Q. Why do we belong to a parish?
A. When I was in college I was at a grocery store and an older woman came up to me and said, “Hi, you don’t know me, but I watched you grow up from five pews behind you and your family.”
It was kind of an odd thing to hear out of the blue but we talked for a bit and she explained that she went to the same parish my family and I had attended. Like most families, my family had our de facto spot in the church that we almost always sat in, and her family had theirs—five pews behind us. We went to the same Mass and sat in the same places for seven years and never once spoke.
Reflecting on this encounter I think it encapsulates the positive and negative aspects of parish life. On one hand there is something beautiful about the unspoken, unknown community of a parish. Our parish was very large and yet that woman felt a connection to me and my family because we worshipped together, even if we did not know one another. The negative is that, despite being at the same Mass every week and sitting in the same place for seven years, we never met.
The canonical definition of a parish is “a certain community of the Chrisitan faithful stably constituted in a particular church, whose pastoral care is entrusted to a pastor as its proper pastor under the authority of the diocesan bishop” (CIC 515).
The answer to why we belong to a parish is in this definition.
Before diving in though, it is worth noting what is not in the definition of parish, namely, any mention of the parish church. This can seem counterintuitive as Catholics commonly conflate their parish church and their parish. It is easy to think of a parish as simply the place I go to Mass. While Mass is essential to the life of the parish, thinking of our parish exclusively in terms of where I attend Mass is reductive and misses the importance of parish as community.
The “community of the Christian faithful” is what is at the heart of what a parish is. It is why the definition begins with it. A parish is more than just a place we go to Mass. It is our community. That’s why parishes have festivals and bazaars and the like. Sure, fundraising is (usually) part of the goal, but these events are meant to help parishioners grow in a sense of community, to gather outside of Mass and to get to know one another.
A consequence of our highly mobile society is that there is less of a connection to a particular parish amongst Catholics. For many Catholics where they go to Mass has become a matter of choice. We have in many places lost the sense of the territorial parish and the idea that ‘I go to Mass at my parish because that’s my parish.’ This is especially the case in urban areas where the number and proximity of different parishes allows for more options.
While this is perfectly understandable, it does contribute to the loss of the sense of the parish as community. Sunday Mass is the pinnacle of parish life, in which all the parishioners gather together in worship of God. St. John Paul II said of the Sunday Eucharistic celebration, “Each community, gathering all its members for the “breaking of the bread,” becomes the place where the mystery of the Church is concretely made present. In celebrating the Eucharist, the community opens itself to communion with the universal Church, imploring the Father to “remember the Church throughout the world” and make her grow in the unity of all the faithful with the Pope and with the Pastors of the particular Churches, until love is brought to perfection.” (Dies Domini 34).
Ultimately, we belong to a parish because the Church wants to make sure Her members have a community in which and through which they can encounter Christ. The Church organizes the world into dioceses (dioceses are a form of particular churches, which is what that part of the definition means) with a bishop entrusted to lead all those within his diocese to Christ. Dioceses are broken down into parishes for the same reason, to make sure every Catholic has a place they belong and someone who is charged with caring for their immortal soul, the pastor. The Church does not want Her people being lost in the shuffle, so She entrusts bishops (or their equivalent) and pastors (or their equivalent) with the grave responsibility of caring for Her people and leading them to live in the freedom of Christ.
But an important part of that care is parishioners supporting parishioners. The Church is a community, and the parish is the most fundamental building block of that community. We are called to engage with our community, to get involved in helping at our parish but also to engage with our fellow parishioners. We are not called to Christ in isolation but through a community, so we need to do our part to build that community. And while the invisible bonds of a parish gathered together in prayer and worship are real and powerful, it is better for everyone when those bonds are made visible by believers joined not just in prayer but in community.
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.
