Church should act to put the Mass card scamsters out of business
I am referring to the phenomenon of fake Mass cards on sale in shops nationwide, several of which came to my notice recently.
These can be ‘Mass cards’ promising that a Mass will be said for the repose of a person’s soul, or a ‘Mass Bouquet’ - announcing that a Mass will be said for the intentions or wellbeing of a living person. The cards cost €3 or €4, well below what a person of average means would consider appropriate to donate to a priest when getting a Mass said.
Although the Church does not allow signed Mass cards to be sold in shops, the potential is obvious to unscrupulous people. You can sympathise with people on the cheap. What it really says about your attitude to the person is another matter.
Apart from the Church ban on the practice, the price should be a good indicator that there is a fraud or scam involved. You won’t recognise the signature of the priest. It’s generally illegible. If the priest named ever did exist, he may be dead, his signature may have been stolen, or he may be a fraud, having accepted a one-off sum of money in exchange for the indiscriminate use of his signature. He may even have been suspended from the priesthood for this kind of activity.
A number of years ago, a couple of Longford-based ‘entrepreneurs’ were identified among the people responsible for this trafficking in Mass cards. With mass offerings then averaging at about £5, they reckoned they could sell Mass cards at £2 each by copying the signature of a priest.
Some shops were selling about 200 of these cards a month. When the Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise, Dr Colm O’Reilly, contacted the priest involved and he withdrew his name, the traffickers responded by recruiting other foreign priests for their operations. At least one of these priests later said he was unaware that his signature was being used in this way. Those trafficking in the cards try to portray themselves as honest businessmen whose acumen is resented by the Church because they are undercutting the priests.
But apart from the false promise in their Mass cards - namely that a specific mass is being said in connection with the card given - the practice perpetuates a distorted notion of what Mass cards and Mass offerings are all about.
Since the earliest days of the Church, the buying and selling of religious or spiritual things has been outlawed. The Church calls this offence ‘simony’ - after a scriptural figure called Simon the Magician who tried to buy the power of healing from the apostles.
“Your silver perish with you,” St Peter told the ‘magician’, “because you thought you could obtain God’s gift with money.”
St Peter was keeping to the teaching of Jesus Christ himself: “You received without pay, give without pay.” As the Catholic Catechism now puts it, “it is impossible to appropriate to oneself spiritual goods and behave toward them as their owner or master, for they have their source in God. One can receive them only from him, without payment”.
The abuse of Mass cards would not be possible, of course, were it not for the fact that the Catholic Church has allowed the practice of giving financial offerings in conjunction with saying Masses. According to Canon 945 of the Code of Canon Law, “any priest who celebrates or concelebrates a Mass may accept an offering to apply the Mass for a specific intention” in accordance with the approved custom of the Church.
It is never a ‘payment’. The code says that the faithful who make such an offering are contributing “to the good of the Church, and by that offering they share in the Church’s concern for the support of its ministers and its activities”.
However, these provisions conclude with two warnings.
FIRSTLY, it is “earnestly recommended” to priests that, even if they do not receive an offering, they should “celebrate Mass for the intentions of Christ’s faithful, especially of those in need”.
Secondly, the canon law stresses that “even the semblance of trafficking or trading is to be entirely excluded from Mass offerings”.
There is no doubt that the Church’s practice of praying for the dead, and more specifically celebrating Masses for the dead, is one of the most appealing and comforting aspects of Catholic tradition. Neither is there any doubt that priests should be supported financially by the community of believers. “The labourer deserves his wages.”
However, it is important that the combination of these factors should not bring the Church and its teachings into disrepute. The existence of unscrupulous business people requires Catholic people to be vigilant enough to spot the abuse, and conscientious enough to reject the practice. You can be sure of this: if you see signed Mass cards on sale in a shop, they are certainly part of a scam.
The current Church rule is that priests, who are generally surviving on salaries well below the minimum wage, may accept a maximum of one financial offering for each Mass they say, and no more than one per day. Any surplus should be applied for the benefit of the Church in other ways.
In one case I know of, an Irish priest is supporting hard-up missionary priests in Argentina by donating his surplus Mass stipends for distribution among them. Each time this happens, the missionary receiving the money is instructed to say a precise number of Masses, one Mass per offering, thus honouring the donors’ intentions.
But Church authorities themselves are not doing enough to avoid the perception that a mass can be ‘bought’ and its spiritual benefits enjoyed at a price. For example, many religious orders invite people to participate in a ‘novena of masses’ whereby they make a donation and are included in a community of people to be remembered during a particular Mass.
No problem with that, in theory, provided the money is used for a good purpose and no one is being hoodwinked. Indirectly, however, this introduces the notion of the cut-price Mass, such enrolments being cheaper than going to a priest and offering €10, say, for a Mass to be celebrated.
It may be time for the Church to break the link altogether between the offering of Masses, which we are entitled to request at any time, and the financial maintenance of clergy at home and abroad, which is part of the ordinary duty of Christians. This might improve people’s attitudes both to the meaning of the Mass and to the obligation to support the clergy. And it would certainly sort out the scamsters.
