A caller named Tammy asks Father Dave about attending Mass at different parishes in her area. She asks, “If I go to different parishes for convenience’s sake — say, this Mass time works better for me at this other church instead of the parish that I belong to — and it seems like the majority of the time I’m attending Mass at a different church than my parish that I belong to, is that a sin? Is that something I need to confess, that I need to be at my own parish more often?”
Father Dave begins, “According to Canon Law, your parish is not necessarily geographically where you are according to the universal law of the Church; you can rightly be a parishioner of any parish that you choose. People came up to me this past weekend at our parish here in New York City, telling me that they travel for a couple hours to come celebrate Mass with us.”
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While Father Dave affirms that Tammy’s situation is not a sin, he invites her and the listeners to examine how we view parish life. “If church was the same as a supermarket, and the prices were all the same all around town, well sure, stop wherever you are. If you’re on your way back from dropping the kids off, and this supermarket is close, no big deal,” he says. “If we view church as I’m just going to get something, then it doesn’t really matter where we get that thing. If my parish is a place where I am a participating member in more ways than merely receiving — even receiving the Eucharist [which is] the most important thing we can receive — [then we are really acting on our] call to community.”
“If I’m committed to my parish and there’s one weekend when we are on the other side of town for a very important event and the Mass time lines up, there’s certainly nothing wrong with that,” he continues. “You said more often than not, you’re at some other parish and it’s not a consistent other parish. I worry for us as Catholics that we get into the mindset that [church] is more of a commodity that we’re conveniently going to get.”
Father Dave commends Tammy for attending Mass each week and not skipping out of convenience, and he invites us all to be active members of our parishes. “I would encourage all of us, not just you Tammy, to look at our parish as needing me to be there,” he says. “In regard to our Sunday obligation — we’re not obliged to receive Communion, we’re not obliged to hear whatever Gospel it is…We’re obliged to go and participate. The spirit of that would be that I’m a participating member of a community, not just that I said ‘amen’ at the proper time.”
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“The idea is we’re not just there for ‘me.’ Part of the idea of the Sunday obligation is that we look around to our left and our right, and we see maybe not exactly the same faces, but it’s a ‘we’ thing,” Father Dave continues, and he notes that you don’t necessarily need to volunteer to be involved. “Somebody that’s in the same pew every week or singing near me, that makes a difference. People notice that.”
Father Dave calls us to both give and receive as contributing members of our parishes. “In the back of our heads, [there may be] the notion that the priest is the one that’s really needed here, and I can watch this priest, or I can go across town to watch the other priest, because I’m just a spectator,” he says. “I would say that [the Church] needs to do a better job emphasizing what we call ‘the priesthood of all believers.’ There is ordained priesthood, but there is also the priesthood that all of us have from our baptism. That doesn’t mean we all get up on the altar and celebrate Mass, but it does mean that we’re all needed and that we all care for one another.”
