Q: I’m retired and I volunteer with my parish to do the tech stuff to livestream some of the parish’s Masses online. Sometimes I livestream funerals for people who have family members who can’t be there in person, and I’m happy to help people out that way. Recently I heard that the parish wants to start charging a fee for having a funeral livestreamed. Isn’t that simony?
A: The short answer is that — while we could perhaps have a different discussion on the pastoral appropriateness of charging for a funeral livestream in a given local parish context — no, this is not technically simony.
For reference, the Catechism of the Catholic Church defines “simony” as “the buying or selling of spiritual things” (CCC 2121). Paragraph 2118 of the Catechism explicitly identifies simony as a sin against the First Commandment.
Simony gets its name from an incident recounted in the New Testament in Acts 8:9-25. We read that there was a man named Simon who “used to practice magic” (i.e., the dark arts of the occult) and who thus “astounded the people of Samaria, claiming to be someone great” (Acts 8:9). But after encountering the preaching and witness of the Apostles “Even Simon himself believed and, after being baptized […] when he saw the signs and mighty deeds that were occurring, he was astounded” (Acts 8:13).
Although Simon had seemingly embraced the Gospel, he did not experience a full conversion of heart and was still in his old mindset regarding the supernatural. Thinking that spiritual things still worked as a quid pro quo system: “When Simon saw that the Spirit was conferred by the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money ‘Give me this power too, so that anyone upon whom I lay my hands may receive the holy Spirit'” (Acts 8:18-19). Simon was promptly put in his place by St. Peter, who rebuked him: “May your money perish with you, because you thought that you could buy the gift of God with money” (Acts 8:20).
On a concrete level today, “simony” as a canonical crime can cover several different things. For instance, Canon 1380 refers to buying or selling sacraments, telling us that “a person who through simony celebrates or receives a sacrament is to be punished with an interdict [a prohibition on receiving the sacraments, similar to excommunication] or suspension [essentially, a cleric being forbidden from serving in that capacity]” among other possible penalties.
Simony can also include the buying or selling of an ecclesiastical office or particular “job” in the church. A hypothetical example might be a priest trying to pay his bishop to appoint him to a bigger or more prestigious parish. But even if the bishop was swayed by the offer of cash, Canon 149, 3 tells us that “the provision of an office made as a result of simony, is invalid by virtue of the law itself.”
Still, the church does have material needs that arise in the course of her spiritual mission. And so it is not simony to accept or request donations on the occasion of the celebration of the sacraments, as long as it is understood that such a donation is truly a free-will offering and not a condition for the sacrament’s administration.
It is also not simony to ask a person to cover the non-spiritual costs associated with a sacramental occasion, such as asking a bride and groom to pay the organist’s stipend if they want music at their wedding Mass.
In the scenario you mention, livestreaming is not an essential part of the funeral Mass, so it would not be simony to charge a fee for this. However, if the parish is not incurring notable costs for the use of the technology, and if you are willing to freely volunteer your time, I think it can make sense to offer this service as a free gift for grieving families.
Jenna Marie Cooper, who holds a licentiate in canon law, is a consecrated virgin and a canonist whose column appears weekly at OSV News. Send your questions to CatholicQA@osv.com.
