3, 2006, the First Sunday of Advent.
After that date, dispensation from the law
will be granted only on the rarest occasion.
Please
be assured of my prayers for the whole
Diocese, that our experience of honoring
this discipline will help us grow in our
hunger of the Eucharist, our reverence for
its great mystery, and our commitment to
pray and work for the promotion of priestly
vocations so that this great gift of God may
always sustain us on our journey toward the
eternal Banquet of God’s kingdom.
With kind personal regards,
I am,
Sincerely yours in Christ,
Most Reverend Joseph F.
Martino, D.D., Hist. E.D.
Bishop of
Scranton
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