- Feb 5, 2002
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A recent Substack post, “The parish you hate might need you,” went viral for suggesting that “church-hopping is killing our parishes.” The author, Patrick Neve, believes that Catholic church hoppers harm the common good of their parish, that a parishioner faced with a parish church he, for whatever reason, “hates” should consider sticking it out and weathering the storm of a bad pastor. Parishioners, Neve argues, have the power to affect their churches.
Neve provoked a huge number of reactions—the great majority of which were negative: “I would rather let those parishes die than let the faith of my children die”; “If they really needed me, they would have actually attempted to dialogue on music and authentic liturgy”; “Everything you do or spend to build up your local parish can be destroyed overnight.”
Neve’s critics are aided by the fact that priests are failing to meet the normative obligations set upon them as pastors. The priest shortage in the United States means that parishes are closing or merging, that pastors are split between many parishes. Where Neve calls for stability and the construction of communities over decades, parishioners have no guarantee that their parish church will exist in a decade.
All of which raises a perennial question: What obligations does a layman have toward his parish? And are parishioners obligated to go to their parish church on Sundays?
Debates over these questions are often worsened by a widespread misunderstanding over what parishes actually are. They are not the nearest church alone but rather “a certain community of the Christian faithful.” A parish must have, according to the Catholic Church’s Code of Canon Law, a particular church, but its substance is the people. Catholics living within the boundary of a territorial parish—whether or not they know it, whether or not they’ve registered there—are members of that parish. The only way to opt out of a specific parish is to move. Some do not live within a territorial parish, while others are members of non-territorial parishes, which are “to be established determined by reason of the rite, language, or nationality of the Christian faithful of some territory, or even for some other reason.” But the territorial parish and membership in it are by far the most common situation for American Catholics.
Continued below.
Neve provoked a huge number of reactions—the great majority of which were negative: “I would rather let those parishes die than let the faith of my children die”; “If they really needed me, they would have actually attempted to dialogue on music and authentic liturgy”; “Everything you do or spend to build up your local parish can be destroyed overnight.”
Neve’s critics are aided by the fact that priests are failing to meet the normative obligations set upon them as pastors. The priest shortage in the United States means that parishes are closing or merging, that pastors are split between many parishes. Where Neve calls for stability and the construction of communities over decades, parishioners have no guarantee that their parish church will exist in a decade.
All of which raises a perennial question: What obligations does a layman have toward his parish? And are parishioners obligated to go to their parish church on Sundays?
Debates over these questions are often worsened by a widespread misunderstanding over what parishes actually are. They are not the nearest church alone but rather “a certain community of the Christian faithful.” A parish must have, according to the Catholic Church’s Code of Canon Law, a particular church, but its substance is the people. Catholics living within the boundary of a territorial parish—whether or not they know it, whether or not they’ve registered there—are members of that parish. The only way to opt out of a specific parish is to move. Some do not live within a territorial parish, while others are members of non-territorial parishes, which are “to be established determined by reason of the rite, language, or nationality of the Christian faithful of some territory, or even for some other reason.” But the territorial parish and membership in it are by far the most common situation for American Catholics.
Continued below.
