Find a Parish

The Catechism gives the Church's account in these words. "A parish is a definite community of the Christian faithful established on a stable basis within a particular church; the pastoral care of the parish is entrusted to a pastor as its own shepherd under the authority of the diocesan bishop." It is the place where all the faithful can be gathered for the Sunday celebration of the Eucharist. The parish initiates the Christian people into the ordinary expression of the liturgical life. It gathers them in that celebration. It teaches Christ's saving doctrine. It practises the charity of the Lord in good works and brotherly love.

The same paragraph keeps an old exhortation, from Saint John Chrysostom, which still says why a Catholic does not stay at home when the parish is offering Mass. "You cannot pray at home as at church, where there is a great multitude, where exclamations are cried out to God as from one great heart, and where there is something more: the union of minds, the accord of souls, the bond of charity, the prayers of the priests."

The Code of Canon Law says the same thing in the Church's law. A parish is a certain community of the Christian faithful stably constituted in a particular church, whose pastoral care is entrusted to a pastor as its proper pastor under the authority of the diocesan bishop. Only the diocesan bishop erects, suppresses, or alters parishes, and he does not do so notably without having heard the presbyteral council. A legitimately erected parish has juridic personality by the law itself. The parish is not a club that gathers itself. The bishop constitutes it.

The particular church in that definition is the diocese. The Catechism says that the phrase "particular church," which is the diocese, or eparchy, refers to a community of the Christian faithful in communion of faith and sacraments with their bishop ordained in apostolic succession. These particular Churches are constituted after the model of the universal Church. It is in them, and formed out of them, that the one and unique Catholic Church exists. The parish lives inside that communion. It is not a congregation beside the bishop.

As a general rule a parish is territorial. It includes all the Christian faithful of a certain territory. When it is expedient, personal parishes may be established by reason of rite, language, or nationality, or for some other reason. The ordinary path for a person in England and Wales is still the territorial parish of the place, under the bishop of that diocese. A person who belongs to another rite, or to a personal parish, does not invent a different Church. That person asks the bishop's own provision, which is a matter for the diocese, not for a guess.

The parish priest is the proper pastor of the parish entrusted to him. He exercises the pastoral care of that community under the authority of the diocesan bishop, in whose ministry of Christ he has been called to share. For that community he carries out the functions of teaching, sanctifying, and governing, with the cooperation of other priests or deacons and with the assistance of lay members of the Christian faithful, according to the norm of law. In England and Wales this pastor is called the parish priest. The title is the Church's, not a courtesy.

He is to see to it that the Most Holy Eucharist is the centre of the parish assembly. The Christian faithful are to be nourished by the devout celebration of the sacraments, and in a special way they are to approach the Most Holy Eucharist and the sacrament of Penance. The functions especially entrusted to him include the administration of Baptism, assistance at marriages and the nuptial blessing, the care of the sick and the dying, funeral rites, and the more solemn Eucharistic celebration on Sundays and on holy days of obligation. Those are the reasons a person goes to a parish rather than to a hall, a broadcast, or a page.

The same pastor is charged to make every effort, with the collaboration of the faithful, so that the message of the Gospel comes also to those who have ceased the practice of their religion or who do not profess the true faith. A parish is not only for those who already know the hour of Mass. It is the Church's ordinary presence in that territory, for the Catholic who has been away and for the person who has never been Catholic. Both still begin with the priest, not with a form on this site.

The obligation to assist at Mass can be met at a Mass celebrated anywhere in a Catholic rite, not only in the parish of one's own territory. A person who is travelling, or who goes to another Catholic church, still fulfils the precept by being there. Belonging does not move with the visit. The person remains one of the faithful of a parish under a bishop. The visit does not create a new parish, and it does not excuse the person from having one.

Sunday is the day. By apostolic tradition the paschal mystery is celebrated on Sunday, and Sunday must be observed in the universal Church as the primordial holy day of obligation. On Sundays and on the other holy days of obligation, the faithful are obliged to participate in the Mass. They are also to abstain from those works and affairs which hinder the worship to be rendered to God, the joy proper to the Lord's day, or the suitable relaxation of mind and body.

The Catechism states the precept in the Church's own words. "On Sundays and other holy days of obligation the faithful are bound to participate in the Mass." And it states how the precept is met. "The precept of participating in the Mass is satisfied by assistance at a Mass which is celebrated anywhere in a Catholic rite either on the holy day or on the evening of the preceding day." The Code says the same. A person who assists at a Mass celebrated anywhere in a Catholic rite, either on the feast day itself or in the evening of the preceding day, satisfies the obligation.

The evening of the day before Sunday is Saturday evening. When a parish offers Mass on Saturday evening, assistance at that Mass meets the Sunday obligation. The law does not add a further condition that the Mass must carry the title of a vigil. It is assistance at Mass, in a Catholic rite, on the evening of the preceding day. Not every parish offers Mass on Saturday evening. This file does not say which parish does. The parish's own notice says so, and only that notice is to be trusted for the fact.

The Sunday Eucharist is the foundation and confirmation of all Christian practice. The faithful are obliged to participate on days of obligation unless excused for a serious reason, for example illness or the care of infants, or dispensed by their own pastor. Those who deliberately fail in this obligation commit a grave sin. A dispensation is not something this page can give. The Code allows a pastor, for a just cause and according to the prescripts of the diocesan bishop, to dispense in individual cases, or to commute the obligation into other pious works. That judgement belongs to him, on the facts of one life. It does not belong to a general permission written here.

If participation truly becomes impossible, because there is no sacred minister or for another grave cause, the Church does not invent a substitute obligation. The Code strongly recommends that the faithful then take part in a liturgy of the word, if one is celebrated in a parish church or in another sacred place according to the prescripts of the diocesan bishop, or that they devote themselves to prayer for a suitable time, alone, as a family, or in groups of families. The Catechism repeats that recommendation. It is not itself the Sunday precept, and it is not a licence for this page to declare that a broadcast will do. Whether the cause is grave is a fact. Where a dispensation is needed, the pastor is the one who can give it.

The universal law also names other holy days. With the prior approval of the Apostolic See, the conference of bishops can suppress some of them or transfer them to a Sunday. This file does not set out which of those days are kept in England and Wales, because that particular law was not the page opened for this study. Sunday was. The parish's own notice, and the bishop's, say what else binds in that diocese.

For a person in England and Wales, the way to find the parish is the diocese. The Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales publishes a page of the dioceses. That page, at https://www.cbcew.org.uk/diocese/, was opened for this study. It says that the Catholic Church in England and Wales is made up of twenty-one dioceses, and it calls a diocese a community of the Christian faithful in communion of faith and sacraments with their bishop ordained in apostolic succession. It names the dioceses, says in prose which counties and districts each one serves, and points onward, diocese by diocese. It is not a search for the nearest church. A person reads which diocese the place belongs to, from that account of the territory, and then leaves the conference's page for the diocese itself.

This file does not print that list again. A directory of every diocese would have required each diocesan site to be opened, and that was not done. One chain was opened, so that the method can be seen in the real thing. The rest of the country is found by the same method, beginning again at the conference's page of the dioceses.

The worked example is the Diocese of Nottingham. The conference's page says that this diocese was founded in 1850 and covers the counties of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Rutland, and Lincolnshire. The conference's own page for that diocese, at https://www.cbcew.org.uk/nottingham/, points to the diocese's website. That website, https://www.dioceseofnottingham.uk/, was opened. The diocese publishes its own list of places at https://www.dioceseofnottingham.uk/find/places-list. On that list, opened in full, one parish is Holy Rood, Market Rasen, in the deanery of Lincoln. The same list gives the parish's own website. That website, https://holyroodcatholicchurch.org.uk/, was opened. It is Holy Rood Roman Catholic Church, Market Rasen, and its own notice carries the Mass times for the week. Those times are not copied here. They belong on the parish's notice, where the parish can change them. A telephone call to the parish, on the number the diocese's list gives, confirms what the notice says.

That is the whole method, and it is the only method this page teaches. Find which diocese the place belongs to, from the bishops' conference. Use that diocese's own list of parishes. Read the parish's own times. One parish has been named because its diocese and its own site were both fetched while this file was written. Naming it does not make this file a directory, and it does not make Market Rasen the pattern for every town.

A person who is away from home uses the same three steps for the place where that person is, not for the place left behind. The conference's page is read for the place at hand. That diocese's own list is used. That parish's own notice is read. Nothing in this file shortens those steps because the person is a visitor, and nothing in it guesses a church from the name of a town.

Mass times on a third-party list can be wrong. A list kept by someone other than the parish, or other than the diocese, can be old, half revised, or simply mistaken. The parish's own notice is what to trust. The diocese's own list is the way to reach that parish. It is not a substitute for the parish's notice of the week. A telephone call to the parish confirms the time before a journey that cannot be wasted. This site does not keep a weekly bulletin, and it does not promise one. The bulletin, where a parish issues one, is the parish's.

A person who is not Catholic may come to Mass. The parish church is not closed to a guest. The guest does not receive Holy Communion. The Code is plain on the ordinary rule. Catholic ministers administer the sacraments licitly to Catholic members of the Christian faithful alone, who likewise receive them licitly from Catholic ministers alone. The paragraphs that follow in that canon are not a permission a visitor applies to himself or herself at the altar rail. A doubt about a particular case is taken to the priest. This page does not decide it.

The right way to be present is simple. Come in good time. Stay from the beginning to the dismissal. Sit, stand, and kneel with the people as far as a guest can do so without pretence. Do not come forward for Holy Communion. Watching is not a smaller Mass. It is the honest way to be there until the Church, through the priest, says that the person is ready to receive.

This page does not replace the priest. Questions of marriage, of Baptism, and of becoming a Catholic are taken to the parish priest, at the start, not after a plan has already been made.

Baptism is among the functions especially entrusted to the pastor. An adult who intends to receive Baptism is to be admitted to the catechumenate and led, as far as possible, through the stages of Christian initiation. Parents who ask Baptism for a child go to the pastor and are prepared for what they are asking. The date is not chosen on this page. The priest says what the parish does, and when.

Assistance at marriages is likewise entrusted to him. A person who wishes to marry says so to him at the beginning, and says what is true about any earlier marriage. Becoming a Catholic is the same kind of beginning. The person says whether he or she has been baptised, and says what is true about marriage, in the first conversation. This file does not enrol anyone, does not fix a season, and does not judge a marriage. The priest does, in the parish, under the bishop.

An earlier version of this site had a search called Find a Church. It did not work, and it was removed. This file does not bring that search back. Build must not make a search box. Build must not make a map. Build must not make a list that guesses the nearest parish, whether from a postcode, from a town, or from a place the machine infers. Build must not fill in Mass times from memory, from an old bulletin, or from a third-party list. Build must not invent a parish, a priest's name, a Mass time, a postcode result, or a map pin. Build must not promise a weekly bulletin inside this site.

The page may say what a parish is. It may tell a person to begin with the bishops' conference, then the diocese's own list, then the parish's own notice. It may keep the one worked example written above, as a teaching of the method, and no other parish. It may not grow that example into a national directory. The door stays closed on any tool that tries to do the finding in the person's place.

Sources: the Catechism of the Catholic Church, on the Holy See's site, for what a parish is and for the Sunday precept, including the evening of the preceding day; the Code of Canon Law, on the Holy See's site, for the parish, the pastor, the Sunday obligation, and who receives the sacraments; the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, for the dioceses of England and Wales and for the Diocese of Nottingham; the Diocese of Nottingham's own list of places, and the parish site of Holy Rood, Market Rasen, for the one worked example. No time of Mass is taken from any of them into this file.