Food for Thought

An often-heard question in the church asks what Catholics want from their parishes. Naturally, people are not carbon copies of each other in all their wants and needs.

May 23, 2014

An often-heard question in the church asks what Catholics want from their parishes. Naturally, people are not carbon copies of each other in all their wants and needs. Nonetheless, a frequent response to this question holds that Catholics want to feel accepted and at home in a parish, to feel they belong — to feel, even, that it is like a family.

“Parishes are meant to be places where people feel a sense of belonging and spiritual kinship,” retired Bishop Howard Hubbard of Albany, N.Y., wrote in a 2011 message. He expressed concern that some “find it hard to connect and be accepted” in a parish or feel “taken for granted” and “ignored.”

“Belonging to a people” is important, Pope Francis suggested in an interview. For, “no one is saved alone.” Instead, the Pope said, “God attracts us looking at the complex web of relationships” in the human community and enters into this relationship web.

“The parish is not an outdated institution,” Pope Francis wrote in The Joy of the Gospel. But it needs to remain in real “contact with the homes and the lives of its people,” not becoming “out of touch” with them. A parish, he indicated, should be an environment “of living communion and participation.”

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