Universalis, your very own breviary in pixels...

Tuesday 8 September 2015

"Destination Parishes"






Am I being all judgey, or is there something inherently dishonest in presenting only one side of a contentious question, and attaching a survey to it, to see how people think?
In any case, the author who takes issue with parish shopping is in Chicago, so I'm pretty well acquainted with some of the "destination parishes" to which he may be referring.

Wonder if he takes equally dim views of St John Cantius and St Sabina's.....

 I don't know what the demographics are, but I think the urbanites, with the ideally "walkable" parish may be outnumbered by the suburbanites and rurals, to whom the "drivability" of a parish is more relevant.

And young, practicing, Catholic urbanites often work, play and live in the territory of several different parishes. SOME kind of choosing is going to have to take place, who is he to say on what basis it should be? (And we won't even get into the choosing on the basis that it makes it harder for someone on whom one is working ones wiles to turn down the invitation to accompany one, and I'm not saying how that situation came to my mind.)

And yes, sometimes one is not within the "territory" of a parish that one finds is actually walkable.

And since the idea of a universal liturgical language is in equal measure risible and abhorrent to a large part of the power structures in modern parish life, the generosity behind bishops allowing so many of those old "national" parishes is still needed, rather, needed more than ever now, (the priest/author doesn't even touch on languages issues.)

And finally, having spent quite a bit of time in his neck of the woods and in other densely populated, multi-ethnic, at least at one time heavily Catholic, urban areas - Chicago ain't Newark, which ain't Boston, which ain't Jersey City, which ain't Brooklyn, which ain't.... you get the picture.

Anyway, as always, one should keep in mind that there are reasons that "parochial" means what it does, and "catholic" means what it does, and I'll let you guess which trait I value more.

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