Question about parish affiliation

[texasag7599]

I’ll try to ask this as straight-forward as possible and would appreciate it if no one asked why I need to attend the Latin Mass so badly.

I recently moved to a new area.

I would like to attend the Latin Mass that is held on Sundays afternoon at a parish about and hour and fifteen minutes away from where I live. It’s the only one that is even remotely close to me. That is obviously too far away to be really involved in the life of the parish.

However, I would go to confession, daily Mass occasionally, and obviously live close to the people in my home parish and would expect be active there in terms of charity work and the like. This is still the closest church although it’s about 30 minutes away.

These two parishes are also in two different dioceses. Weird situation I know but I live in an area where if you want to be Catholic you can expect a drive.

The question is which parish do I consider my home parish and who gets my tithe every Sunday? It feels like my home parish should but shouldn’t something go to the parish that I go to on Sunday as well?

 

[Usige]

My wife and I are in a similar situation except the distances are halved.

We simply split our donations between the two parishes.

 

[L_Marshall]

There’s no hard rule. Use your best judgement.

Keep in mind where you’re going most often, and the need of the two different parishes, and decide from there.

 

[phil19034]

I’ll try to ask this as straight-forward as possible and would appreciate it if no one asked why I need to attend the Latin Mass so badly.

I recently moved to a new area.

I would like to attend the Latin Mass that is held on Sundays afternoon at a parish about and hour and fifteen minutes away from where I live. It’s the only one that is even remotely close to me. That is obviously too far away to be really involved in the life of the parish.

However, I would go to confession, daily Mass occasionally, and obviously live close to the people in my home parish and would expect be active there in terms of charity work and the like. This is still the closest church although it’s about 30 minutes away.

These two parishes are also in two different dioceses. Weird situation I know but I live in an area where if you want to be Catholic you can expect a drive.

The question is which parish do I consider my home parish and who gets my tithe every Sunday? It feels like my home parish should but shouldn’t something go to the parish that I go to on Sunday as well?

The home parish is the one you live in. Feel free to use your discretion regarding the tithe. Perhaps alternate weeks so you split it 50-50 (assuming you tithe the same amount each week). Or if you don’t want to split 50-50, split it 60-40, 70-30, 90-10, etc

If you are active in your home Parish for fellowship events, etc; might be good to most of the money to your home parish. But it’s up to you, do what your heart tells you is the right thing.

 

[FrDavid96]

…

The question is which parish do I consider my home parish

Your parish of membership is the parish where you live.
Parishes are geographical territories, just like states. Membership in a parish is determined by which parish territory your home is located.

and who gets my tithe every Sunday?

That’s entirely your decision.
There is a certain responsibility to support ones own parish, but this is not defined in detail (for example, in contrast to some non-Catholic places which require 10% of ones income, or some such).

It feels like my home parish should but shouldn’t something go to the parish that I go to on Sunday as well?

In justice, yes. The parish where you are a visitor still has to pay the lights and the air conditioning and all the other expenses of keeping the church open. When we visit another place, we should make some kind of voluntary donation to help with those expenses.

If you decide that your annual donations will be such that they might impact your tax situation, you should ask for envelopes, or use electronic donations, or whatever means each parish uses to keep account of donations so that they can give you a receipt at year’s end.

 

[suko]

Your parish of membership is the parish where you live.
Parishes are geographical territories, just like states. Membership in a parish is determined by which parish territory your home is located.

Is there like a website that shows the territory of each parish? I tried Googling around, but couldn’t find anything that speaks about the territory of the parish that is closest to me. In the city where my home is located, there’s actually about 5 or 6 different parishes close by (and they are all in the same city).

Edit:

Never mind, I found it! I had to go to the archdiocese’s website.

 

[FrDavid96]

Is there like a website that shows the territory of each parish? I tried Googling around, but couldn’t find anything that speaks about the territory of the parish that is closest to me. In the city where my home is located, there’s actually about 5 or 6 different parishes close by (and they are all in the same city).

No. There’s no single website.

Sometimes (only sometimes) a diocese will post parish territory information on a website. I’ve only seen it done a few times, and even then, it was done as a document explaining parish re-structuring. I cannot say that I’ve searched every diocese (not even every one in the U.S., not by far) but I have looked at some of the bigger ones which would be more likely to have such maps. It just doesn’t seem to be the sort of thing that gets posted on the web.

Most of the diocese website that have a feature to help someone find a parish seem to use third-party websites (like google maps or yahoo maps, etc.) which simply direct someone to a church based on distance from a location that the user provides; much that same that stores or restaurants use these maps. They can be very helpful when someone is looking for a Mass time, or someone is new to an area, but they’re not very useful when it comes to parish boundaries. Of course, that’s not what they’re intended to do anyway.

Anyway, that’s a very long answer to your question. I’d suggest checking the website for your diocese and checking the information for the individual parishes that are close to you. It might have something explaining the parish territory, but given what I’ve seen I don’t think it’s very likely.

 

[Joe_5859]

I’ll just agree with the above. There’s no reason it has to be an all or nothing proposition. It seems most reasonable to me to give some to both parishes.

 

[tafan]

I’ll try to ask this as straight-forward as possible and would appreciate it if no one asked why I need to attend the Latin Mass so badly.

I recently moved to a new area.

I would like to attend the Latin Mass that is held on Sundays afternoon at a parish about and hour and fifteen minutes away from where I live. It’s the only one that is even remotely close to me. That is obviously too far away to be really involved in the life of the parish.

However, I would go to confession, daily Mass occasionally, and obviously live close to the people in my home parish and would expect be active there in terms of charity work and the like. This is still the closest church although it’s about 30 minutes away.

These two parishes are also in two different dioceses. Weird situation I know but I live in an area where if you want to be Catholic you can expect a drive.

The question is which parish do I consider my home parish and who gets my tithe every Sunday? It feels like my home parish should but shouldn’t something go to the parish that I go to on Sunday as well?

What part of Texas are you 30 minutes away from a Catholic Church? Far west?

 

[texasag7599]

It’s actually east central Texas. It’s just a heavily Baptist area and there are no straight shots to a town that has a Catholic church.

Just a weird spot where it takes a long time to get anywhere. I’ve been told I live in the middle of nowhere.

 

[Brendan]

The home parish is the one you live in…

Not necessarily. If the bishop established the Latin Mass parish as a personal parish for those who are attracted to the Mass in the EF, then that would be his parish.

If he was accepted by the pastor of a personal parish, then, canonically, that IS their parish, regardless of the geographical parish that their domicile is in.

Such is the case here in the Archdiocese of Detroit. There are three parishes that are personal parishes for those attracted to the EF Mass ( and several ethnic personal parishes)

For example, within a few miles of my house, there are two geographic parishes, but 3 ethnic personal parishes, ( Polish, Slovak and Croatian).

For any of those Poles, Slovaks and Croats, the parish they attend IS, canonically, their parish, it doesn’t matter if they have to drive past 10 geographic parishes to get there.

 

[Brendan]

Your parish of membership is the parish where you live.
MOST Parishes are geographical territories, just like states. Membership in a parish is normally determined by which parish territory your home is located…

Fr, to be fully correct, I would clarify your statement above slightly.

 

[phil19034]

Not necessarily. If the bishop established the Latin Mass parish as a personal parish for those who are attracted to the Mass in the EF, then that would be his parish.

If he was accepted by the pastor of a personal parish, then, canonically, that IS their parish, regardless of the geographical parish that their domicile is in.

Such is the case here in the Archdiocese of Detroit. There are three parishes that are personal parishes for those attracted to the EF Mass ( and several ethnic personal parishes)

For any of them, the parish they attend IS, canonically, their parish.

In this case, the Church the OP attends the EF Mass in is not in his diocese. So it doesn’t matter if its a personal parish or not. The OP can attend, but cannot canonically be a member.

 

[phil19034]

Fr, to be fully correct, I would clarify your statement above slightly.

Brendan,
I believe Father’s answer was more correct the way he had it. However, you could have prefixed it by saying “Unless a personal parish”

Personal parishes are common in some dioceses (like mine) but rare or non-existent in others. My previous diocese had none.

In the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, we do not have a personal parishes dedicated to the Extraordinary Form. But we do have an apostolate, with a chaplain and a few priests, which officially offers it at three Churches for the archdiocese. The community acts like a quasi-parish (aka community) which is not a parish or personal parish. Also, there are a some additional parishes that offer the EF too.

 

[FrDavid96]

Fr, to be fully correct, I would clarify your statement above slightly.

Yes but…

I intentionally avoided that issue because “history” tells us that once that subject is brought into the thread, we get all kinds of “there’s a ____ parish in my neighborhood” comments.

Given the OP’s isolated location, I took an educated guess that personal parishes were not part of the OP’s situation.

I tried to give direct answers to address only the OPs actual questions.