It also helps people who are on a fixed income to plan (if they can find any parish with available slots in the calendar!). A fixed amount removes confusion and questions. Mind you: setting a fixed amount in a diocese for Mass intentions is not a bad thing in itself. They can make their own arrangements for stipends for those Masses. Priests can celebrate with their own intentions when they are not obliged to take the scheduled intention at the parish. Canceled priests have all days off, as it were. I believe that counts mostly for public Masses celebrated on the parish schedule as well as “stole fees” (for marriages, etc). In some places the amount of a stipend is fixed by the diocese. It is right to provide stipends for priests who do things for you (baptize your babies, marry you, etc.). This proverb explains that the priest’s income is rightfully from the celebration of Mass and, by extension, all his priestly actions. Where the Mass is, there also the table/meal/living is. Hence, it is right and just that the priest receive material means to live through his action of offering the Sacrifice at the altar for people’s intentions. The identity of the priest and his living is “from the altar”. They are not for being nice or chairing committees or running youth groups. Priests have the right to make their living “from the altar”. Moreover, religious priests and diocesan priests can have a different manner of receiving intentions: some go to the community, some to the parish, some even to the diocese (which I think could be a violation of canon law… certain it is of justice and charity). Also, customs and particular laws are established in different places.
First, it may seems a little self-serving, since I am a priest and I receive Mass stipends now and then. This is a hard one to tackle for a couple of reasons.
Would we generally assume a higher amount is also fitting for those priests who have been cancelled and are receiving nothing at all from the diocese that (canonically) probably owes them to pay their living expenses? So, it seems like there would be a reasonable sort of amount or range of donations that is fitting or generally appropriate from those of us who are not poverty-stricken. Presumably, other than the (sometimes very modest) living typically provided to a priest from the parish and diocese, he must pay for his needs at least in part out of what is given to him, and this includes what is given to him in thanksgiving that he is available as a priest to say masses for us and our needs. But I am not truly poor, and I am willing and able to assist with meeting priests’ needs. I understand that it is not strictly necessary to send a certain amount, and that way the truly poor can still get masses said for their needs / intentions. What is a reasonable ordinary donation to a priest in connection with a request to say a mass.
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