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Let's get straight down to tin tacks. Attending a 'Paraliturgy', as it's called in this neck of the woods - but properly known as a Liturgy of the Word with Communion - almost certainly will not fulfill your Sunday obligation, which is to keep the Lord's Day holy by attending Mass.
"Canon 1248 - If participation in the eucharistic celebration becomes impossible because of the absence of a sacred minister or for another grave cause, it is strongly recommended that the faithful take part in a liturgy of the word"(emphasis added, for ease of understanding).
That's it. Cut and dried. Here in New Zealand, if Father's away or ill, or if you live in a 'priestless parish', how impossible is it for you to attend Mass? Do you, or many other Catholics, live more than an hour away from a celebration of the Mass? And how many Catholics wouldn't drive for an hour or more to a sports fixture, or the beach, or to lunch in a restaurant or cafe?
In regard to my parish of Holy Trinity, Central Hawke's Bay, Sunday Mass is celebrated at four churches in nearby Hastings and Havelock North. So the 'Holy Mass', as my German leprechaun Leo calls it, is only 40 minutes away. In the other direction, Sunday Mass in Dannevirke is a 35-minute drive. Admittedly, there are many in our St Patrick's community who can't seem to manage the five-minute drive to St Joseph's when the occasion calls for it (and vice-versa, I suppose). It's a mini-manifestation of the same maxi-problem: lack of charity.
Under the 'progressive' leadership of NZ's bishops, ably assisted by the ladies of the Catholic liberal left ('lay leaders' are usually women), Liturgies of the Word are likely to be served up in more and more parishes in future.
So we all need reminding of the seriousness of our Sunday obligation to attend Mass. "Those who deliberately fail in this obligation commit a grave sin" (CCC 2181).
Last Sunday, with Father away on holiday for two weeks, the logical response to the requirement of canon law would have been to car-pool, hire a mini-bus or two, and/or offer rides to parishioners who for one reason or another can't drive themselves to Mass elsewhere. Imagine how happy those communities would have been to have their Mass counts boosted, and what it could have done for our own community spirit and morale to share the journey to Mass.
But no; Holy Trinity made do with a 'paraliturgy'. So before the 'service' (such a Protestant expression), and after, I offered as many parishioners as I could a ride with me to the best Mass on offer, the indult Traditional Latin Mass at St Columba's, Ashhurst, at 12 midday.
Okay, the Manawatu Gorge is closed (has been for a couple of years) so Ashhurst is now 75 minutes away - and 'over the Saddle' might as well be over the moon for some. I had no takers. I even made so bold as to mention fulfilling my Sunday obligation, at which our parish expert on all things liturgical - a woman, of course, who'll lead next Sunday's 'paraliturgy' - assumed an expression of caring tolerance. Another woman was so emphatic about turning me down, it was like I was offering her a ride to a black Mass.
I hadn't intended to go to the 'paraliturgy' but I'd changed my mind, in a spirit of good will, I hoped. I think these good people believe they're doing The Right Thing, because for one thing Father told them to do it and for another, they've had absolutely no catechizing on the Mass and its meaning as "the source, centre and summit" of our Catholic Faith.
"Justice towards God is called the virtue of religion" (CCC 1807). And, talking about our duty to God as Christians, St Thomas Aquinas says, "the precepts pertaining to religion are given precedence (Ex 20), as being of the greatest importance. Now the order of precepts is proportionate to the order of virtues, since the precepts of the Law prescribe acts of virtue. Therefore religion is the chief of the moral virtues" (Summa Theologiae, ii-11, Q. 81, A.6).
So in the same way that I wanted to cut my fellow-parishioners some slack by going to their 'service', I had to give God His due by going to His Holy Mass.
That's justice, which is the principal virtue. And obeying His Third Commandment - which like all Jewish law was fulfilled in the New Covenant by Jesus - is even more than giving God His due; it's being kind to God, it's loving God.
My fellow-parishioners, as far as I know, are kind people. Well, Jesus commanded us to "love one another" - and isn't God the Other beyond all others? If the people we love ignored us, sent us to Coventry, acted as if we weren't there, how would we feel? If our husband/wife refused to drive for one hour to see us just once a week, when we'd specially asked them to, and if they maybe even drove an hour to see someone else instead, how would we feel?
So when we can't be bothered to make the effort to attend Mass as He asks, how do we imagine God feels?
In his encyclical Mediator Dei Pope Pius XII stated that "all the faithful should be aware that to participate in the Eucharistic sacrifice is their chief duty and supreme dignity ... (and) with such earnestness and concentration that they may be united as closely as possible with the High Priest, according to the Apostle "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus" (MD 80).
Of course it's hard for us post-Vatican II Catholics, surviving on our subsistence diet of the Novus Ordo and the fol-de-rol that goes with it, to appreciate the sublimity of the Mass and what they can gain for themselves by sharing in that other-worldliness, the largesse of our loving Saviour who hung on the Cross in agony to achieve it for us.
And in their homilies, our shepherds, good Protestants that most of them are, have led us to even leaner pastures by assuring us that we're all going to Heaven and there's nothing we even need to do to get there.
That's why we owe it to ourselves and our families to find out what the Mass offers us, not to mention what we should be offering to God.
Even Pope Francis has stated that " It is true that the quality of Christian life is measured by the capacity to love, ... but how can we practise the Gospel without drawing the energy to do so, one Sunday after another, from the inexhaustible source of the Eucharist? We do not go to Mass in order to give something to God (ahem; I don't agree) but to receive what we truly need from Him."
https://media.ascensionpress.com/2019/07/10/why-sunday-mass-is-an-obligation/
And as St (Padre) Pio of Pietrelcina said: "It would be easier for the world to survive without the sun than to do without Holy Mass".
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