Parish registration

[Chuck1]

Hi I was wondering why you have to register into a parish ?
What’s the purpose of it ? I didn’t have to do that when I went to a baptist church althoguh they don’t have parishes anyway or a CE one and they do have parishes ?
Can anyone help me out if this makes sense ?
Thanks Charlie

 

[MarkThompson]

Hi I was wondering why you have to register into a parish ?
What’s the purpose of it ? I didn’t have to do that when I went to a baptist church althoguh they don’t have parishes anyway or a CE one and they do have parishes ?
Can anyone help me out if this makes sense ?
Thanks Charlie

It is primarily for record-keeping on the parish’s part. It allows them to know who is affiliated with the parish, to send you the quarterly newsletter and occasional pleas for money, that sort of thing. In pre-email days, a small parish might have had a phone tree to let people know if Mass was canceled due to inclement weather. As far as I’m aware, you don’t have to register anywhere (although some parishes will not, for instance, hold your wedding unless you are a registered parishioner), and there are plenty of places in the world where the practice of registration hasn’t really caught on.

Please note, though, that registration does not make you a canonical member of a parish. Parishes have territorial boundaries, and with certain exceptions (designated ethnic parishes, military parishes?, etc.), you are, by canon law, automatically a member of the parish in whose boundaries you live. Registering just makes them aware of your existence.

 

[paperwight66]

Chuck, you are living in England. We do not have to register at a parish in England.

Remember that most of the people on here are American, and so they refer to what is the custom in America.

As a poster called NewEnglandPriest pointed out once, even registering in a parish in the States does not have any importance in Canon law.

Forget about it.

 

[FrDavid96]

Hi I was wondering why you have to register into a parish ?
What’s the purpose of it ? I didn’t have to do that when I went to a baptist church althoguh they don’t have parishes anyway or a CE one and they do have parishes ?
Can anyone help me out if this makes sense ?
Thanks Charlie

It’s nothing more than a way of keeping contact with people.

Just this morning, I had to phone a few parishioners. I went to the registration records to lookup their numbers. That’s why we have registration. Each year, I have to report the number of families in my parish. The registration list gives me a number to put on the form, although it might not be an exact one. It can be a useful tool for parish administration, but it’s meaningless in the end.

Registration means nothing whatsoever in terms of parish membership. Registering does not make one a parishioner, nor does lack of registration make one a non-parishioner.

Sometimes it does more harm than good. Registration creates a false sense of membership and people sometimes think that they are members of a certain parish because they are registered there, or they think that because some parishes allow registration of non-members that somehow this means that membership is determined by registration rather than residence. It sometimes causes some very serious problems.

Here in the US, most religious congregations have some form of registration, so even Baptist or Anglican places request their members to register.

 

[Kielbasi]

Is parish registration a relatively new protocol in America?

I remember as a youth living at home, a couple of the nuns walking from door to door in the neighborhood, and I think they were doing a census.

 

[FrDavid96]

Is parish registration a relatively new protocol in America?

I remember as a youth living at home, a couple of the nuns walking from door to door in the neighborhood, and I think they were doing a census.

Same thing. Makes no difference, but the word “census” is usually used when we’re talking about updated registration information, or doing it for the first time. Maybe the census was that parish’s first attempt at registration?

I suppose even a hundred years ago, there were parishes that had some kind of parishioner list. We might even say that just being baptized and having the baptism recorded was a form of registration.

Nowadays, computers make it easy to keep all kinds of lists, and given the fact that people move around so much, and there’s much more data to record now then there was before (email addresses, phone numbers, home faxes, etc etc.), registration is more useful than it was before when everyone simply knew everyone else.

Why do we have parish registration? Because we can.

 

[ATeutonicKnight]

Why do we have parish registration? Because we can.

This made me laugh.

Father, I wanted to ask you a question, and since there is no other way to contact you I hope it is okay if I ask here: Why don’t you ever post on forums if the topic is confession as a general rule? You don’t have to answer, I’m simply curious.

 

[FrDavid96]

This made me laugh.

Father, I wanted to ask you a question, and since there is no other way to contact you I hope it is okay if I ask here: Why don’t you ever post on forums if the topic is confession as a general rule? You don’t have to answer, I’m simply curious.

No problem. I’m actually very happy to answer that. Happy to have the opportunity.

For one thing, there’s always some very remote possibility that someone might post a question about a confession I’ve heard, or might think that to be the case. Or maybe I might think it. Not a door that should be opened. I would dread the thought of someone coming to me in confession and saying “this priest on CAF, FrDavid96 said such-and-such…after the last time I confessed to you.” I wouldn’t want it happening to me, or to any other priest.

The other reason is that confession is something that ought to be talked about in private with either the actual confessor or with another priest. If someone poses a question about the Mass, we can freely ask other questions to get more information from the OP to better understand the situation. That’s not a good thing to do when it comes to confession. You’ve been around these forums enough to know that the original question often turns out to be something different once we start posting and getting the other details. If someone asks “what’s the proper liturgical color for April?” I can follow up with “that depends, what day exactly?” If someone asks “is this a sin?” asking for more details is often inappropriate. The best answer is “ask your confessor.”

It’s difficult as a priest because there’s a certain authority behind that, even on an internet forum. Since I do not know all the details of someone’s confession (of course, I should not), there’s a real danger that I might say the wrong thing. If someone else gives a wrong answer, well, those things happen. We can’t trust everything we read on the internet. But if a priest gives the wrong answer, it can cause a lot more damage.

Yet another reason: as a priest I have to deal with people who come to confession and have some very strange ideas that they learned on the internet. I struggle with the challenge of trying to help people when I actually understand the situation, but the penitent is getting all kinds of misinformation from people who don’t understand it. I don’t want to contribute to that, and I do often grit my teeth when I read posts about confession.

Scrupulous people look for ways to justify their scrupulosity. That’s part of the condition. They will often go to internet forums and ask questions in such a way that they ensure they’re going to get the answers they want–meaning they’re looking for others to validate their own notions that everything they do is sinful. Well meaning people on forums contribute to this because they don’t see confession from the priest’s perspective. Over the years, I often struggle with scrupulous people who insist that I (the priest-confessor) am wrong because someone on the internet told them that “it’s a mortal sin.” That’s not just me; I’m sure every priest gets that. If I become part of that process of validating the scrupulosity, I’m only making it more difficult for the person to have a proper confession–again, because I am a priest and that only lends authority to the misinformation. That misinformation might be objectively true, but it just doesn’t apply to that particular person. A scrupulous person will form the question in such a way that no matter what the unmentioned specifics “yes, that’s a mortal sin” will be the answer. That’s what they do.

Another very common pattern that I’ve noticed is that posters will often ask “was this a valid absolution?” (how many times do we see that as the title of a thread?) Frankly, most of the time, the answer is no, otherwise the question would not have been asked. As a priest, I don’t want to say that on the internet. If it happens in person, I can fix it right then and there with a valid absolution. I can’t do that on the internet. If I can’t do anything to help the situation, the best thing I can do is to keep my fingers off the keyboard. And to answer the inevitable question, the priest must use the required juridic formula “Ego te absolvo or I absolve you.” Without exactly those words, there is no valid absolution (not in the Latin Church). I can say that here, but I just can’t say it in response to a person who asks about an actual experience.

If the topic is generic, and applies only to the Sacrament itself, I’ll probably participate, but if it gets into someone describing his own confession, I’m gone.

See you around CAF! Just don’t ask me about your own confession.

 

[ATeutonicKnight]

No problem. I’m actually very happy to answer that. Happy to have the opportunity.

For one thing, there’s always some very remote possibility that someone might post a question about a confession I’ve heard, or might think that to be the case. Or maybe I might think it. Not a door that should be opened. I would dread the thought of someone coming to me in confession and saying “this priest on CAF, FrDavid96 said such-and-such…after the last time I confessed to you.” I wouldn’t want it happening to me, or to any other priest.

The other reason is that confession is something that ought to be talked about in private with either the actual confessor or with another priest. If someone poses a question about the Mass, we can freely ask other questions to get more information from the OP to better understand the situation. That’s not a good thing to do when it comes to confession. You’ve been around these forums enough to know that the original question often turns out to be something different once we start posting and getting the other details. If someone asks “what’s the proper liturgical color for April?” I can follow up with “that depends, what day exactly?” If someone asks “is this a sin?” asking for more details is often inappropriate. The best answer is “ask your confessor.”

It’s difficult as a priest because there’s a certain authority behind that, even on an internet forum. Since I do not know all the details of someone’s confession (of course, I should not), there’s a real danger that I might say the wrong thing. If someone else gives a wrong answer, well, those things happen. We can’t trust everything we read on the internet. But if a priest gives the wrong answer, it can cause a lot more damage.

Yet another reason: as a priest I have to deal with people who come to confession and have some very strange ideas that they learned on the internet. I struggle with the challenge of trying to help people when I actually understand the situation, but the penitent is getting all kinds of misinformation from people who don’t understand it. I don’t want to contribute to that, and I do often grit my teeth when I read posts about confession.

Scrupulous people look for ways to justify their scrupulosity. That’s part of the condition. They will often go to internet forums and ask questions in such a way that they ensure they’re going to get the answers they want–meaning they’re looking for others to validate their own notions that everything they do is sinful. Well meaning people on forums contribute to this because they don’t see confession from the priest’s perspective. Over the years, I often struggle with scrupulous people who insist that I (the priest-confessor) am wrong because someone on the internet told them that “it’s a mortal sin.” That’s not just me; I’m sure every priest gets that. If I become part of that process of validating the scrupulosity, I’m only making it more difficult for the person to have a proper confession–again, because I am a priest and that only lends authority to the misinformation. That misinformation might be objectively true, but it just doesn’t apply to that particular person. A scrupulous person will form the question in such a way that no matter what the unmentioned specifics “yes, that’s a mortal sin” will be the answer. That’s what they do.

Another very common pattern that I’ve noticed is that posters will often ask “was this a valid absolution?” (how many times do we see that as the title of a thread?) Frankly, most of the time, the answer is no, otherwise the question would not have been asked. As a priest, I don’t want to say that on the internet. If it happens in person, I can fix it right then and there with a valid absolution. I can’t do that on the internet. If I can’t do anything to help the situation, the best thing I can do is to keep my fingers off the keyboard. And to answer the inevitable question, the priest must use the required juridic formula “Ego te absolvo or I absolve you.” Without exactly those words, there is no valid absolution (not in the Latin Church). I can say that here, but I just can’t say it in response to a person who asks about an actual experience.

If the topic is generic, and applies only to the Sacrament itself, I’ll probably participate, but if it gets into someone describing his own confession, I’m gone.

See you around CAF! Just don’t ask me about your own confession.

Oh, I see. This makes sense. I admit I am guilty of asking whether something was a Mortal Sin or not on here, but I really don’t have anywhere else to go, as confession isn’t held in high regard in my diocese so it is either not given often or when it is it’s a matter of minutes until the Priest walks out of the confessional. However, despite this, I will make sure to simply take it up with my confessor instead of asking on the internet, lest I tempt a Priest to make the mistakes you have stated.

I look forward to seeing you around on CAF. In the meantime, the last time I went to confession the Priest…