PARISH. - It is an institution of ecclesiastical origin, arising within the ambit of the diocese for the direct care of souls included in a determined territorial circumscription.
I. ORIGIN
The term, used in Roman public law in the 3rd-5th centuries to designate a group of provinces governed by a high official (vicar), was also used in Western ecclesiastical law for the territory governed by a bishop, until it became exclusive to the far more modest district of today. As a rule today every diocese is divided into parishes, each of which has its own church for the gathering of the people and the exercise of divine worship, and its own head called the parish priest (plebanus, prior, rector; in ancient times also parishioner and juridically sacerdos proprius). Its origin is due to historical developments and local circumstances that made it necessary, until the canon laws that gradually regulated its development created its present uniformity of government. The diocese, from the very beginnings of Christianity, has in general had its organizing nucleus in the urban center. It is evident that in regions where cities are very close to one another, true rural centers did not form and consequently small ecclesiastical organizations were not established; indeed in the East, where they seemed about to arise, rural bishoprics (chorepiscopates) met with opposition, and even rural parishes organized only with difficulty and at a later age. Instead, bishoprics with limited districts and populations were preferred, as in Asia Minor and particularly in proconsular Africa and Numidia and in some regions of central and southern Italy, where only with the disappearance of many cities in the barbarian storm did districts of the parish type later form. In countries, however, where cities were rarer, numerous etici arose, small agricultural centers, villas or estates of great landowners, particularly in the Po Valley and in central and southern Gaul; it was therefore necessary to provide first for the conversion of those agricultural populations (and this could not be done before the urban nucleus had been firmly established) and then for a constant spiritual assistance. It was preferred not to split the diocese into small independent communities that would have had a wretched and uncertain existence, but to organize these, on a smaller scale, on the model of the urban organization, under the direct subjection of the bishop. What in the 6th century had already been achieved, at least in general lines, in the above-mentioned countries, served as a model for reorganizing in the 7th-8th centuries the countries reconquered from barbarism
(Noricum, the Rhineland countries, northern Belgica, upper Pannonia) or newly evangelized from the 9th century onward, as the episcopal regime was reconstituted or erected: very extensive dioceses because the inhabitants were few and scattered and the places that could be constituted as centers of organization were very rare; while the progressive development of civil life and the growth of the population, especially agricultural, gradually brought about the parish system; so that one may well say that it advances in step with and is at the same time the most effective coefficient of national and social progress. The rural church is the gathering place of the common people scattered in the fields, valleys, and forests; there they feel associated and see themselves guided in the religious life. All this takes place under the direct supervision of the bishop: often he cedes to the parish part of the possession of his church or urges private owners or benefactors to constitute the necessary endowment. When under the Carolingian regime the payment of the tithe to the church is organized, it will go in a particular way, together with the oblations, to the benefit of the parish. When later monasticism in the 7th century begins to constitute ever larger and more important patrimonies in the countryside, it finds itself having to provide also for the spiritual life in its possessions, building chapels to the point of organizing communities and true parishes, over which it places its monks and entrusts to clerics dependent on itself, without breaking, at least at first, the dependence on the bishop: the monastery itself could thus also be a parish or have parishes dependent on itself. Finally there will also occur the case, quite frequent beyond the Alps, of great lay lords who establish churches in their domain for their own advantage and that of their dependents, and feel themselves masters of them to the point of wishing to dispose of them as their own property. All this broke that organic and uniform order that was proper to the diocese of Christian antiquity, particularly after feudal law permeated also benefices (v.) and the other ecclesiastical institutions; the patrimonies of parishes, particularly the tithes, suffered reductions and cuts for the benefit of other institutions and even of lay bodies; parishes were subjected to Chapters so that these might enjoy their revenues while entrusting their spiritual government to their own dependents; within parochial benefices prebends were constituted, which had nothing more to do with the care of souls; in the 15th and 16th centuries it came to conferring parochial benefices on ecclesiastical dignitaries and even on lower clerics, accumulating them also on the same persons. The legislation that had intervened in the 12th century to limit lay interference with the provisions relating to the right of patronage, reduced in the Council of Trent the parochial discipline to its original concept and made it one of the cornerstones of the Catholic reform (sess. XIV, de Reform. c. 9; sess. XXIV, de Reform., c. 13). The present discipline is nothing but its updated continuation.
Particular attention deserves the parochial organization in cities. Only in the largest and most populous cities, from Christian antiquity onward, was it necessary to resort to a particular organization: at Rome from the 3rd century provision was made by instituting the tituli (v.); at Alexandria there were already then subsidiary churches in the different quarters. In other cities, later, as at Milan, Verona, Lucca, urban or suburban sanctuaries were officiated by special colleges of clerics or even by monks. With the 13th century the great churches of the Mendicant Orders were centers of religious life and of special gatherings of laypeople. An attempt was made to maintain at least symbolically the unity of the whole population by reserving to the Cathedral special honors and rights, such as that of the single baptistery; but the constant growth of the urban population determined everywhere, though with different aspects in each city, the rise of a network of churches through which the care of souls was provided. Here too the Tridentine legislation intervened to regulate relations and to urge the institution of true parishes where they had not yet been established.
Pio Paschini
II. DIVISION
Parishes can be: 1) independent, if they have no relationship of juridical coexistence with others, or incorporated, if they are united with an office or with an ecclesiastical institute. In that case the actual care of souls must be entrusted to a vicar. 2) With an irremovable titular, if the latter cannot be removed except under certain conditions established by law and usually after a canonical trial; with a removable titular if removal takes place by a simpler procedure and even when not prompted by an actual crime; the CIC [Code of Canon Law] favors irremovability, because it is more consonant with the nature of the institute. 3) Secular if they are entrusted to the secular clergy, or religious if they are governed by religious. Almost always these parishes are incorporated pleno iure into a religious family; in doubt the parish is presumed to belong to the secular clergy. 4) Territorial, if a portion of diocesan territory with fixed boundaries is entrusted to the jurisdiction of the pastor, with ordinary competence over all the faithful who live in that territory, or personal, if the pastor's authority is limited to a certain number of families or individuals, who are united either by reason of language or by common origin or because they are ascribed to the same rite. 5) Mother or daughter parishes, of which the former retain honorary prerogatives over the latter, which derive from the mother parishes by an agreement or by custom.
III. JURIDICAL NATURE
The elements of the parish are: the church, the ecclesiastical office, the territory and the population. Among them the church stands out, in which worship is carried out and the Sacraments are administered. Connected with the church is the ecclesiastical office, that is, the complex of rights and duties that are exercised by the holder with ordinary power. The territory determines the circumscription of parochial authority and constitutes a clear determination of the population: this element was defined by the Council of Trent in its juridical relations. However, even today there can be parishes that prescind from territory. The parish is a juridical person; three elements contribute to its formation: the church, to which the spiritual and temporal rights of the parish refer; the benefice, constituted by the revenues of property belonging to the church, or by determined oblations that belong to the parish priest as remuneration for his work; the fabriceria, which is instituted for the maintenance and preservation of the church. In general these three elements constitute a single moral person, but in the course of history such a union did not always exist; at times there were three distinct entities. The CIC supposes these three elements in a single juridical person. The fabriceria (v. FABBRICA E FABBRICERIA), moreover, is considered rather as an organ of the parish than as an entity in itself (can. 1183).
IV. ERECTION
The establishment of a parish ex novo occurs in territories that do not belong to any parish, which in practice can now happen only in mission lands; elsewhere, the creation of new parishes takes place by division or by union of pre-existing parishes. Division entails the separation of part of the territory, together with the corresponding population, of one parish in order to constitute a new one. Such an act was regarded by the law as odious and therefore required a proportionate cause (3, X, III, 48), which the Council of Trent found in the great inconvenience the faithful experienced in going to the parish church to receive the Sacraments and to attend the services; it added moreover another cause that was already found in the Glossa, the excessively large number of parishioners (sess. XXI, cap. 4). These two causes were accepted by the CIC (can. 1427 § 2). The distribution of the goods destined for the new parish must take place ex bono et aequo, without infringing the will of the founders and of the donors, and without violating acquired rights and particular laws (can. 1500). The dismemberment of a parish falls within the competence of the vicar capitular and of the vicar general (can. 1427). The union of parishes can take an extinctive form when, one or more parishes having been suppressed, a new one is created, or when one or more parishes are united into a single one (can. 1419); in the form aequo principalis, when two or more parishes are entrusted stably to a single titular incumbent, although they retain their juridical personality (can. 460, 1); in the form minus principalis, when one parish is united to another as the accessory to the principal and is subject to a single titular incumbent. Extinctive union is reserved to the Holy See (can. 1422). Any kind of union is withdrawn from the competence of the vicar capitular and of the vicar general without a special mandate (can. 1423, 1).
Furthermore, between a moral person and a parish there can be a twofold union: pleno iure, when all the spiritual and temporal rights of the parish are transferred to the moral body; only quoad temporalia, when the revenues accrue also to the benefit of the moral body, while the spiritual rights remain with the parish independently of the body. Union pleno iure can be authorized only by the Holy See (can. 452, 1).
The innovation of a parish occurs through the transfer of the seat and through the transformation from removable to irremovable (can. 254, 3).