Parish shopping is now a favorite pasttime in the AmChurch. In the suburbs, where proximity and Sunday morning traffic lend itself to traveling to another parish, all sorts of folks shop around before settling in and registering at a parish. Here in northern VA we have all kinds of parishes:
McParish – no organ, big piano, Marty Haugen all the time.
St. Schola Cantorum – “Verbum Domini”
Our Lady of K thru 8 – popular with parents of small children that don’t want them in public school
St. Gerontius – mostly older folks with light organ music
St. Snugglepuss and Companions – the “When’s Vatican III?” parish
You get the idea. And it’s not uncommon for someone who lives in St. Schola’s boundaries to drive 30 minutes to St. Snugglepuss. Similiarly – someone who could walk to McParish ends up driving downtown to get to St. Schola because they hate guitars.
And in some ways, I can’t blame them. Particularly parents who want their kids in a Catholic school should explore those options. There’s genuine issues that prevent active, prayerful participation at Mass. But at the same time there’s some really bad reasons for not going to a particular parish.
Bad Reasons:
“I don’t get a feeling of community at Parish X.”
Feelings are for sissies. I’m only slightly kidding. There’s a “U” in community and you need to engage people at a parish, pray and perhaps even get involved in some form of ministry. And you need to realize the primary function of a parish is the sacraments. Some people think the Mass is all about friendship and hugs and warmth and that’s like being offered a 5 course gourmet dinner and telling the offeror you’d rather have a Happy Meal.
“That pastor/associate is too
And that something is usually liberal, conservative or unfriendly. Meaning, it drives you nuts that the priest preaches about birth control. Or the priest messes with the text of the eucharist prayers. I have no patience with people who can’t take getting preached at about moral issues. I have only a little patience with people that totally come unglued when a priest differs from the rubrics. Granted, I’ve been to Mass where the priest was all over the place. That’s very bad. But are you really going to let Fr. Loosey-Goosey ruin your day? Make you drive to a new parish?
Those are the major bad reasons. Chime in if you have others.
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A variation on “the pastor is too..” is the pastor is too boring. When the celebrant doesn’t have much of a personality, and that is coupled with poor public speaking or homily preparation skills, the Mass becomes an ordeal to sit through. A celebration becomes a marathon, and you have to work very hard to concentrate on the liturgy. Spirits are not lifted, but left pretty much where they were when you walked in. Granted, it is NOT the job of the priest to entertain, but it is his job to inspire and uplift the congregation.
Sometimes, the Pastor can be too … heterodox, and when you have genuine doubts about the pastor’s beliefs, then it’s rather hard to dispose yourself for the sacrament.
People are going to have different pain thresholds, according to their own gifts and their particular situation. We have to be charitable and patient with a domicile parish, but not necessarily to the point of “dry martyrdom”. It’s not as if Our Lord told the apostles to not leave their home towns until everyone was converted, He rather said something about sandals and dust and some shaking. I overlooked plenty at my old “Spirit of Vatican III Catholic Community” one block away, for nearly two years before I’d had enough.
Even more than to “inspire” the congregation, a priest’s duty is to instruct it: alas, many priests simply do not instruct.
Anyway, John, is this concern about parish-shopping why you’ve been urging Steve to stay in his own parish and sing in the choir there instead of in yours?
what if you usually dutifully show up at McParish but, every month or so, sneak off to St Schola Cantorum every once in a while for some fortification?
what about dropping a hint in comments boxes that you wouldn’t mind if someone tipped you off to a St Schola Cantorum-type parish in Montgomery County, Maryland? is that too awful?
If someone were looking for St. Schola’s in Montgomery County, he or she might start at St. John’s in Silver Spring, which had a schola at its T-Mass last time I visited.
It may not be what you’re really looking for, but maybe you can get some leads there: I expect the musicians involved in chant or other classic Catholic sacred music tend to know one another.
Ahem… what if you try to get friendly with the parishioners, but they consistently rebuff you? What then?
I’ll stick with my parish, even though it’s 15 minutes from my house (as opposed to 5 mins for the Unfriendly and Cold People Church).
Fooling around with the Eucharistic prayer is no small matter. At least some kinds of fiddling would make the mass invalid. And in any event it is a terrible scandal.
And as far as driving goes, that’s really “no big deal” nowadays. We have horseless carriages with internal combustion engines, some of which are capable of traveling at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour! And these devices are widely owned by ordinary people. Many American families own two or three of them.
Seriously, given the wide availability and use of automobiles by ordinary people, the inconvenience of “driving to a new parish” really wouldn’t and shouldn’t stop most of us from moving if necessary, desirable, or convenient. We aren’t driving horses.
Parish Shopping
Why I chose a parish outside of my geographical parish.
Katherine has an excellent point that brings to mind a new category of parish: “Our Lady of Perpetual Cliques”.
Not to open a can of worms here, but isn’t the whole idea of a parish to be a community, a family of prayer? When you have disputes or disagreements with your family, you don’t abandon them for a new one do you? With the importance of the institution of family at the center of so much Catholic doctrine and policy, it’s hard to jive this with Catholics hopping from parish to parish whenever there is something that bugs them. The hop to elsewhere should be reserved for pretty substantial impediments to your spiritual health that are the result of something within the parish you are looking to bail out on.
I don’t fault people who are new to an area for checking out the area parishes to find the one that suits their “style” the best, and I don’t begrudge those who drive to the parish that is the best fit for them, even if they don’t live within the “boundaries of the parish”. I do this myself. There are two other Catholic Churches between my home and my parish church, but my parish church is where I have set down my roots, and I’ve stuck with them through thick and thin. As mentioned by someone before, in the age of the automobile, the notion of strict parish boundaries should not really be that big of a determining factor for where you worship.
“Taking your ball and going home” whenever things don’t go your way in your parish just doesn’t hold a lot of water with me. I feel sticking to one parish once you’ve settled in, and maintaining loyalty to its community is very important, and the decision to leave that community should only hinge on serious issues that truly impinge on your ability to come closer to God there. In other words, except in the case of moving to a new area, “parish-shopping” is not an action to be taken lightly.
As for “shaking the dust from your feet”, there does indeed come a time for that, but even among Christ’s apostles, there were disagreements and arguments frequently, both pre- and post-resurrection. The contentious decision that had to be made by the apostles as leaders of the fledgling Church on whether to take Jesus’ teachings beyond the Jewish community to the Gentiles is a good example. Yet they remained one community. God makes every person different, and He’s probably got a good reason for that. We can’t all be on the same page on every issue.
I think that if a legitimate problem (i.e. liturgical) is nagging at you so much that it disrupts your participation or concentration at the Mass, and you are unable to change it, it may be time to parish shop.
Well I live in Montgomery County, Maryland, and I would suggest that those looking for St. Schola Cantorum try St. Peter’s in Onley TONIGHT! On First Fridays, Fr. Kalita offers Mass in English and Latin. There is no choir, but when Fr. Kalita is singing, you don’t need a choir. (He has cantored at Pope John Paul’s private Mass!!) You could also stay for Eucharistic Adoration and Benediction. We sing night prayer before Benediction – it is truly beautiful!
Oops! That’s St. Peter’s in OLNEY, MD.
I have a slightly different set of perspectives. When we lived in Los Angeles, our local parish had 7 Spanish masses and 2 English Masses for Saturday vigil/Sunday. We attended there for the first 3 years we lived in that house, and had our 5th child baptised there and our second child made his first communion there. We tried to get involved in parish life and I was in the small music group – but after several instances where I was not informed of when rehearsal would be or what Mass I was supposed to help with – after being rebuffed on several levels when we tried to be a part of the community – we stopped going to Mass for a year or so, and only returned to regular Mass attendance at the urging of an Evangelical friend of mine – who invited us to attend Mass at her sister’s parish about 4 miles away. Now, Los Angeles is so populated (and about 25% are nominally Catholic) that there is a lot of choice without travelling farther than many in the rest of the USA travel to get to their geographical parish. Anyhow, we stayed in that other parish (7 weekend Masses, 4 different choirs, elementary and high school) until we left Los Angeles – somewhere around 10 years.
In Oregon, our geographical parish was also our first choice of parish – and if that hadn’t worked out we weren’t too far from the Eastern rite parish in Springfield.
Now, in New Hampshire, we are up against a different quandary. When we moved here, we rented for a year in a community that is now 20 minutes drive from where we ended up buying our home. My husband and I are happy (for the most part) staying on in the parish where we started – our teenage daughter would prefer that we join the parish in town – the one with the active youth group and the lively music – (the one I suspect of bordering on heterodoxy as well).
If you move, are you supposed to change parishes? Up until the Los Angeles incident, we have always joined and supported our local parish (with occasional forays to others due to scheduling etc). But that experience taught us that sometimes it is better to be elsewhere.
I wish I had such problems. Out here is ‘fly-over-country’, we have one parish in our county. God knows, it’s not perfect but I love it anyway. There are reasons to leave (priest in the confessional for 30 minutes a week). But I grew up in this church – it’s my family. The next nearest parish is 30 minutes away. And it’s one of those ‘no chior, no organ, bad homily’ type churches.
Now and then, when my schedule requires it, I drive almost an hour to reach another ‘acceptable’ parish in the nearest sizable city. And it’s a real treat – great music, inspiring homilies, communion rails, reverent community, etc…
It’s nice to visit occasionally (theres nothing wrong with that), but I prefer to fix the problems in my own parish than leave. I thought that our young people were not properly catechized, so I became a CCD teacher and did something about it.
My advise; if you don’t like it, fix it.
The ethics of parish shopping
What parish do you belong to? This is a standard Catholic question that reveals a truth some may doubt; we belong to our parish. It encompasses us; we do not possess it.
In a recent (off-line) conversation I suggested that, according to the Code of Can…