Question Corner: Is logging Mass attendance for Catholic school discounts aligned with canon law?

Q: Many Catholic schools in the archdiocese I am in are now adopting expectations to attend 75 percent of the year’s Masses and holy days of obligation only at the school’s parish to receive “active parishioner discounts” for school tuition, among other expectations. While I support positively encouraging Mass attendance and involvement in the parish, the expectation requires logging your attendance at Mass to receive credit, which I don’t agree with. The transactional nature of the Mass attendance record feels misaligned with the intent of Mass. Is having a parish-sponsored minimum attendance record for a tuition discount aligned with canon law? Does it infringe on our free will to determine, in good faith, if we are excused from the duty of Mass? Is a Mass attendance record misaligned with the trust that the church is to provide to parishioners?

A: Certainly, attending Mass should never take on a “transactional” tone. But since I’m not “on the ground” or directly acquainted with the situation in your archdiocese, I can’t come to a firm opinion on the appropriateness or inappropriateness of this system of tracking Mass attendance. I can share a few observations, however.

First, technically speaking, a tuition discount for attending Mass does not violate canon law. Yes, simony — that is, the buying or selling of sacraments or “spiritual things” (see the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2121) — is not only a canonical crime but a grave sin. As per Canon 1380 of the Code of Canon Law, “a person who through simony celebrates or receives a sacrament” can be punished with interdict, which is similar to excommunication, or even by some other more enduring penalty.

But paying tuition to a school is not the same as buying or selling a sacrament. Education certainly has a spiritual component, but it is not fundamentally a supernatural reality like the sacraments. This is clear by the fact that most modern secular societies provide for some degree of education for their people, and even Catholic schools routinely teach nonreligious subjects.

Additionally, if you could read any buying or selling into this particular situation, I suppose it would be that the parish or diocese is “paying” parents to attend Mass via a tuition discount. While it would be a crime to attempt to buy a sacrament, I don’t think the reverse holds true. Or in other words, if the local church wants to attach some material benefit to Mass attendance, this would be the free addition of one gift (a tuition discount) to a greater gift which is already offered freely (the holy sacrifice of the Mass).

This is also a separate issue from one’s ability to discern in conscience whether one is bound to the obligation to attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation. In this regard, the church does trust us to use our own common sense in good faith to determine whether illness, severe weather, distance from a Catholic parish or some other serious reason renders it imprudent or practically impossible for us to attend Sunday Mass. But this freedom pertains to the question of whether or not our missing Mass is a sin; we are not promised any fringe benefits that come about as a result of Mass attendance just because we have legitimately discerned that our specific life circumstances excuse us from the Sunday obligation.

I can sympathize with whoever drafted this diocesan policy, as it seems like they were trying to juggle competing priorities. These days, it can be expensive to run a Catholic school, but at the same time Catholic education should be accessible to those who are striving to raise their children in the faith.

A system of “logging in” to Mass might not have been my own solution to this problem, but perhaps we can try to appreciate the challenge these administrators were facing.

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