Parish Registration?

  • Thread starter Thread starter scameter18
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
S

scameter18

Guest
Hello. I converted to Catholicism and was baptized and confirmed in 2008. I have been attending the same parish ever since (and for a year or so prior to that, during my RCIA time). However, recently, I tried to sign up for our parish Prayer and Care group. I also sent a prayer request to this group prior to signing up for it. Both times, they responded and told me that I could not submit prayer requests or join their prayer group unless I was a registered member of the parish. This surprised and confused me. Considering that I’ve been attending that parish as long as I’ve been a Catholic, going almost every Sunday and all days of obligation, I never thought I actually had to register to be apart of the parish. But, apparently that is the case. Could someone explain this to me? Because frankly, I don’t believe it is right. Why should a Catholic have to register at a specific parish in order to participate in their extra-liturgical activities? Especially when I attend Mass there regularly and am a confirmed Catholic? I thought being Catholic gave universal access to the entire Church, and that qualifications for certain roles and functions was more individual and vocational than a matter of registration. Thanks for the help. God bless. 🙂
 
There are certain things in which registration should be required, but for such things as submitting a prayer request and joining a group to pray and care for people seems a bit ridiculous. Have you asked the parish the reason for this requirement?
 
Registering in a parish means you are acknowledging it as your home parish, which you are willing to support. It’s a simple form asking basic information. Name, address and such, so they can mail you donation envelopes, or e-mail you about parish happenings. It is the only way they have of tracking regular parishioners. Since this is your parish family, you should sign up.

I have never heard of with holding prayer till some one does…hmmm. We are called to evangelize, and pray for everyone. That’s a bit strange. Perhaps they feel their time, and energy should go to their own parish first? I would register, but I would also let them know how you feel in a chairitable manner.🙂
 
So let me get this straight, you went through RCIA in that parish and were baptized and confirmed in that parish but because you haven’t filled out a specific piece of paper you aren’t a ‘registered’ member of the parish?? Or were you baptized and confirmed elsewhere although you attended Mass at this parish?

Do you know if it’s your territorial parish, IOW, do you live within that parish’s physical boundaries? If you do, according to Canon Law you are automatically a member of that parish and the Pastor is responsible for you.

Either way, it makes no sense to refuse the prayer requests of people because they are ‘from away’.
 
I encountered the same surprise. Really, it’s nothing much. If anything, you’ll start receiving offering envelopes for use during the year.
 
To answer the questions posed to me here, yes I live relatively close to the parish, within a couple miles (it’s the only parish in my county), and yes I was baptized and confirmed in that parish. It’s odd because the prayer group would not accept my prayer request or let me join it because I am unregistered, but they forwarded my request to my parish priest who added my request to his personal prayer list and offered a Mass for the subject of my request. I’m not entirely sure how this differentiation occurs.

Also, I have a question: am I required to register? Like, if I disagree with the practice of parish registration as such, or if it is unnecessary, am I still obligated to register? Or is that purely a practical function? Thanks everyone for the help. God bless. 🙂
 
It might be worth your while to ask about this policy, given that you’ve encountered this with a prayer group. It doesn’t matter if you think asking won’t change anything. Rather, it matters for your future planning.

What will happen if you have a child and want them confirmed? What will happen if you have a spouse (who attends mass and is Catholic) and now they need a funeral mass? I think you might want to know the answer before a problem comes up.

Different places handle registration and donation tracking differently. I’d ask, so you don’t end up surprised. Maybe your territorial parish isn’t the one you think it is. Best to find out before any more surprises.
 
scameter18 said:
To answer the questions posed to me here, yes I live relatively close to the parish, within a couple miles (it’s the only parish in my county), and yes I was baptized and confirmed in that parish. It’s odd because the prayer group would not accept my prayer request or let me join it because I am unregistered, but they forwarded my request to my parish priest who added my request to his personal prayer list and offered a Mass for the subject of my request. I’m not entirely sure how this differentiation occurs.

Also, I have a question: am I required to register? Like, if I disagree with the practice of parish registration as such, or if it is unnecessary, am I still obligated to register? Or is that purely a practical function? Thanks everyone for the help. God bless. 🙂
Click to expand...
If that’s the only parish in your county I’d be very surprised if it were not your territorial parish. How much more registration do they need but that your opted to become a Catholic there??

We are the only parish in town. Catholic living in this town = Parish member. If we find out someone is Catholic, we add them to the parish list because we are canonically responsible for them. We require no formal registration and we really have no idea how many of the members on the local military base are Catholic, we simply know that there are some and we are their parish since they don’t have a Catholic Chaplain on the base. If they come to the office for something, or want to join a group, they are welcomed with open arms even though we may not have been aware of their presence before.

In a case like yours, you would have been added to the parish membership list upon your baptism, if not when you joined RCIA. For the life of me I can’t think of anything that would make you more a member of the parish than your baptism and residence within the territory. One has to wonder how many Catholics they are failing to minister to because they haven’t filled out a form.

I would advise you to register, if only to avoid future headaches, but politely inquire about the requirement to do so when you were baptized and confirmed there and assumed they’d have all the information required to add you to the ranks.

I hope that it’s not all about donation envelopes.
 
I think this is the best way to go, yes. Hopefully I can try to register and join that prayer group. Thank you all for your help, I greatly appreciate it. God bless. 🙂
 
scameter18 said:
Hello. I converted to Catholicism and was baptized and confirmed in 2008. I have been attending the same parish ever since (and for a year or so prior to that, during my RCIA time). However, recently, I tried to sign up for our parish Prayer and Care group. I also sent a prayer request to this group prior to signing up for it. Both times, they responded and told me that I could not submit prayer requests or join their prayer group unless I was a registered member of the parish. This surprised and confused me. Considering that I’ve been attending that parish as long as I’ve been a Catholic, going almost every Sunday and all days of obligation, I never thought I actually had to register to be apart of the parish. But, apparently that is the case. Could someone explain this to me? Because frankly, I don’t believe it is right. Why should a Catholic have to register at a specific parish in order to participate in their extra-liturgical activities? Especially when I attend Mass there regularly and am a confirmed Catholic? I thought being Catholic gave universal access to the entire Church, and that qualifications for certain roles and functions was more individual and vocational than a matter of registration. Thanks for the help. God bless. 🙂
Click to expand...
Have you considered the possibility that there may be laws about privacy in the state/country where you live such that prayer requests or care (which may entail access, i.e., visitation to vulnerable individuals) require a certain amount of control over how information about others is shared? In light of the scandals that have rocked the Church over the past several decades, many parishes are being much more careful about who is allowed access to others or information about them. Could this be the case in your parish?
 
I suppose that’s possible, though it seems unlikely. My parish is small and mostly composed of older people who all seem to know each other, so privacy doesn’t seem that big of an issue. And my parish priest accepted my prayer request even though the prayer group didn’t, so it doesn’t seem to be entirely unacceptable to all of them. Actually, I would view it the other way: perhaps my parish is such a tight-knit community, they feel it is necessary for new members to be known personally, rather than by consequence of Mass attendance. Though that is just speculation on my part.
 
In my parish, the faithful are required to register and be “active and participating members”, which means they are regularly using donation envelopes and attending Sunday Mass. This is a requirement for people who wish to receive sacraments, religious education, or be a godparent for a Catholic baptism. It can also come in handy if someone is going through an immigration process and the court wishes him to prove that he is an upstanding member of the community.

Nobody is allowed to approach the sacraments (except of course Confession and Eucharist) if they are not active and participating for at least four months prior. Children in religious education classes actually have punch cards which the sisters will validate at the end of Mass, so that the RE program can track their Mass attendance accurately. But in the parish office, the only reliable way to track Sunday Mass attendance is by counting donation envelopes put in the plate collection. Now, some people sign up for an EFT service and only have to use envelopes when we have a special second collection; those people are given credit for attending Mass weekly. Some people are too poor to donate anything, but give generously of their time and talent; they are special-cased by the office staff and flagged as “active and participating” even though they are not using envelopes.

Now, your parish has not asked you to use envelopes on a regular basis, but simply to register as a parishioner. Just because you received sacraments at this parish, or live within its boundaries, does not mean that they have you on record. It is vital for a parish office to track their active members and have their address and phone numbers on file for contact. The pastor may wish to send out letters for various reasons, and how would you expect him to accomplish that without a list of active parishioners? If you should die, how can the parish verify that you have been attending Mass and are at least eligible for the “parishioner rate” for church use (many parishes charge extra for non-parishioners to use the church and/or social hall for ceremonies and events.) It is expecting too much of the pastor to say that he should recognize everyone who regularly attends, can put a name to a face, and will vouch for you when you say that you have been a parishioner attending Mass for the past X years.

I don’t know why you object to registering. It is really a simple matter. They do not require your social security number, your credit cards or bank account. If you wish, fill in as little information as possible on the questionnaire. They already have your name in the sacramental records, what more can it hurt to have your home address, especially if you live right there in the neighborhood? My parish publishes a directory every few years, with all parishioners’ photos, names, address, and phone numbers. Other parishes treat this as confidential identifying information. It is your right to query how the parish handles your personal information, and it is your right to request that they keep it confidential if that is your wish. Any parish office is capable of this, if you just ask. Believe me, it makes life much easier if active parishioners are registered. Someday, you will be glad you did it.
 
Elizium23 said:
Now, your parish has not asked you to use envelopes on a regular basis, but simply to register as a parishioner. Just because you received sacraments at this parish, or live within its boundaries, does not mean that they have you on record.
Click to expand...
How could they not have him on record when he was in RCIA in the parish and was received into the Church there? He didn’t just materialize out of thin air for the occasion. They had to have interviewed him and got his name and address at he time. What more do they need?
 
Elizium23, that seems creepy to me. Thankfully I haven’t run afoul of the mass attendance and donation police yet. I am aware they exist. If I were to die now, it would be fine, since the entire parish office knows me on sight and so do the sacristans, cantors, people in St. Vincent de Paul society, etc. But I will no doubt have been in some dumpy nursing home for years, not even in my same parish district, absurdly poor, slightly demented, not having darkened the door of any parish for years by the time I die. Fortunately they currently still anoint and bury people like that. Hopefully they will still be doing that by the time I die. No one will know who I am or care by that time, but God will be glad to see me.
 
I’d chalk up your being unregistered to human error instead of a nefarious plot.

That said, you should register. There may come a time when you need something from your parish - like a letter verifying you’re a Catholic in good standing - for a wedding, to godparent, to be a Confirmation sponsor, and it’s a whole lot simpler if you’re already registered.

You can usually opt out of having envelopes mailed to you, but if you’re going every week, why not? They’ll send you a year-end statement for taxes if you use an envelope. And you might get a subscription to the diocesan newspaper if they have one.
 
Every Catholic should be on the register in their parish. You should have been registered when you were in RCIA.
 
To clarify:
  1. I was not registered during RCIA, nor was my name or address taken during RCIA until my baptism, which they do have a record of. Also, I was never approached to register. The only reason this ever came up is because I tried to submit a prayer request to our parish prayer group. Even then they didn’t specifically ask me to register; they just said if I wanted prayer requests submitted, I would need to register.
  2. My issue with this, as most extremely exemplified by the Church in Germany, is the treatment of Catholics more as registered parishoners than as members of the universal Church. For example, denying Catholics sacraments because they are unregistered. In Germany, as I recently saw in the news, has even called it a sin and will deny a Catholic all sacraments if they don’t register with the government and pay a tithe-like tax to the government for the Church. I don’t intend to get into that topic, just to use it as an example of what I’m talking about. A Catholic should never be denied any sacraments merely because they are not registered to a particular parish. They are Roman Catholics and that, alongside their interior spiritual life, is more important than registration. This is my opinion. But, as I said, I intend to register this Sunday for the sake of convenience.
 
You have been hearing distorted rumors in the press about what is happening in Germany. I would suggest you read some more reputable sources to find out the truth. Nobody is being denied sacraments unless they formally leave the Church. That is the bottom line.
 
I registered in a second parish a while back, and asked them not to notify my home parish, because I didn’t want to upset anyone there. I registered in the second parish because they are the only parish in our large diocese which offers the EF mass, and I want to support them in that effort. Now I’m registered in two parishes but, so what.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top