Fixing Canon Law’s Parish Boundary Problem
During a family trip to Rome, my dad looked out at one of the major avenues nearby the Vatican and commented: the roads don’t have lanes. There were busses, vespas, fiats, and somehow no accidents. Immediately I pointed out to him, and the people that drive on these roads are the same ones that write our Canon Law. When experts gathered in the Vatican leading up to the introduction of the modern version of Canon Law (1917), they were attempting to apply the principles of Aquinas and theology to a set of rules. It’s ironic in a sense because Aquinas himself was very clear that you could not reduce every possible scenario to a list of rules. But they meant well and the tradition of Canon Law is still important today.
We’re living in a period of transition in the Catholic Church. In many ways, the history of the Catholic parish and it’s territorial boundaries —something we started enforcing after the Protestant Reformation— is like the Church trying to paint lines on the road. It genuinely wasn’t about controlling where people go to Mass, it was about accountability. Which priest is responsible for your soul! Even if you go somewhere else, who at the end of the day has the duty to try and assist you specifically.
By assigning every square inch of the globe, the Church’s obsession with territory created a sort of safety net. Theoretically no one was left out.
The world is in transition now just as the Catholic Church is. People have cars and many spend half of their day/week in a neighboring diocese where they work. Over 2 million individuals live most of the year at sea shipping goods across the continents and fishing so we can eat. Parish territories are for land and not the sea, so those individuals technically do not have a bishop either.
The Pope is an American! But more importantly, he is someone who has seen the Church at work on three different continents (North and South America, plus Europe). All complicated for their own reason. And I am very hopeful that Pope Leo XIV will use his expertise as a Canon Lawyer and as someone committed to listening to the people who have experienced issues in the Church.
Don’t get me wrong, the concept of a parish boundary still matters some. The map isn’t the problem, it is the fact that Church law currently assigns pastoral service to people based on taxation rather than presence. Going back to the original meaning of the word parish (Greek paroikia) it means a pilgrim people. It refers to people on the move through a space. And theologically the sense of belonging we are called to create is one of presence.
But if boundaries are strictly about domicile (let’s be honest, it’s about where you pay your taxes), you miss out on a massive portion of your population.
In Arlington, VA, a parish priest once told me that his affluent congregation didn’t include any poor people. I pointed out to him that if he took a walk around the neighborhood after the Noon Mass, he would see commercial vehicles, trucks with ladders, utility vehicles, maids/cleaning services. From a visit I made to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in 2014, I recall a parish opening up at lunch. Can you imagine how many people would prefer to eat (and relieve themselves) inside rather than huddling in their van for 30-45 minutes? It’s an opportunity to demonstrate the Church’s recognition of their dignity & that the individuals here for 8-10 hours a day are equally contributing members of our community. The sign of welcome provides an important theological encounter and welcomes people back (or encourages them to remain Catholic).
I’ve also mentioned my personal experience, feeling uncomfortable for behavior happening in a parish, and then having been encouraged to go back to my parish boundary. I was told, “the Church in her wisdom gives you a home.” The thing is, Canon Law doesn’t really say that. But for someone who is trying to enforce a model, they could read to me Canon 518 and I might think that the obligation is on me. “As a general rule a parish is to be territorial.” We’ll, thankfully I decided to leave for safer grounds despite having heard that. It wasn’t until years later I realized that 518 is actually an instruction to the priests rather than the congregation.
Pope Leo XIV should consider amending it for more flexibility.
-518 (amended to add) A parish is a community of the Christian faithful defined by missionary proximity. While the territory of a defined boundary provides a stable administrative base, the parish is primarily constituted by the active presence of the Church within diverse spaces where the faithful sojourn and pass through.
Remember, historically parishes were literal community centers. We did not have pews before the Protestant Reformation and only added them after the Catholic Church started to lose ground as the convener of society. The eucharist and the others sacraments are the source of parish life and the reason for it’s community. But we should also consider loosening our mental model of a parish as a collection of buildings.
-518 (possible additional amendment) Personal parishes [aka languages, specific ministries for demographics that can’t easily be served in a regular parish.] should be held in equal legal standing with territorial parishes, recognizing that in a mobile and contemporary society, the mission territory of the Church is porous and requires efforts to create a culture of encounter where a legacy parish might not best be equipped to serve everyone.
In Northern Virginia, there is a bustling parish for Korean speakers and another for Vietnamese speakers. My home parish is Italian-speaking (although almost all of us have full proficiency in English too). The military services of a handful of countries have their own “diocese.” Prisoners have souls too. And as pointed out earlier, 2 million individuals live at sea and are only served by a priest when pulling into a port covered under the Vatican’s stella maris program (largely managed by Scalabrinian priests).
In a complex world, we have to accept that our canon law should not try to put every person into a box. And at the same time, we can still recognize the contributions of a territorial parish. Catholic theology builds itself upon the presence of the people and not where one is registered to pay taxes.
