Parish (Catholic Church)

In the Roman Catholic Church

Roman Catholic Church

The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church. With more than a billion members, over half of all Christians and more than one-sixth of the world's population, the Catholic Church is a communion of the Western, or Latin Rite Church, and...

, a parish is the lowest ecclesiastical geographical subdivision: from ecclesiastical province

Ecclesiastical Province

An ecclesiastical province is a large jurisdiction of religious government, so named by analogy with a secular province, existing in certain hierarchical Christian churches, especially in the Catholic Church and Orthodox Churches and in the Anglican Communion...

 to diocese

Diocese

In some forms of Christianity, a diocese is an administrative territorial unit administered by a bishop. It is also referred to as a bishopric or Episcopal Area or episcopal see, though strictly the term episcopal see refers to the domain of ecclesiastical authority officially held by the bishop,...

 to deanery

Deanery

Deanery is an ecclesiastical entity in both the Catholic Church and the Church of England. They see over the church and its contents.- Catholic usage :...

 to parish.

Requirements

A parish needs two things under common law to become a parish. Firstly a body of Catholics within a fixed boundary and a named priest with responsibility for that parish.

Each parish has a parish priest

Priesthood (Catholic Church)

The ministerial orders of the Catholic Church includes the orders of bishops, deacons and presbyters, which in Latin is sacerdos. The ordained priesthood and common priesthood are different in function and essence....

, also known as a pastor

Pastor

The term pastor usually refers to an ordained person within a Christian church. In some countries the term is more usually used in traditional Protestant churches but is also used in reference to priests and bishops within the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox churches. The...

, although pastoral care of one or more parishes can also be entrusted to a team of priests in solidum

Team of priests in solidum

In 1983 the Catholic Church introduced the possibility of entrusting the pastoral care, of one or more parishes to a team of priests in solidum. This provision in the 1983 Code of Canon Law, which resembles ancient models of pastoral care in the Roman tituli churches with their colleges of priests,...

. In extraordinary situations, administration of a parish can also be entrusted to a deacon or lay person (supervised by a priest).

The practical significance of parish boundaries varies in different parts of the world. Catholics can generally choose to worship in any church that they find convenient or specially appealing, irrespective of whether they live within the parish boundaries, and if they thereby become members of that parish community, their place of residence will not count against them. Many Catholics probably do not even know where the parish boundaries are. A parish is thus primarily a community of people, rather than a geographic territory.

Parish life

The parish is the centre of most Catholics' spiritual life, since it is there that they receive the sacraments

Sacraments of the Catholic Church

The Sacraments of the Catholic Church are, the Church teaches, "efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us. The visible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and make present the graces proper to each sacrament...

.

The parish generally has a busy schedule, although this depends on size and culture. The seven sacraments are the centre of parish life. Traditionally, there is Mass

Mass

In physics, mass commonly refers to any of three properties of matter, which have been shown experimentally to be equivalent: inertial mass, active gravitational mass and passive gravitational mass...

 daily

Daily

Daily may refer to:* An event which occurs once every day, or 5 days of the week* In informal usage, a daily newspaper* A daily occurrence happens at a frequency of 11.57 microhertz* Iveco Daily a large van produced by Iveco...

 and on Sundays according to pastoral need, normally celebrated by priests resident in the parish. There is offered confession

Confession

The confession of one's sins is a religious practice important to many faiths, e.g., Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.- Christianity :...

s, as well as other forms of prayer and social events. This is still the case in many parishes. However, in the Western world, as numbers of priests fall, there tend to be fewer priest-led, and more laity

Laity

In religious organizations, the laity comprises all persons who are not clergy. A person who is a member of a religious order who is not ordained clergy is considered as a member of the laity, even though they are members of a religious order .In the past in Christian cultures, the term lay priest...

-led activities. There are also always social events: their nature depends on culture and circumstances.

The Parish Priest

"The Parish Priest is the proper clergyman in charge of the congregation of the parish entrusted to him. He exercises the pastoral care of the community entrusted to him under the authority of the diocesan Bishop, whose ministry of Christ he is called to share, so that for this community he may carry out the offices of teaching, sanctifying and ruling with the cooperation of other priests or deacons and with the assistance of lay members of Christ's faithful, in accordance with the law".

In the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 the Parish Priest is usually called the Pastor.

Parish personnel

In addition to the Parish Priest, it is common for the Parish to have a group of staff; lay

Lay

Lay may refer to:*Lay person, any person who is not a member of the clergy is of the laity*a lyric song or lyric poetry**Germanic *laikaz***any poem of the Poetic Edda**Lai, a 13th- or 14th-century northern European song***Breton lai...

, consecrated religious, and ordained. For example, there can be a Parish Secretary who assists the Parish Priest with administrative matters; a parish sister who was responsible for activities like sick visiting; and a permanent deacon

Deacon

Deacon is a role in the Christian Church that is generally associated with service of some kind, but which varies among theological and denominational traditions...

, who is often married and assists the Parish Priest with the pastoral or administrative side of parish affairs. Often, parishes also have a parish council, appointed by the Parish Priest, although, unlike in Protestant denominations, this has no authority except through the Parish Priest.