Should Your Parish Take Mass Intentions Online?

What Canon Law Says About Asking Online §

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

The canons on Mass offerings don’t say how a request has to reach a priest (canons 945 to 958). Any priest may accept an offering so that he applies a Mass for a particular intention (canon 945), and the law’s concern is what follows: the Mass said, the offering kept clear of trade, the book kept. The Holy See’s 2025 decree on Mass intentions doesn’t mention the internet at all (decree of 13 April 2025, in Italian).

What the decree does give is the test. The whole discipline, it says, rests on “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” (preamble, our translation). A web form passes or fails on those two things, the same as a secretary with a pen.

What a Form Does Well §

A form is open when the office isn’t. Someone who decides late on a Sunday night to ask for a Mass for her father’s anniversary can ask then, in her own words, instead of waiting for the office to open.

The names arrive spelled by the person who knows them. A surname taken down over a bad phone line can come out three ways; typed by his daughter, it comes out hers, and that’s the spelling that goes to the sacristy and, if your parish prints intentions, to the bulletin.

And the request arrives in writing: who the Mass is for, whether they’re living or have died, the date asked for, and how to reach whoever asked. A good form asks for what the office needs and nothing more (how the office takes a request, step by step).

What Makes a Form Look Like a Shop §

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

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 canon names no feature of a website, so what follows is our reading of it, offered as that. These are the things that make a request read as a sale:

• A cart or a basket, and a button that puts a Mass in it.
• Shop words on the buttons: “Order”, “Checkout”, “Complete Purchase”.
• A running total, or a figure printed beside each Mass on the calendar, as on a menu.
• Offers on quantity, or an “add another Mass” prompt at the end.
• Urgency: a countdown, “only two Masses left this week”, a hold that runs out.
• A request that counts only once the card has cleared, so that paying is what makes it a request.

Near its opening, the 2025 decree quotes Pope Francis: “the Church is not a tollhouse; it is the house of the Father, where there is a place for everyone, with all their problems” (Evangelii gaudium, 47, the Holy See’s English). What a form should carry instead is the office’s own conversation, written down: who the Mass is for, which day, how to reach you, and then, as a separate question, whether you’d like to give an offering (what canon law asks of parish software).

Can a Form Require an Offering? §

No canon we found forbids a parish to ask for the customary offering. The bishops of the province set it (where they haven’t, the diocese’s custom stands), and a priest may not ask for more, though he may accept more if it’s freely given, and less (canon 952). But two canons point the other way for the person who can’t give, and in 2025 the Holy See set both at the head of its article on offerings:

Occorre soprattutto tenere presente le disposizioni del can. 848 CIC il quale stabilisce che il ministro, oltre alle offerte determinate dalla competente autorità, per l’amministrazione dei sacramenti non domandi nulla, evitando sempre che i più bisognosi siano privati dell’aiuto dei sacramenti a motivo della povertà. Si osservi inoltre quanto vivamente raccomandato dal can. 945 § 2 CIC, vale a dire «di celebrare la Messa per le intenzioni dei fedeli, soprattutto dei più poveri, anche senza ricevere alcuna offerta».

Above all, the provisions of canon 848 CIC must be kept in mind, which lays down that 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. Let what canon 945 §2 CIC so warmly recommends be observed besides, namely «to celebrate Mass for the intentions of the faithful, above all of the poorest, even without receiving any offering».

Art. 3 §1. Italian · Our translation.

The law, then, doesn’t settle whether a web form may make an offering a condition, and no Church document we found speaks of web forms. What it does settle is who must not be left out: the poorest, who are not to go without because they’re poor (canon 848), and anyone who asks with nothing to give, for whom priests are urged to say Mass all the same (canon 945 §2).

A form that takes a request only with a card leaves out exactly those people, unless it tells them on the same screen how else to ask. Our advice is to let the form take a request with no offering and write it in the book like any other. If your parish does ask for an offering online, say right there whom to call to ask without one, and make sure the answer they get is yes. Where you’re unsure, ask your pastor and your diocese.

One Mass, One Offering, on a Screen §

At the desk, the secretary looks at the book before she promises a date. A form has to do the same. Each offering given and accepted is owed a Mass of its own (canon 948), so a form that lets two people choose the 8 AM Mass on the same Tuesday has promised one Mass twice. Either the form offers only Masses that don’t yet carry an intention, or the office confirms each request before a date is promised. One cathedral parish tells people that a request sent through its form “is not considered to be ‘booked’ until you hear back from our Parish Secretary”.¹

The year needs the same watch. No one may accept more offerings for Masses he is to say himself than he can satisfy within a year (canon 953). A form that takes requests for “the next available Mass” without limit can take on more than the parish can say, so someone should be keeping that count.

Two parts of the 2025 decree bear on forms directly. A “collective” Mass, one Mass for several people’s offerings, is allowed only under rules the bishops of the province or the Holy See have set, and only if every giver was told and freely agreed, and that wish “can never be presumed; on the contrary, in the absence of explicit consent, it is always presumed not to have been given” (Art. 1 §§1 to 2, our translation). To our reading, a box ticked in advance on someone’s behalf is not explicit consent. And asking for, or even accepting, an offering for a name simply remembered at Mass, in the Prayer of the Faithful for example, is “gravely illicit” (Art. 4 §§2 to 3, our translation). If your website takes prayer requests as well as Mass intentions, keep every mention of an offering away from the prayer requests (one Mass, one intention).

Into the Mass Book §

However a request comes, the parish writes it in a book kept for the purpose: how many Masses are to be said, the intention, the offering given, and the Mass once it has been said (canon 958). The Holy See restated that duty in 2025 (decree, Art. 4 §1).

A form that only sends an email leaves someone to copy each request into the book by hand, and the email and the book can then disagree. It’s better for the request to land in the register itself, with the offering written as what actually came, not what someone meant to give. Dioceses differ on paper and software, so ask your chancery before you change how you keep the book (paper or software).

Who Sees the Names? §

A request carries 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. Canon law protects both a person’s good name and their right to protect their own privacy (canon 220).

Online, more people can read a request than at the desk: whoever at the provider can open the parish’s records, whoever receives the confirmation email, and, if the bulletin is posted on the parish website, anyone who searches her name. The Diocese of Lansing’s 2015 guidance on parish prayer lists fits here: ask before a name is published, “Keep the prayer request general, especially regarding personal health,” and don’t put a prayer list on a website unless it’s “behind a login screen for church members only.”²

So let the form ask whether the intention may be printed, print only what the person agreed to, and find out who outside the parish can read what’s sent (what to print).

Offerings Online §

An offering is a gift to the Church, a share in her care for her ministers and works (canon 946). Some dioceses set rules for the account it goes into: Scranton’s is that offerings received for Masses “should be deposited in a non-interest bearing checking account.”³ So an offering given online should land in the parish’s own account, where your diocese’s rules can apply to it, and no one but the card processor should keep any of it.

Stripe, for one, keeps part of each card payment: its published rate for a domestic card in the United States is 2.9% plus 30 cents,⁴ so a $10 offering reaches the parish as $9.41. Whatever processor you use, the form should say plainly where an offering goes.

No Church document we found speaks of card processing. Whether to ask the parishioner to add the processor’s share, and whether the book records $10 or $9.41, are questions for your diocese’s finance office.

Keep the Phone and the Desk §

Most older Americans use the internet now, but not all. In Pew Research Center’s 2025 survey, 90% of adults 65 and older said they used it.⁵ Others will always want to hand an envelope across the counter, or will come in after a funeral wanting to talk to someone.

A form replaces none of that. Requests from the phone, the counter and the website should go into the same book, kept the same way, so that Tuesday’s 8 AM Mass can’t be promised once by phone and once online.

Questions to Ask Any Provider §

Whoever builds your form, us included, should be able to answer these plainly:

• Who outside the parish can read the names and intentions, and where are they kept?
• Does anything on the form look like a shop: a cart, a checkout, a total, a countdown?
• Can someone ask for a Mass with no offering, and is that request written in the book like any other?
• Where does an online offering land, does anyone in between keep a share, and what does the card processor keep?
• Can the form, the phone and the desk together promise one Mass to two people?
• Does every request reach the book with the four things canon 958 asks for?
• Can a record be deleted, and can you see who changed one and when?
• If you leave, can you take the whole book with you, in a file you can read?

How Memento Keeps This §

In Memento, requests from the parish website go into the same register as those taken at the desk and by phone, and a new parish’s booking page takes no money until the parish chooses otherwise: it says only that an offering can be given at the parish office, and how. A parish that takes card offerings online may require one on that page, and set a least amount; we recommend against both. Where it does, the page names whom to contact to ask for a Mass with less or with none, and the desk is never bound by it. Card offerings go by direct charge into the parish’s own Stripe account, we take no part of any offering, and Stripe keeps its own processing share before the money reaches the parish’s bank (canon 947, and what we do about it).