Holy Days of Obligation Abroad

A business trip was set to take me to Canada in late October and into the first days of November. As I already knew that All Saints’ Day is not a holy day of obligation in Canada, and mindful of the maxim When in Rome, do as the Romans do, I gathered that I was not obligated to attend Mass on November 1. Yet, because I’m a lawyer, I wanted to figure out the exact nuances of the rules. But because I’m not a canon lawyer, I did not know where to start. Guidance isn’t particularly easy to find online. Though praying about it might be the right approach, I wanted to understand the law.

On online discussion boards, people seem to favor following the local rule and thus see no obligation to attend Mass in a situation like All Saints’ Day in Canada. But I’m not one to believe things on message boards, and I found out that some experts seem to think differently.

Several years ago, the late Fr. Kenneth Doyle, himself also a lawyer (he earned a law degree from Albany Law School in 1978), wrote, “When traveling for brief periods…Catholics should follow the rules of their own country on Mass attendance” (Catholic Philly, Aug. 29, 2017). Canon Lawyer Cathy Caridi reached a similar conclusion: “If you visit another country on a vacation of less than three months, you are obligated to attend Mass on the holydays established by the U.S. Catholic Bishops — no matter what the Church does in the country you are visiting” (CanonLawMadeEasy.com, May 22, 2008). Caridi and Doyle both anchored their analysis in canon 12 of the Code of Canon Law. I could see their point in the sections of canon 12 they highlighted, yet in my inexpert reading, canon 13 seems to lead to the opposite conclusion — especially if read together. (I emailed Caridi but did not receive a response.)