p. 1The Parish

As a Catholic, you are, ordinarily, a member of a certain parish, which in this country is a designated district or class of persons assigned by the Bishop to a church and to the spiritual care of a Pastor.

When moving into a new locality, let it be your first duty to inquire for your parish church.

Introduce yourself to the Reverend Pastor as soon as possible. If you are the head of the family, or are in charge of a household, be ready to give the Pastor the names of all its members, together with their ages and their condition in life, that he may be enabled at once to enter all the names on the parish register. You will thereby enable both him and yourself to know your mutual obligations and save yourselves possible inconveniences, which often arise in parishes through the presence of families unknown to the Pastor. The latter will then also be able the better to attend to your wants, to visit you, especially at the time of his regular visitations.

On moving out of a parish, be sure to advise the Reverend Pastor of it, so that your name may be crossed off the parish books and many inconveniences and misunderstandings be thereby avoided. Both religious conscientiousness and common gratitude ought to dictate such a course.

If new Catholic neighbors move into the parish, who are not likely to make themselves known to the Pastor, it will be charity on your part to remind them of that obligation, or to inform the Pastor yourself of their arrival.

Should you merely change your residence in the parish, you should likewise give notice to the Pastor that he may note the change and spare himself and his co-laborers possible inconveniences.

Should there be several parishes, as is sometimes the case in this country, covering the same territory, in favor of various languages, remember that you are bound to adhere to the one to which you have been assigned, or which you have selected yourself, according to existing regulations. To go now to one and then to another for various purposes, merely to enjoy a personal advantage in the one and to escape a burden in the other, is unjust, productive of confusion, and renders one liable to be overlooked in the hour of need, with no one to blame but oneself.