Can we force a priest to hold confirmation at our parish?

[L_Marshall]

My church shares a pastor with another church in town, our church being the second parish he’s taken on. He’s constantly referring to his first church as “my church,” with my own parish (the second one he’s taken on) being put on the back burner. Now, my church’s confirmation program has started. There are seventeen young adults waiting to be confirmed from my own church, and only one from “his.” He, unfortunately decided for us to have the actual confirmation Mass at his own church to add to that church’s statistics on paper. Everyone is very distraught at this. Is there any way we can present it so that he’s obligated to change the site of the Mass, any way we can petition to the diocese, or any piece of canon law that we can mention that would require him to have the sacrament at our own parish?

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

Unless this priest is asking indigent families to travel to a parish that is an hour or more away, why should it matter where the confirmation Mass is held? Why consider trying to force this priest to hold the confirmation Mass at one particular parish, instead of acquiescing to his desire to consolidate the confirmations at the parish he considers his own? (That parish may indeed be the only one at which he is pastor; he might only be the administrator at your parish.) What matters in cases like this is that the confirmations are held in a Catholic church, and not that they are held in a Catholic church chosen by the confirmands’ families. It might also help to keep in mind that there are priest shortages in many areas and that it is a great gift just to have a local priest able to confer confirmation.