How many of choose a parish based on distance from your home?

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How many of you choose a parish solely based on distance from your home or for other things such as the architecture of the parish, the music, the priest, the youth activities?

Do you feel it’s important to be in a church in your same town?

How far would you drive to find the main things you’re looking for?

Also --this might be silly, but how many of you choose a church because of the way it looks? i.e., modern, old, etc.???

Thanks for the (name removed by moderator)ut~~~
 
I do feel it is important to go to church in the same town I live in. Besides, we only have one Catholic church in our town and the next nearest church is almost an hour away!
 
I think you ask the question backwards. Did anyone else choose their home because of it’s proximity to a church? <*raises hand 👋 *>

right around the corner,
tee
 
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tee_eff_em:
I think you ask the question backwards. Did anyone else choose their home because of it’s proximity to a church? <*raises hand 👋 *>

right around the corner,
tee
Click to expand...
I guess my wife and I fall into both categories. We used to live in a neighboring town, and drove 25 minutes to go to a solid traditional parish rather than the more “progressive” parish that was 10 minutes away.

When we moved last summer due to our growing family, one of the big factors was choosing a location close to our chosen parish, especially because our oldest child was about to start Kindergarten there! Now, in our new location, we live about 10 minutes from our traditional parish, but there’s still a “progressive” one that’s closer – only about 5 minutes away. 🙂
 
This will probably seem odd but I drive about 45minutes to a different town to the parish I attend now. Its in the town where I work and its just convinient for me to go to Mass after I get off work. I generally go to this parish now even if I don’t have to work because I’ve grown so accustomed to it. I guess its odd because the church in my home parish (which I still attend on occasion) is much nicer and traditional looking (although its also about a quarter of the size).
 
I choose to attend services at the student center chapel because of how close it is to where I live. However, the community of faith and the priest have made the chapel my choice wonderful! I have been to other masses in the area and nothing compares to the feeling I get at this church. I mean my mind is set, the homilies are awesome, and we dont rush through the mass (average mass time 75 to 90 minutes though the chapel only holds around 250 people). I think it is important to find a place of worship that fits you best so that you can give your all at every moment.
 
we always go by the parish boundaries-- but like the preivious post we are totally at real esate now based on where the parish is teehee =)

-K
 
When we moved back to our town after having lived elsewhere, we chose the house based on the Parish.

There are about 40 Parishes with elementary schools in our town. I knew which ones had good reputations, so my wife, children and I visited the top 6 candidates to choose based on the best school.

Well, we reached the conclusion that our children would be blessed to attend any of the 6 schools, but we chose the top 2 schools that were in side-by-side parishes. Then we house hunted in those parishes only.

We now live within walking distance of our first choice school.

Lest someone think we were choosing all about school with no regard for parish life, a major part of our inquiry process included the depth of religious education, how often the children attended Mass, etc. It was also our belief that a strong, orthodox pastor was one of the driving factors in having a strong, orthodox parish school.

So, if nothing else, I can say that our lifestyle choices are reflecting our values.
 
I’m big on building the community in which I live so I think it’s important to go to the parish that is in that community. I live in a town of about 4,000 which has one Catholic Church. Most of the Catholics in the town go to that church so I get to know them I see them at the stores in the parks at other community events. We share more than just a common church we share a community.
That being said I would have to switch parishes if we had a priest who taught what was blatantly heterodox.
 
We started at a parish in a neighboring town when we lived in that town. Then we moved here, about 10 miles away. We still go to that parish: our kids go to that school, I am a lector, our kids are altar servers, and dh and I were just asked to be the confirmation directors.

Some people think we’re crazy for driving 15 minutes, past about 5 other Catholic Churches…but we love our pastor and our parish, and have no plans on changing!
 
In the 11 years since I moved back to Omaha I have been registered at 4 parishes. All in the general area of where I live but I was always searching for something more with adult ed or better preaching etc. The last parish I lived in was abysmally flat. Basically all there was was school and Mass. If you did not have a school age child there was nothing for you. No talks, no classes no retreats. I found a parish that was more geared to these things and had many people who were in my wife’s profession and had graduated from our college.

Since my wife is not Catholic we use the public school and CCD. Her concern was that parochial schools are limited in being able to address children outside the box who are a bit brighter or slower than the norm. The problem I faced was that our son started CCD last year and hated it becuase he knew no one because we do not live in that neighborhood and no one from his school was there on Wednesday night.

We moved at the end of April and he will switch schools this August to the public school down the street. There are three parishes all 2.5 miles from our home and I chose the one we actually live in to register. We had been registered here before in 1996-1997. I am hoping that he will have a few familiar faces on Wednesday nights and he will get a sense of community to go along with the catechetics we work on at home and at CCD.

If I had not cut off my nopse to spite my face back in 2001 when we last switched he would have attended CCD with many neighborhood kids that were Catholic. Hopefully, that situation is rectified with our new home in our new domiciliary parish.
 
I definitly would drive to attend a parish that I like better then my home parish.

I do that right now. I live in an area where my local Catholic church is in an “inter-faith” center. The services are very “liberal” allowing several different types of litergical abuses.

Instead of driving 5 miles to that church I drive 10 miles to a church that follows the GIRM very closely. I almost left this church a few years ago because the Pastor started allowing litergical abuses. It got so bad I couldn’t attend Mass at that church during Lent, or Advent due to the abuses so I would always make pilgramages during that time. But that Pastor was transfered and a new Pastor came in and turned things around.
 
40.png
tee_eff_em:
I think you ask the question backwards. Did anyone else choose their home because of it’s proximity to a church? <*raises hand 👋 *>

right around the corner,
tee
Click to expand...
My thoughts’s exactly! About ten years ago I needed to move. I briefly considered some new homes about 20 minutes away, and 20 minutes closer to work, but I would have been in a different parish.

But I really liked my current parish, and was quite active in several ministries. So I bought a home near the church. It takes me “one rosary” to walk from my house to the church. It’s that much more likely that I’ll attend daily Mass or stop by for Eucharistic Adoration, or whatever else is going on in the parish.
 
If I wanted to go to a church in my own town, I would have to choose between 5 of them – all protestant ones. 😃

We are in a small town and there is one Church in another small town about 10 minutes away and 3 that are in other towns about 20 minutes away. We go to one of the 20 minute churches because the pastor is very orthodox while the 10 minute church is not. It also has CCE right before Mass so it is very convenient.

The Church I would love to attend has the Traditional Latin Mass (the only one in the diocese :mad: ) and a Latin NO. But it’s (The TLM) at 8am and an hour and a half away. I have enough trouble getting my husband up for the one near us and I don’t know what I would do about CCE.
 
I chose distance because i have to take the bus and the buses only run at certain times. If I was to choose a church that was an hour bus ride instead of a half an hour, on Sundays, I would never get there in time for mass cause the fisrt bus runs at 7:30…mass starts at 8.
 
Thank you so much everyone for your responses. It really helps!!!

Funny when you live in a small town, there’s just maybe 1 church, and that’s it, that’s where you go, but when you live in a big city, with so many more choices, then it gets harder.

I also find there’s so many differences in architectural styles with churches too. Some of super modern, everything white ,no stained glass windows, no pipe organ, modern decor, contemporary feel, others are old stone buildings, with painted murals of Apostles, and lots of stained glass windows. Everyone has a preference I suppose.

Additional Question:

Do you think it’s worth driving some distance (under 1/2 hour) vs. 10 minutes (the near by parish) to attend a church where your architectural preference is obtained? How many of you have made a decision based on the looks/style of the parish?

Your help is very much appreciated!!!

THANKS~~~~
 
I’m a bit baffled bythe way the voting is going. We become the church we attend. If we don’t necassarily agree with something can’t we help change it?
 
My parish is the only one in town and may be merging w/ another within the next year or so. If and when that happens I’ll have no problem with traveling to find a more traditional parish. I have just about had it with the liturgical abuses… Teaching the Faith is about the only thing that keeps me there for now and I’m consider “very old school”…children should be having fun not good doctrine…that went out with all the changes…don’t you know?😦
 
I grew up two blocks from my childhood parish church. We always walked to Mass. To me that is ideal.

I currently live 2 miles from my church. It is great if I am running late or getting the kids to CCD. I find it is nicer to be involved in different parish activities because I only live a short distance. I like that I drive past my Church everyday.

I feel belonging to the Church in my community helps me to connect with my neighbors. The families that we know from church are also the families that we play little league with and go to school with. I meet them in the store. My Catholic community expands outside the church building and I am glad to connect with it. If we went to church outside of our community, I would not knowingly have this mutual bond with many of my neighbors.

Architecture is not important to me. It is the celebration of the Eucharist that is most important to me and I could be in a hut celebrating Mass and still feel wonderful and connected.
 
We go to our local parish. My children attend public schools and I wanted them to be with school mates at church and in the community. They went to CCD classes and now attend the youth groups with classmates and students from parochial schools. Thank heavens they know their school mates because the kids that go to the parochial schools tend to form a very tight group and if they hadn’t known kids from their school they would probably feel uncomforatble trying to fit in.

Our church is a modern 60’s ish contemporary structure with one “artistic” stained glass round window that no one can figure out. The cruifix is again “artistic” with a flat metal figure of Jesus. But I am still glad we belong to the local parish.

Several times a year we will go another beautiful old church in downtown or to the Cathedral (when I need an architectual fix) and we always go to great old churches when we are on vacation.
 
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