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Changes to SCAP start Sunday

By Marie Mischel
^©Intermountain Catholic

SALT LAKE CITY – The history of the Catholic Church is scattered with periods during which congregations lacked priests. In those times, the people prayed the Liturgy of the Hours or gathered for the liturgy of the Word but they didn’t necessarily share communion.

These days, in Utah as well as other rural areas of the United States, many Catholic parishes lack a resident priest, but congregations still gather to hear the Word of God and receive Holy Communion through a ritual called Sunday Celebrations in the Absence of a Priest (SCAP.)

While the liturgy of the Word is pronounced and Holy Communion often is distributed during the SCAP, the ritual lacks the central portion of the Mass – the Eucharist, or consecration of the bread and the wine. So, although attending a SCAP fulfills a Catholic’s Sunday obligation, the ritual isn’t the equivalent of Mass.

SCAP was formalized by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in 1994 and revised in 2007. Those revisions will take effect in the Diocese of Salt Lake City on Nov. 29, the first Sunday of Advent.

“The Church has always revised their liturgical books, through the centuries,” said Timothy Johnston, the diocese’s director of liturgy. “After we’ve experienced the previous ritual, we realize things weren’t that great or it didn’t make sense and so it was appropriate and the time had come where it needed to be revised.”

A primary reason for the change was that the original version of the SCAP was so similar to the Mass in language and structure that many people didn’t realize the difference, he said.

Lay ministers who were celebrating the SCAP joined priests and bishops to make the revisions, Johnston added. “This was really a call from the laity that were actually doing it in mission territories like our own, realizing the deficiencies, in connection with our bishops.”

Although the SCAP is intended to be a temporary measure, for many of Utah’s missions, it’s a regular celebration. In Hurricane, for example, only one Mass is celebrated each month because of the shortage of priests.

While the preferred version of SCAP is the Liturgy of the Hours, either the Morning Prayer or Evening Prayer may be used, Johnston said.

Workshops regarding the change were held throughout the diocese during the summer. Deacon John Gorman, who has been performing SCAP for about a dozen years in the St. George area, said the changes won’t be “a terribly huge problem, because…all of the deacons and three lay people have gone through practice sessions twice now to be able to understand what it is we’re doing, where we stand, what our postures are and go through the whole ceremony as individuals. So I believe we’re quite comfortable with changing.”

The regular congregation in that area is aware that the changes are coming, but many of the tourists who attend the missions may not know what to expect, he said, However, one of the parishioners has prepared a page outlining the changes, he said.