Can we belong to more than one parish?

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omniginger

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Hello!

My husband and I are members of the Parish where we married. We live in a very large city, and attend Mass both at our Parish and another Parish in the area. Over the past year, we have been attending the Parish where we are not members more frequently - in part because it is extremely active. Can we be members of this Parish as well as the Parish we already belong to? Or do we have to decide between the two?

Thank you!
 
Speak to someone in the office.

While you can technically only be a member of one parish there usually no reason why you can’t be in the database of several parishes. Parish database programs have a way of flagging you as to whether or not you are an actual member. You will generally be assigned a “household number” and an individual “member number” but those numbers are for the benefit of the database program rather than the parish.

If you regularly attend Mass at more than one parish then you ought to be also be donating so you and the parishes will want to track your contributions for tax purposes. Whether or not you actually use physical envelopes the parish will want to assign an “envelope number” to you.

Likewise if you are involved in some kind of ministry the parish may want to track you for that reason.

The potential problem I can see is would be if your diocese to has you listed twice. The diocese usually has its own database which assigns a household number to registered families and your local parish should also have that number in it’s database. Hopefully if you register with multiple parishes, all will have the same diocesan tracking number.
 
My husband and I currently belong to two different parishes (one Latin, one Novus Ordo) within the same diocese. We haven’t had any issues arise from it yet, but it also hasn’t been very long. We receive envelopes from both and contribute to both equally.
 
omniginger said:
Hello!

My husband and I are members of the Parish where we married. We live in a very large city, and attend Mass both at our Parish and another Parish in the area. Over the past year, we have been attending the Parish where we are not members more frequently - in part because it is extremely active. Can we be members of this Parish as well as the Parish we already belong to? Or do we have to decide between the two?

Thank you!
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My understanding is that you can go to any parish you like, but you can belong to only one parish.
 
I asked my pastor this question a couple years ago, and because I have the finances for it, just like the previous poster mentioned, he said sure, as long as you contribute in some way or in service, don’t just sign up, utilize everything, and jet. It made sense, so I support the parishes I think do a good job with good programming.
 
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