Feast of Immaculate Conception on Dec. 9 is holy day of obligation

By Kate Quinones/Catholic News Agency

VATICAN CITY. The Vatican has clarified that Catholics in the United States must still attend Mass on holy days of obligation even when they are transferred to Mondays or Saturdays, correcting a long-standing practice in the U.S. Church but causing some short-term disparities in the way the rule is applied.

Dec. 8 is typically a holy day of obligation celebrating the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, but this year the feast day lands on a Sunday in Advent. As a result, the USCCB transferred it to Monday, Dec. 9, according to the 2024 USCCB liturgical calendar, without designating it as a holy day of obligation.

Yet the Vatican’s Dicastery for Legislative Texts, in a Sept. 4 letter to Springfield, Illinois, Bishop Thomas Paprocki, stated that all of the feasts in question “are always days of obligation . . . even when the aforementioned transfer of the feast occurs.”

Bishop Paprocki, the chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Canonical Affairs and Church Governance, had in July written to the Holy See seeking clarification on whether an obligation transfers when the feast itself is transferred. Archbishop Filippo Iannone, the prefect of the legislative text dicastery, told Paprocki that “the feast must be observed as a day of obligation on the day to which it is transferred.”

Archbishop Iannone noted in the letter that certain feast days are established by canon law as days of obligation. These “must be observed” and “the canon does not provide exceptions,” he noted in the letter.

The archbishop clarified that if someone is unable to attend Mass for a “grave cause” such as illness or caring for an infant, then they are excused, as “no one is bound to the impossible.”

Some archdioceses in the United States, such as Chicago and Galveston-Houston, have dispensed Catholics from attending Mass on Dec. 9 this year, citing the difficulty of changing parish Mass schedules on short notice. However, Mass attendance is obligatory across many other U.S. dioceses, including the Diocese of Colorado Springs. See pages 8-9 or 2024 PARISH ADVENT SCHEDULES for Dec. 9 Mass times at parishes around the diocese, or see below.