Parishes
The word “parish” comes from the Greek word paroikia and the Latin parochia. Translated literally, it means something like “houses near each other” or a “district.” Some people translate it as a “neighborhood.”1
Describing it this way helps us understand something important about Catholic parishes that we don’t normally attend to ― namely that they’re territorial. Indeed, the “parish” refers not to the church building or its grounds, as we sometimes think. It refers, rather, to the community of Catholics who live in a specific geographical area. Parishes are tied to districts or neighborhoods. “As a general rule,” the Code of Canon Law says, “a parish is to be territorial, that is, one which includes all the Christian faithful of a certain territory” (§518).
This is more important than you might think. In the Middle Ages, Catholics practiced something called “beating the bounds.” During the annual “Rogation Days” ― days of prayer for a healthy harvest ― parishioners would physically walk the entirety of their parish’s territorial boundary tapping the various landmarks with willow rods. Before maps were widely used, this was done every seven years in order to keep fresh the memory of the parish boundary and to pass it on to the next generation.2 “Walk through Zion,” the Psalmist sings. “Walk all round it. Review its ramparts, examine its castles, that you may tell the next generation that such is our God” (Ps 48:12-14).
There are interesting things that follow from all this, even for contemporary Catholics ― especially with respect to things like “parish membership.” Indeed, many Catholics are surprised to learn that, in the Catholic world, one’s parish membership refers, first and foremost, to the parish territory in which one lives. This is still true today. Cathy Caridi, a Rome-based canon lawyer, explains that “when a bishop formally erects a parish, he establishes its specific boundaries, and all Catholics residing within those limits are ipso facto [by that very fact] members of that parish, whether they know it or not.”3
Of course, Catholics are able to worship outside their territorial parishes. In the United States especially, it has become common to “register” and receive sacraments at a different parish. But baptized Catholics always remain, by default, members at the church which serves the geographical district in which they live. This is true even if they’ve never stepped foot in the building.
This is also true, perhaps remarkably, of the baptized Catholic who no longer steps foot in any church at all, no matter the reason. By right of their baptism, Catholics are automatically parishioners at their local Catholic church, even if they stopped attending Mass years ago. Each Sunday, moreover, all territorial parishes are required to offer one Mass pro populo ― “for the people of the parish” (see Code of Canon Law §534.1). These Masses are not just for the parish’s registered members or for those who regularly go to church. They are for all baptized Catholics ― practicing or not ― who live within the boundary.
There’s something grittily beautiful about all this, about our belonging to God’s Church being attached fundamentally to our baptism and the land on which we live rather than the choices we make. It should go without saying that, after our baptism, every Catholic must allow God to continue forming him or her. If he wanted, God could raise up baptized Catholics from the stones (cf. Matt 3:9). We need to receive the sacraments, grow in virtue, and become more like God.
But baptism nevertheless confers on the Catholic a mark which we call “indelible” ― it is lifelong and cannot be wiped away. Baptism means that, for the remainder of our lives, no matter what we do or don’t do, we remain always God’s. The baptized are irrevocably part of God’s family. As such, in the Catholic world, wherever one may wander off to, membership in the family of one’s local parish is guaranteed. It is simply a given. This is just another way of saying that, so long as we are on the earth, we belong to God and his Church.
We often examine the character of our parishes and choose to attend one church or another based on their style or quality, on their preaching or their music. But the more fundamental nature of our parishes ― their gritty, land-bound character ― tells us more about God than it does about any particular community. The territorial nature of the parish reminds us that the baptized are God’s people ― no matter where they wander off to ― because God has claimed them and all the earth is his. “Walk through Zion, walk all round it,” the Psalmist sings. “Review all its ramparts, examine its castles, that you may tell the next generation that such is our God, our God forever and always.”
See Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. F.L. Cross and E.A. Livingstone (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Hendrickson Publishers, 2007), s.v. “Parish,” 1221.
See Dictionary of the Christian Church, s.v. “Beating the Bounds,” 174.