Comments on: The parish “shop and hop”

By: Top 10 Most Commented Posts of 2010 « Divine Life – A Blog by Eric Sammons

Thu, 30 Dec 2010 12:36:33 +0000

[...] The parish “shop and hop” – Every Catholic lives their faith through their local parish, so discussing when it is legitimate to “parish shop” is sure to generate comments. [...]

By: Christian

Christian — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 14:09:53 +0000

IIRC, in my pre Vat2 childhood, there was no reason not to belong to the closest parish: you got the same thing at all of them. Only after the the parishes began to change around 1967 or so did people start to ’shop.’

By: AR

AR — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 22:03:30 +0000

JF Archer, I hope you get to read this. Thanks for your comment, I know I should be more understanding of the great responsibilities of a priest but I still know that what was done was not appropriate. But I must admit that my parish is very much devoted to the Christ in the Blessed Sacrament and for the most part I don’t have to be concerned heretical teachings being taught during Mass – and that is what truly matters. God bless…

It still will take a while for me to return to my home parish so please keep me in your prayers because I do miss it but the wound is still sensitive.

By: Parish Shop and Hop? « Catholic Dads

Parish Shop and Hop? « Catholic Dads — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 17:20:31 +0000

[...] Auto Draft By Jason Gennaro on July 31st, 2010 | Category: Faith & Spirituality, Family Life, Parenting A few days ago, Eric Sammons at The Divine Life wrote a post about the parish “shop and hop”. (Read it all here: http://ericsammons.com/blog/2010/07/28/the-parish-shop-and-hop/) [...]

By: Ruth Ann

Ruth Ann — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 16:31:09 +0000

I was baptized Catholic before I was a month old and have practiced the Catholic faith all my life, faithfully. Now I am a sextagenerian. My rule of thumb is to go to the parish within which I reside. What happens over time is that one develops relationships inside and outside of Mass. Neighbors are members of the same parish. One’s children play with other children from the parish. Pastors come and pastors go. Musicians also come and go. R.E. directors come and go. But, friends and neighbors generally stay.

One time, when our daughter was young, we went to a parish which was outside the official geographical boundaries of our residence. But, it was actually closer to our home! We chose it also because of safety: when our daughter walked to Catholic school she would not have to cross streets with high density traffic.

By: J. Steffenberry

J. Steffenberry — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:09:03 +0000

Eric,
I’m in the same boat as you. When we decided to return to the Catholic Church I said, “Well, there’s one about a mile away,” and we started to go — and love it. But subsequently we too found out that geographically we are actually in another parish. That’s the hazard of living in a heavily populated area, I guess.

I actually drove by the other day just to see the church we “supposed” to go to. The church we do go to is closer, so I’m not feeling too guilty.

By: J

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 19:08:58 +0000

Dear Dante,

I think, having done it myself, that the homeschooling families failing to register phenomenon is partly laziness, partly the deep lack of confidence in the lay administration (which exercises more authority in, e.g., catechesis and liturgy) combined with the phenomenon you mentioned: being told that your services are not welcome.

But if we can overcome our laziness, I think with time we can overcome our reluctance. How do we *want* to? Well, as soon as we see that our parish looks anything like the Christianity we read about in the New Testament, the Fathers, the Didache, the living, continuous, apostolic tradition, the universal Church–a Church that can be universal.

We need to see that people care more about what’s in the tabernacle than talking points we could as easily get from mainstream mass media.

We need to see that people care more about the dignity of the person than the comforts offered by pro-abortion politicians;

that they care more about suffering and dying for Christ’s sake, and living the whole Gospel–not just the part about benignity and forgiveness–the whole Gospel–the sword of Matthew 10, and the division of Luke 12.

There is a difference between letting the wheat of Matthew 13 grow with the tares and trying to convince the wheat that it’s being uptight and exclusive for maintaining that tares are still bad.

By: Dante

Dante — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 18:55:52 +0000

15 years ago my wife and I hopped parishes, but only after many years of attending our territotial one and TRYING to participate in apostolate to help improve the teaching, etc. Finally after being told flat out that our services were not needed we hopped. The pastor of the new parish welcomed us with open arms and immediately asked us to run the catechetical program and be on the parish council. He was so happy to welcome an orthodox younger couple into parish life. Our biggest concern has been NEITHER parish-hopping or parish-staying. The phenomenon in our urban archdiocese (with a parish every few miles) has been getting orthodox families to belong to ANY parish. By far the custom for many years has been “parish take-out” or “parish drive-thru”, i.e., taking from a parish whatever is needed for sacramental or spiritual life but never belonging or giving by participating. This has been most especially the case with the many homeschooling families in our region who find imperfection in even the better Catholic parishes and use that as a reason to not register.

By: Stephen Lowe

Stephen Lowe — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:44:36 +0000

….heresy being preached or severe liturgical abuses,….

it should be “and/or” although you most frequently find them together. I once went to confession at a cathedral here in the southeast and it was held (weekly) in a janitors closet with no dividers, sitting on folding chairs. I would have continued there but there were better options fortunately. I found a spiritual home elsewhere and my car won’t let me go near the cathedral.

By: Greg

Greg — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:15:52 +0000

I’m a dad, and I am of the opinion that aside from heresy being preached or severe liturgical abuses, we should go to the parish closest to us. Parents are the primary chatechists, their souls depend upon it.