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Is mandatory concelebration coherent with the Second Vatican Council and canon law?
VATICAN CITY — Reports have circulated for several years now of Catholic priests being told to cease saying private Masses by themselves and celebrate with other priests instead, a practice called concelebration.
In 2021, for example, the Vatican banned priests from saying private Masses at the above-ground altars in St. Peter’s Basilica. The edict was later eased after a public outcry, but concelebration in the basilica is now “the norm.”
That same year Archbishop Roland Minnerath of Dijon, France, expelled members of the traditional Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter from his diocese because they would not concelebrate Masses — specifically the Chrism Mass in the ordinary form — and had not done so for many years. Various religious communities, houses of formation and parishes have similarly mandated concelebration.
Proponents say the practice has enriched the Church as a whole, as well as a priest’s spiritual life, that it shows the unity of the order of bishops united to the priests and to all people, and that it can perhaps act as a kind of antidote against clericalism.
Those enforcing concelebration are largely intent on promoting the post-conciliar liturgical reforms that were introduced in the 1970s, and therefore wish to place penalties on those seen as obstructing their full implementation.
It so happens that many of those who continue to celebrate private Masses have a devotion to the traditional Latin liturgy, which Pope Francis severely restricted in his 2021 motu proprio Traditionis Custodes.
In a later clarification of that decree, Cardinal Arthur Roche, prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, specifically ruled that a priest was no longer allowed to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass if he refused to concelebrate. The bishop was also ordered to ascertain that the priest’s attitude did not reject the liturgical reforms of 1970 and the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, and that he understood the “value of concelebration.”
Continued below.
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VATICAN CITY — Reports have circulated for several years now of Catholic priests being told to cease saying private Masses by themselves and celebrate with other priests instead, a practice called concelebration.
In 2021, for example, the Vatican banned priests from saying private Masses at the above-ground altars in St. Peter’s Basilica. The edict was later eased after a public outcry, but concelebration in the basilica is now “the norm.”
That same year Archbishop Roland Minnerath of Dijon, France, expelled members of the traditional Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter from his diocese because they would not concelebrate Masses — specifically the Chrism Mass in the ordinary form — and had not done so for many years. Various religious communities, houses of formation and parishes have similarly mandated concelebration.
Proponents say the practice has enriched the Church as a whole, as well as a priest’s spiritual life, that it shows the unity of the order of bishops united to the priests and to all people, and that it can perhaps act as a kind of antidote against clericalism.
Those enforcing concelebration are largely intent on promoting the post-conciliar liturgical reforms that were introduced in the 1970s, and therefore wish to place penalties on those seen as obstructing their full implementation.
It so happens that many of those who continue to celebrate private Masses have a devotion to the traditional Latin liturgy, which Pope Francis severely restricted in his 2021 motu proprio Traditionis Custodes.
In a later clarification of that decree, Cardinal Arthur Roche, prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, specifically ruled that a priest was no longer allowed to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass if he refused to concelebrate. The bishop was also ordered to ascertain that the priest’s attitude did not reject the liturgical reforms of 1970 and the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, and that he understood the “value of concelebration.”
Continued below.
French Canonist Questions the Legality of Mandating Priests to Concelebrate the Mass
Is mandatory concelebration coherent with the Second Vatican Council and canon law?
