Q. Can you explain what the word ‘Mass’ means? Protestants say they go to church while Catholics say they participate in the Mass. How are those two things different?
A. I cannot think about the difference between Catholics saying “Mass” and Protestants (in general) saying “church” or “service” without thinking of a conversation I overheard when I was in college. In this conversation, a well-meaning but overzealous student criticized another student for saying they were going to “church” at the Newman Center instead of saying they were going to “Mass.” I remember thinking at the time, ‘who cares what they say?’ Full disclosure: I still mostly think that, but given that Catholics and Protestants will, at times, make a point about the difference, I think it is worth considering why there is a difference.
It is first important to establish that the term “Mass” was not the original way Christians would refer to the liturgical celebration of the Eucharist: “As in the case of all liturgical terms, the name is less old than the thing” (Catholic Encyclopedia). In the New Testament, the “breaking of the bread” is commonly used. In the infant Church, eucharistia was commonly used to refer to both the celebration and the bread and wine that had become the Body and Blood of Christ. This became the norm in the late second century and passed into Latin as Latin superseded Greek as the liturgical language of the western portions of the Roman Empire.
The first concrete example of missa (what would become in English, Mass) is from St. Ambrose in 385. In a letter, he used the term missa to refer to what we would now call the Liturgy of the Eucharist within the Mass. His pupil St. Augustine (not surprisingly) used missa throughout his writings, as did other notable figures of the time, but at this point missa was used to refer to the dismissal of the catechumens during Mass just prior to the Eucharistic Liturgy. Eventually, the dismissal referred to by missa was the final dismissal that ended Mass (ite missa est), which seems to have taken place throughout the Middle Ages and been firmly in place by the Reformation.
Mass, then, being as it was heavily associated with the Eucharistic Liturgy, and the Reformers being generally not so enthusiastic about the Eucharistic Liturgy (although Luther initially retained the use of the word Mass for his liturgies), lost favor with the Reformers as the means to refer to their Sunday celebration.
There was no single term that emerged as the way Protestants refer to their Sunday worship. “Service,” as a common form of referring to a Protestant worship gathering, seems to me (given that I am not an expert in this area) to be rooted in the term Gottesdienst, or “service of God,” which was used by Lutherans (and some Catholics) in the German-speaking portions of the Holy Roman Empire. As German Protestants immigrated to the U.S., the term became used in English and eventually shortened to just “service.” Again, I am not an expert in the historical development of Protestant liturgy, but this is the impression I have from my very limited research (about 45 minutes of Google searching).
This is where the second part of this question gets tricky to answer. There is no hard and fast rule about what term Protestants use to refer to their worship gatherings. Some Anglicans and very traditional classical Lutherans will even use the term Mass still. Similarly, Catholics using the word Mass instead of church is also not a hard and fast rule. While writing this, literally, I had a conversation with a very devoted Catholic who said he went to church the other day, not that he went to Mass.
My sense is that the attempt to draw a strict distinction between saying “Mass” and “service” or “church” is an outgrowth of the tension common to American Catholics to differentiate ourselves from our Protestant neighbors just as Protestants at the time of the Reformation tried to differentiate themselves from their Catholic neighbors. It is an understandable attempt to communicate that there are fundamental differences between a Catholic Mass and a Protestant worship service. This generally comes from an authentic place, a desire to express that Christ is present Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in a way He is not in a Protestant service. Watering down Catholicism to minimize the very, very important differences of belief between Catholics and Protestants is destructive to Catholicism and patronizing to Protestants.
Having said all that, if a Catholic says “let’s go to church” instead of “let’s go to Mass,” I really do not think that is a big deal. Sometimes Catholics try to draw lines in the sand where no line exists, to demonstrate their Catholic-ness vs. someone else’s, which is fundamentally unhelpful to everyone involved.
This question was answered by Father Caleb La Rue, chancellor of the Diocese of Lincoln. Write to Ask the Register using our online form, or write to 3700 Sheridan Blvd., Suite 10, Lincoln NE 68506-6100. All questions are subject to editing. Editors decide which questions to publish. Personal questions cannot be answered. People with such questions are urged to take them to their nearest Catholic priest.
