Private fair

A private mass ( Latin formerly missa privata , today missa sine populo "mass without people ") is a silent holy mass ( Missa lecta ) in the Roman Catholic Church , which is not a parish or convent mass and is celebrated without public announcement.

Liturgical situation

The Second Vatican Council saw "the liturgical rites aimed at communal celebration with the participation and active participation of the faithful" and stipulated that "celebration in community is preferable to that which is practiced privately by the individual". Even a private mass is not of a private nature, but the liturgy of the Catholic Church , which is the "sacrament of unity" and the " holy people ". According to the Codex Iuris Canonici (Canon 904), the celebration of Holy Mass is “an act of Christ and the Church”, even if the participation of believers is not possible. It is part of the sanctification ministry of the church and is celebrated in general and especially recommended concerns.

The priest may only celebrate such a mass on days on which he is not celebrating any other holy mass , i.e. not in addition to celebrating a community mass .

The Roman Missal of Pope Paul VI. contains its own order of the celebration of mass "without people" ( sine populo ). It is celebrated by the priest with the assistance of an acolyte or other person. In the case of a Missa sine populo , the order of the parish mass is modified to the extent that the altar servant takes on the “role” of the people. Only for a just and reasonable reason is the priest allowed to celebrate alone (the so-called Missa solitaria ). In this case, all the usual forms of addressing the fellow celebrants are omitted, e.g. B. the greeting "The Lord be with you", as well as the final blessing "May bless you [...]". The Corona crisis in 2020 is seen as such a “just and reasonable reason” for priests to celebrate Holy Mass without others being present.

Since the promulgation of the Motu proprios Summorum Pontificum in September 2007, every Roman Catholic priest is again allowed to attend the private mass after the Missale Romanum of St. Celebrating Pius V in the 1962 edition . He does not need any special permission from the bishop or superior.

history

The private masses, which have increased rapidly since the early Middle Ages, were due to the cultic veneration of the saints' relics, which were found in the altars and venerated by a daily mass celebration. The early medieval Benedictine - Abbey looked as image of the city of Rome Church system that all the churches of the city as a city church, headed by the bishop understood together ( church family ); this found its expression in the practice of the station service in one of the station churches . In the abbeys, the churches of the city were to a certain extent grouped together on the monastery grounds, as a "church town" with a large number of churches and shrines, or even integrated as side altars in the monastery church. This is how the chapel wreath developed in church architecture .

The convent office knows the resulting mass system as the “main mass” in the role of the Roman station celebration and also a large number of “secondary masses” in the other sanctuaries and at the “side altars” in order to give them due cultic veneration. The celebration of such secondary or private masses is not explained by the private piety of the individual priest-monk, but is to be understood as necessary and important in the context of the overall liturgy of the abbey. The fact that more and more monks were ordained priests did not correspond to pastoral constraints or excessive clericalism, but to the growing number of liturgical tasks of the monastic body. The number of private fairs increased until the Middle Ages. Many priests even celebrated several times a day with a specific intention , often for the deceased . The development meant a substantial loss of the community character of the Holy Mass.

The increase in the number of altars to 35 to 45 in a church - in the Marienkirche in Gdansk and in the Magdeburg Cathedral there were 48 side altars each around 1500 - contributed to the church crisis of the 16th century in the opinion of the liturgical scholar Josef Andreas Jungmann that led to the Reformation . Martin Luther criticized certain forms of private mass, referred to them as angular mass (at the side altar) and condemned them as being for sale. In particular , Luther fundamentally rejected masses in which the priest was the only one to receive the Eucharist .

Private masses are not common in the Eastern Churches .

literature

Angelus Albert Häussling : The measuring system of the early medieval monastery liturgy . In: Ders .: Monks' Convention and Eucharistic Celebration. A study of the mass in the western monastic liturgy of the early Middle Ages and the history of the frequency of measurements. Münster 1973, ISBN 3-402-03842-2 , pp. 298-347.

Otto Nussbaum : monastery, priest monk and private mass. Their relationship in the west from the beginnings to the high Middle Ages (= Theophaneia Volume 14). Hanstein, Bonn 1961.

Karl Rahner , Angelus Häussling: The many masses and the one sacrifice (= Quaestiones disputatae Volume 31). 2nd Edition. Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 1966.

Web links

Wiktionary: Private fair - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

↑ Second Vatican Council: Sacrosanctum Concilium - Constitution on Sacred Liturgy , No. 27

↑ Sacrosanctum concilium, No. 26.

↑ Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani 2002, No. 252-254; missale romanum. (PDF; 545 kB); General Introduction to the Roman Missal (AEM), no.211.

↑ z. B. erzbistum-paderborn.de: Current developments on the corona virus , March 14, 2020.

↑ Karl Rahner , Angelus Häussling: The many masses and the one sacrifice . 2nd edition, Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 1966, pp. 119 f., Note 14 ( Quaestiones disputatae 31)

^ Josef Andreas Jungmann: Missarum Sollemnia. A genetic explanation of the Roman mass. Volume I, 5th edition. Nova & Vetera, Bonn and Herder, Vienna / Freiburg / Basel 1962, p. 293.

↑ So Angelus Albert Häussling: Monks' convent and Eucharistic celebration. A study of the mass in the western monastic liturgy of the early Middle Ages and the history of the frequency of measurements . Münster 1973, ISBN 3-402-03842-2 , pp. 298–347, esp. Pp. 321 f., 342 ff., Against Otto Nussbaum, who took the position, an increased number of priest monks and their wish for more frequent masses out of personal piety would have led to an increase in the number of altars in the abbey; Otto Nussbaum: monastery, priest monk and private mass. Their relationship in the west from the beginnings to the high Middle Ages. Bonn 1961 ( Theophaneia 145).

^ Josef Andreas Jungmann: Missarum Sollemnia. A genetic explanation of the Roman mass. Volume I, 5th edition. Nova & Vetera, Bonn and Herder, Vienna / Freiburg / Basel 1962, p. 290 f.

^ Hans Bernhard Meyer : Eucharist: history, theology, pastoral. Pustet, Regensburg 1989, ISBN 3-7917-1200-4 ( Church service. Handbook of liturgical science , part 4), p. 252.