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Views from the Choir Loft

Should Priests Trinate on All Souls’ Day?

Fr. David Friel · November 1, 2015

OR GOOD REASON, Holy Mother Church limits the frequency with which priests may offer Holy Mass. Celebrating Mass too often runs the risk of reducing the sacred liturgy to routine action. It also encourages the abuse of stipends, the abuse of concelebration, and misunderstanding of the nature of the Holy Sacrifice.

Ordinarily, a priest is not to celebrate Mass more than once per day. There are exceptions, however, to this norm, which allow for bination or trination. One such exception is the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed (“All Souls’ Day”), whereon priests are permitted to offer up to three Masses. Should this permission be understood as an encouragement to offer three Masses on All Souls’ Day? Certainly, one could not argue that it is a requirement. But should the norms be seen as simply permission, or also as invitation?

I am posing this question to our readers, both clergy & laity. I do have my own opinion, which I will withhold for now. Your insights and perspectives would be most welcome (please contribute via Facebook comments).

Allow me to share some of the relevant liturgical documentation to inform your thinking. The opportunities when it is permissible to offer Mass more than once per day are stipulated in GIRM #204. This section states:

For a particular reason, having to do either with the significance of the rite or of the festivity, the faculty is given to celebrate or concelebrate more than once on the same day in the following cases:

a. A priest who has celebrated or concelebrated the Chrism Mass on Holy Thursday may also celebrate or concelebrate the Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper;

b. A priest who has celebrated or concelebrated the Mass of the Easter Vigil may celebrate or concelebrate Mass during the day on Easter Sunday;

c. On the Nativity of the Lord (Christmas Day), all priests may celebrate or concelebrate three Masses, provided the Masses are celebrated at their proper times of day;

d. On the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed (All Souls’ Day), all priests may celebrate or concelebrate three Masses, provided that the celebrations take place at different times, and that the norms established regarding the application of second and third Masses are observed;

e. A priest who concelebrates with the Bishop or his delegate at a Synod or pastoral visitation, or concelebrates on the occasion of a meeting of priests, may celebrate Mass again for the benefit of the faithful. This holds also, with due regard for the prescriptions of law, for groups of religious.

The specific GIRM rubric that refers to All Souls’ Day (above) actually originates from Incruentum altaris sacrificium, a 1915 bull of Pope Benedict XV (available HERE). This document states:

All priests are permitted to celebrate three Masses on All Souls’ Day, provided these take place at different times and on condition, moreover, that while they may at their preference apply one of the Masses in favor of any person and accept for that Mass a stipend, they may not accept a stipend for the second or for the third Mass, the second of which they are bound to apply respectively for all the faithful departed and the third for the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff.

Is this permission to be understood as an encouragement? What do you think?


A discussion about this post is underway.

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: All Souls Last Updated: January 1, 2020

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About Fr. David Friel

Ordained in 2011, Father Friel is a priest of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and serves as Director of Liturgy at Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary. —(Read full biography).

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Corpus Christi Watershed

President’s Corner

    “Yahweh” in church songs?
    My pastor asked me to write a weekly column for our parish bulletin. The one scheduled to run on 22 June 2025 is called “Three Words in a Psalm” and speaks of translating the TETRAGRAMMATON. You can read the article at this column repository. All of them are quite brief because I was asked to keep within a certain word limit.
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    “Music List” • Pentecost Sunday
    Some have expressed interest in perusing the ORDER OF MUSIC I prepared for Pentecost Sunday (8 June 2025). If such a thing interests you, feel free to download it as a PDF file. Because our choir is on break this week, the music is relatively simple.
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    “Truly Great Processional” • (Pipe Organ)
    I stumbled upon this live recording of a PROCESSIONAL I played on the pipe organ in 2002. It’s an excerpt from a much longer composition by Sebastian Bach. In those days, there weren’t sophisticated recording devices allowing one “fix” wrong notes. (Perhaps they existed, but we didn’t have machines like that.) So it was necessary to play the entire piece from beginning to end. If you’re a church organist, feel free to download the PDF score. I suppose it’s only a matter of time until some joker uses “artificial intelligence” to play music at church … but there’s something so satisfying about playing an organ in real life.
    —Jeff Ostrowski

Quick Thoughts

    Antiphons Don’t Match?
    A reader wants to know why the Entrance and Communion antiphons in certain publications deviate from what’s prescribed by the GRADUALE ROMANUM published after Vatican II. Click here to read our answer. The short answer is: the Adalbert Propers were never intended to be sung. They were intended for private Masses only (or Masses without music). The “Graduale Parvum,” published by the John Henry Newman Institute of Liturgical Music in 2023, mostly uses the Adalbert Propers—but sometimes uses the GRADUALE text: e.g. Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul (29 June).
    —Corpus Christi Watershed
    When to Sit, Stand and Kneel like it’s 1962
    There are lots of different guides to postures for Mass, but I couldn’t find one which matched our local Latin Mass, so I made this one: sit-stand-kneel-crop
    —Veronica Brandt
    The Funeral Rites of the Graduale Romanum
    Lately I have been paging through the 1974 Graduale Romanum (see p. 678 ff.) and have been fascinated by the funeral rites found therein, especially the simply-beautiful Psalmody that is appointed for all the different occasions before and after the funeral Mass: at the vigil/wake, at the house of the deceased, processing to the church, at the church, processing to the cemetery, and at the cemetery. Would that this “stational Psalmody” of the Novus Ordo funeral rites saw wider usage! If you or anyone you know have ever used it, please do let me know.
    —Daniel Tucker

Random Quote

“However well equipped and trained a choir may be, all its good points may be obscured by an unsuitable accompaniment. In fact the organist can, in a large measure, either make or mar his choir. It must be owned, however, that the accompanist of Plainsong has to contend with many difficulties. […] The purist will still find his best enjoyment of the chant when it is sung unaccompanied, but to most a becoming accompaniment gives an added charm.”

— Benedictines of Stanbrook (1905)

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