Nothing Resembling Trade

A Book Older Than Software §

We make Mass intention software, so weigh what follows accordingly.

On a shelf in a parish office there may be a run of Mass books, one a year, the oldest in a hand nobody now in the office would recognize. When a parish moves its intentions onto a computer, that book is what the computer takes over, and the law that governs the book governs the program in the same words:

§1. Parochus necnon rector ecclesiae aliusve pii loci, in quibus stipes Missarum recipi solent, peculiarem habeant librum, in quo accurate adnotent Missarum celebrandarum numerum, intentionem, stipem oblatam, necnon celebrationem peractam.

§2. Ordinarius obligatione tenetur singulis annis huiusmodi libros per se aut per alios recognoscendi.

§1. The pastor, and the rector of a church or other pious place where Mass offerings are customarily received, are to keep a special book in which they accurately record the number of Masses to be celebrated, the intention, the offering given, and the celebration once completed.

§2. The Ordinary is bound to examine these books each year, either himself or through others.

Canon 958. Latin · The Holy See’s English · Our translation.

The canon says librum, a book, and names no material. When the Holy See restated it in 2025, it spoke of “the register kept for the purpose” (decree of 13 April 2025, Art. 4 §1, our translation), and the decree doesn’t mention computers, the internet or software anywhere. No Church document we found speaks of software for Mass intentions. So the question to put to any program is the old one: does it do what the canons ask of the book? Whether the book may live on a computer at all is another matter, and dioceses answer it differently, so ask your chancery before you change how you keep yours (paper or software).

What the Record Must Show §

Canon 958 names four things for every intention a parish accepts: how many Masses are to be said, the intention, the offering given, and the celebration once completed. The last is celebrationem peractam, the Mass once it has been said, so it is written after the Mass and never when the Mass is only scheduled.

A parish asked for more Masses than it can say may have them said elsewhere, unless those who asked expressly said otherwise (canon 954), and then the law asks for more. Whoever entrusts Masses to others is “without delay to enter in a book both the Masses they received and those they handed on, noting the offerings as well,” and stays bound to see to them “until he has received word both that the obligation was accepted and that the offering was received” (canon 955 §§1 and 3, our translation). Every priest, besides, “must accurately note the Masses he accepted to celebrate and those he has satisfied” (§4).

Put into the terms of a program, which is our reading and not the canon’s wording, that comes to this. Each intention is its own entry. The offering is recorded as what actually came, and “None” is an answer, not a blank. The date said is entered after the Mass. A Mass sent to another priest carries where it went, how much went with it, and the day word came back, and it stays open until that word comes.

The record also has a reader besides the office. In the churches of the secular clergy, the local Ordinary has the duty and the right to see that Mass obligations are carried out, and in the churches of religious institutes, their Superiors (canon 957); the Ordinary, or someone he sends, examines the book every year. A record only its own program can open serves that reader badly. Our advice is that the year’s book can always be printed, or handed over as a file anyone can open.

Kept Safe and Kept Accurate §

The Code doesn’t say where a Mass book is to be stored, but it says a good deal about parish records generally. Every document concerning a diocese or its parishes is to be kept with the greatest care (canon 486 §1). The pastor is to see that the parish’s registers of baptisms, marriages and deaths, and any others the bishops prescribe, are written accurately and kept carefully; that they’re held in a parish archive, which the bishop or his delegate inspects; that they don’t come into the hands of outsiders; and that the older registers are kept carefully too, as particular law directs (canon 535).

Canon 535 is about the sacramental registers, and the Mass book has its own canon, so read it as the Code’s pattern for parish records rather than a rule written for this book. The pattern asks two things of a record: that it be right, and that it last. Canon 958 asks the first in its word “accurately”, and canon 199, below, is the reason we would give for the second. Beside the Mass book, every administrator of Church goods is to keep well-ordered books of receipts and expenditures, and to keep the documents on which the Church’s rights to its goods rest in good order, in a suitable archive (canon 1284 §2, 7° and 9°). Your diocese may have its own norms for how a parish holds and accounts for the offerings themselves; ask the chancery.

For software, our reading is plain enough. The book belongs to the parish, whose pastor answers for it, and not to whoever wrote the program. The parish should be able to take the whole of it, every year and every line, in a form it can read and print, and keep a copy in its own archive. It should outlast a change of pastor, of secretary and of program.

Nothing Silently Erased §

A Mass promised and never said doesn’t lapse. If the offering is lost through no fault of the priest’s, the Mass is still owed (canon 949), and time doesn’t cancel it either:

Praescriptioni obnoxia non sunt: [...] 5° stipes et onera Missarum; [...]

The following are not subject to prescription: [...] 5° Mass offerings and Mass obligations; [...]

Canon 199, 5°. Latin · The Holy See’s English · Our translation.

Prescription is the means by which, in law, time lets a person gain or lose a right or be freed from an obligation (canon 197), and canon 199 puts Mass obligations out of its reach. So a record that can lose a line can lose a Mass that is owed, and nobody would know.

A paper book shows its corrections: a line drawn through the old words so they can still be read, the new words beside them, a date and initials (how to correct a line). That is bookkeeping practice rather than canon law. A program can hide a change that a pen can’t, so software has to keep the same habit on purpose: no entry deleted, a correction written beside what it corrects, every change kept with who made it and when, and no entry number used twice. No canon says that in so many words. It is our reading of what “accurately” in canons 955 and 958 asks of a record that can be edited without leaving a mark.

Nothing Resembling Trade §

Canon law keeps away from Mass offerings not only trade but even its look:

A stipe Missarum quaelibet etiam species negotiationis vel mercaturae omnino arceatur.

Every appearance of bargaining or commerce is to be kept entirely away from offerings for Masses.

Canon 947. Latin · The Holy See’s English · Our translation.

The 2025 decree puts that duty at the root of the whole discipline, beside a first one: “justice toward the offerers, that is, keeping the word given to them, and the duty to avoid even the mere appearance of ‘commerce’ in sacred things” (decree, preamble, our translation). The faithful’s gifts, it recalls, were never regarded as a “sale price” for something holy, since that would be simony (our translation). What the offering is, canon law says plainly: a contribution to the good of the Church, and a share in her care for her ministers and works (canon 946). And the Code punishes whoever makes an unlawful profit from a Mass offering (canon 1383).

People search for “selling masses online”. A Mass is not for sale, and the screen where someone asks for one shouldn’t look as though it were. A cart, a running total, a figure beside each Mass on the calendar, a countdown, an offer on quantity: each borrows the look of a shop (what a request form should never do). The words count as much as the layout. The parish asks for an offering, never a price or a fee.

Where the offering goes counts too. Our advice, not the canon’s words, is that an offering given through software should reach the parish whole, less only what the card processor itself keeps, and that the page should say so. No source we opened speaks of a software company taking a share of an offering, and whether such a share would offend canon 947 or canon 1383 is a question for a canonist. We don’t answer it here.

Never the Condition of Asking §

Priests are earnestly urged to celebrate Mass for the intention of the faithful, especially those in need, even when no offering has been received (canon 945 §2). In 2025 the Holy See set that canon at the head of its article on offerings, beside canon 848, by which the minister is to ask nothing for the administration of the sacraments beyond the offerings determined by the competent authority, “always taking care that the neediest are not deprived of the help of the sacraments by reason of poverty” (decree, Art. 3 §1, our translation).

No canon we read says whether a program may make an offering the condition of asking, and no Church document we found speaks of one. A priest may not ask for more than the offering the province has set, though he may accept more, or less (canon 952). What the law does say plainly is who must not be left out: the person who asks with nothing to give.

So our advice for any system is that a request with no offering can be taken and entered in the book like any other, with “None” where the amount goes and nothing on the screen marking it as lesser. If a parish does ask for an offering online, the same screen should say how to ask without one, and the answer should be yes.

Who Can Read the Book §

An intention can carry more than a name. “For my sister, who has cancer” tells the priest what he needs to know, and tells anyone else who reads it something she may not want known. No one may unlawfully harm the good name a person enjoys, nor violate any person’s right to protect their own privacy (canon 220, our translation), and the pastor is to keep the parish’s registers from coming into the hands of outsiders (canon 535 §4).

A paper book sits in one office. A program’s records may be open to people a long way from it, at the company that runs it and at any company it relies on. Before a parish puts names in one, it should know who those people are.

Questions to Ask of Any System §

These are our questions, most with the canon behind them. Ask them of any system, ours included:

• Does every intention carry the four things canon 958 names, with the date said entered only after the Mass?
• Can a request with no offering be taken and entered like any other (canon 945 §2)?
• Does anything on the screen read like a shop: a cart, a total, a figure beside a Mass, a countdown (canon 947)?
• Does the offering reach the parish whole, and does the page say who keeps what?
• Is each Mass sent to another priest recorded on both sides, with its offering, and kept open until word comes back (canon 955)?
• Can a line be deleted, or changed with no trace of what it said and who changed it (canon 199)?
• Can the chancery read the year’s book without the program (canon 958 §2)?
• Can the parish take the whole book with it, and keep a copy in its own archive?
• Who outside the parish can read the names and intentions (canon 220)?

Asked of Memento, the answers we can give from our own code are these. While a parish keeps its account, a canceled intention stays in the register, marked canceled; every change to an intention or an offering is written to a change history with its time and, when someone is signed in, the account that made it; and the whole register downloads as a file. Card offerings, where a parish takes them, go straight into the parish’s own Stripe account, and we take no part of any offering. Two answers are not the ones this page hopes for. A parish that takes card offerings online may choose to require one on its booking page, and may set a least amount; we recommend against it, the page then names whom to contact for a Mass without one, and the desk is never bound by it. And a parish that closes its account has its register erased for good, offerings and change history with it, as soon as its owner confirms, after the closing page offers the register to download.

Where an answer leaves you unsure, take it to your pastor and to your diocese, whose Ordinary examines the book every year.