This is a common misconception but is not true in the United states. You can register in and attend any parish you want. This has been also addressed in Ask the Apologist forum. I have been a member of different parishes in different dioceses and never once belonged to a parish based on where I lived. Neither have I ever had a parish tell me I can’t register there because of my address.
No. What you are stating is absolutely false.
Father, this is the answer Fr Serpa provided to a similar question on two occasions, dealing specifically with registration at a parish:
Neither of these answers negates what Fr. David said. In fact, they both clearly show that there is a territorial parish, but that we are not obligated to attend that parish and we are free to register anywhere.
And he can answer that way because registration is merely putting a name into a database, but has no effect on parish membership.
Yes. That is possible. There are plenty of perfectly legitimate reasons why parents might want their children baptised in a parish other than their own proper parishes of membership.
I was told that in my parish they don’t baptise at all during lent or on holy days must be our pastors preference.
Yes, sorry. The OP’s first move is to talk to the pastor. Of course.
This is the answer. To it I will add, “Humbly accept whatever answer Christ gives you through the pastor.”
Delay of baptism for months is usually not God’s plan. Sometimes parents seem to have a better understanding of this than parish lay workers who like to schedule neat clean sacraments. Life is not that way. However it may just be that the baptism will not be done in “public” at a Mass. One needs to find out if baptism is being withheld because of schedules, or another reason, and that can be found out by talking to the priest of the parish.
We do not know what the real issue is here, or why the parish office seems to be avoiding you. Whatever their reason, they seem to be doing a very poor job of explaining things to you and making excuses. You will not know what the pastor thinks of this until you speak directly to him.
Is there something stopping you from going into the parish office and speaking directly to Father?
At the parish office where I work, this is usually the least effective way to speak to a priest. Father is so busy and always in and out of the office, as much as he tries to accommodate drop-ins, it’s just not usually possible. The best thing to do, in my office, is to be transferred to Father’s voice mail, leave a message, and wait patiently for a call back and an appointment. The next best thing to do is to attend Mass, after which Father always greets the people, and bring up the issue and/or make an appointment at that time.
If getting someone baptized is reduced to appointments and schedules we have lost our way.
There are priorities. As the receptionist, the utmost priority is an emergency call for someone who is dying. When one of those comes in, I interrupt a priest, I call his cell phone, I exhaust all means of contacting one or more of them until it is confirmed to be handled.
There is no way I’d accept such a silly rule, nor should she. Sadly there are some really un-catholic parishes out there. I have 5 kids. All were baptized within a couple of weeks of birth. If someone waits til whenever to have their child baptized and heaven forbid something happened to the baby, what would the parents think and how would they feel then? I’d not simply go to a different parish for the baptism, I’d change parishes entirely. Perhaps that first parish is simply too big to serve the masses of folks going there.