My experience had been that the pastor sets the tone of the parish and there's nothing to be done if the tone he sets us not great. If he doesn't like the Legion of Mary, it's gone. If he doesn't care about liturgy, you'll get what the songleader likes. If your peace doesn't rest in a town, Jesus told his disciples, shake the dust from your sandals and go to the next town. And that's in the Bible.
There’s something to be said about the dust shaking. Of course most catholic families are not missionaries the way the apostles were. You’re stuck with the parishes near you and if they’re all basically the same, you gotta pick one and stick with it
Yes, we couldn’t sit and have our children hear the homilies given by the radical leftist priests every week at our former patish, so we moved to a parish further away, Fortunately, those priests were finally moved and replaced by wonderful, holy priests, but we have chosen to remain at the parish where we sought refuge.
I'm still new to the faith but for the past few years in trying to volunteer at the parish like described above, I think you're 100% right Deacon Brad. Thank you for the Scripture reference too, I haven't thought of it that way before.
Lewis may have been addressing protestants, since he was one. They have the luxury of denominational options in any given town. It's not as easy, especially in prior centuries, for Catholics to do so.
Ethnicity/race is more likely to determine which local parish a Catholic chooses. Up until recently at least.
Agreed. That's why I said it. In any town in past decades, American Catholics may have attended a parish because it was the Irish parish in town, or the Italian parish, or the French parish. Proximity may not have mattered. Was this also "church hopping"?
These days, families that don't have a family tradition with one parish may choose another because it fits the teachings of the Church that ring true to them. But to pretend that families have always attended a parish because of proximity to their home isn't accurate. I suspect it's an argument to boost dying churches.
It wasn’t church hopping because they were all first-gen Americans and literally spoke different languages. They didn’t choose a different parish because of vibes or bad preaching, as was the original point that Pat made. Ethnic parishes don’t exist anymore and you know it. You’re conflating then and now.
Ethnic parishes absolutely exist now, they’re just not European. The small, one mile stretch of town I grew up in that had ethnically Polish, Italian, and German churches now have 2 Korean churches and a Spanish- speaking church that has one English Mass.
I think you're missing my point. Between first-gen Americans, as you pointed out, their descendants attending masses of the same ethnicity, which happened in my childhood and is still happening in cities like NYC, and people's current preferences due to the wide 'spectrum' of church teachings out there, I'm arguing it's not as common as we're assuming that American Catholics have just always gone to the parish around the corner.
And you're mistaken if you don't think ethnic parishes exist anymore. Congrats on never having to leave your own to witness this phenomena.
Agreed. This quote strikes me in relation to contemporary Catholics in larger cities with lots of options since a lot of ‘em end up parish hopping looking for the “right” liturgy, music, preaching, etc. instead of pouring into the parish nearby.
There is something distinctly not Catholic about church-hopping. In fact, up until Vatican II, if you wanted to church hop, you had to essentially get permission to do so (in order to get any sacraments of initiation, you had to have permission from your priest. You still have to seek the permission of your bishop if you wish to get sacraments such as marriage outside the diocese.)
One of the critical issues of church-hopping is what we owe to our neighbors. We have all become a bit cavalier about the responsibility we have to build up our local community. Traditionally, one had to go to the parish in which they lived, regardless of the priest, quality of the liturgy, the facilities, or the youth group. This can be a deep penance at times, certainly. It's often the people closest to us that are the most irritating. And we don't get to choose them! How undemocratic is that! But its also the people whom we see at the grocery store, in our neighborhoods and who deliver our mail. The ones we are supposed to encourage, support and show up for.
That isn't to say there are no times when changing parishes is necessary. But it should be the rare exception, not the common practice.
What if the church in your parish, instead of the liturgy of the Mass on a Sunday near the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, has children dress in native costumes to Mexico and do dances, then afterward an “abuela” sits the children on the alter to tell them about the harm the Catholic explorers did to the Aztecs when they went to colonize Mexico? We walked out of this particular Mass and never returned to this church in our parish. Instead m, until we moved away from the city, we attended an Anglican form Mass in a church belonging to the Personal Chair of St Peter established by Pope Benedict XVI for Anglican converts that wanted to confer as a congregation. That liturgy didn’t go through the evolution of Vatican II and is as close to a TLM as possible without being a TLM. Church hopping, no. Finding a church that is respectful to God and that adheres to the teachings of the church, yes. Protestants church hop to find a church that suits their personal beliefs (I grew up Protestant). Catholics that search for a church outside their parish do so to find an authentically Catholic church, which are sadly becoming more difficult to find.
My wife and I are now parishioners of the Parish 2 mins away from us. Have been avoiding it for a whole year after moving into our new house mostly cause the architecture is horrendous. The Church is a legit circle with the altar in the middle of it. You can sit behind the priest or in front of him. The only nice part is that at least it's ad orientum for some lol.
But as someone who works in evangelization full time- I felt like a hypocrite telling people to live on mission and be disciple makers when my family and I were driving past the basketball arena parish to drive to another one. We are a couple months in now and are absolutely loving it- besides the architecture. We have another mission minded family coming to the parish alongside us and are ready to rock.
I think that's a critical piece of this- is finding at least 1 other mission minded family to go in with. It allows you to share the responsibility with evangelization and gives you a natural other family to build communities of fellowship with.
All in great post on a topic that is near and dear to my heart
Now I would interested to hear your take on Catholic schools with a similar concept. To me the school verse, the parish are categorically different in that the school is a foundational element of a child’s catechesis. Now it’s different because it’s hard to extrapolate the school from the parish, but I think it’s necessary given where we are in Catholic education in parish life.
Yeah, I think you need to be much more careful with the parish school. I think we overestimate the catechetical effect of things like the priest's homily but underestimate the catechetical effect of the school, despite the fact that the former is 10 minutes a week (are they even listening) and the latter is 7 hours a day
The problem is that too many parishes have priests who have been poorly formed, there is little reverence for the liturgy and heterodox sermons are the norm. This is not what a faithful Catholic parents want for their children.
It becomes imperative in this modernistic world to find a parish that teaches the orthodox Catholic faith and passes on the great patrimony of the church Jesus established through the apostles. I can tell you that where such parishes exist they are overflowing. Community exists, people from the elderly to children are engaged. And if that means driving by half a dozen or so parishes on the way, it is more important that we relearn the depths of our faith and teach our children truth than to attempt to coexist with heterodoxy.
Where there is not orthodox teaching and practice in liturgical norms the only thing that will result is poorly formed and confused children who are more likely to walk away from the faith.
Pray for your local parish but build community where there is right practice and the faith is not watered down or destroyed by modernism.
There isn’t a single data point that suggests that a parish is a prominent factor in keeping children engaged and practicing the faith into adulthood. The family domestic church is almost entirely responsible for that.
Data points are not the issue or even important. Data doesn’t mean anything to parents trying to raise truly Catholic children, and part of the home church is taking children to a Mass that reinforces what the parents teach and how they live the Catholic faith in the home. I know someone who started driving his family of ten (he, his wife, and their eight children) quite a distance to attend a TLM when his daughters started expressing interest in being alter servers because they saw other girls alter serving. Alter serving was always (and still should be, but no longer is) about introducing boys to the priestly duties to encourage vocations. Girls have no role to play in helping with the liturgy and they should not be encouraged to be alter servers - one of the many mistakes JPII made during his reign as pope. Of course a father who wants to teach the true faith to his children must make such a choice to drive far to a TLM. My husband and I, converts to the Catholic church, drive fifty minutes to attend a TLM and yes we drive by a few Catholic Churches on the way, but the NO Masses are so much like Protestant services, watered down liturgy for the taste of the poorly catechized congregation and disrespectful of the kingship of Christ who is very present there in the sanctuary in the consecrated host, that we cannot abide attending them. People stand up in line and hold out their hands to receive the body of Christ as if they are receiving a symbolic wafer as in the Protestant churches, no reverence at all, why should anyone stay and attend such a parish? If I understand this article correctly the author is more interested that people in a parish stay to make others feel welcome. That is NOT the point of the Mass nor the job of the people who attend Mass. The Mass is a holy event and it is for God, it is not for the people. It is to raise the people to God, not to lower God to the people. Until NO masses start respecting God again, and teaching the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist so that people kneel before Him and receive Him on their tongues from the consecrated hands of a priest or a bishop only, no one who drives past some Catholic churches to attend a respectful Mass need be criticized. The onus is on the priest and the bishop and the pope to form parishes where people feel the Mass is worthy of God, returning to truly Catholic tradition, so that people desiring to live their Catholic faith feel they can stay in their home parish and trust the Mass will be worthy of God.
If the Mass is for God and not for people, then why do you let people decide where you go to Mass? Surely the same God is present at your parish as He is present at the TLM parish where you attend. Your behavior of driving past several parishes to attend one that you like suggests that you are not willing to park your car in the church parking lot where your mouth is, so to speak.
Would you receive the Eucharist from a deacon? Does the minister of Holy Communion somehow change the reality of Christ's presence? I agree that Extraordinary Ministers are often a problem. But I attend a parish with a weekly Sunday Extraordinary Form Mass that uses an Extraordinary Minister to bring Holy Communion to the choir during Ordinary Form Masses. I am of the opinion that what the Church permits is permissible, always with necessary prudence and sound judgment.
Basically, I think we all just need to chill out. lol
You miss the point entirely. The NO Masses are Protestant, not Catholic, and though God is there and Jesus is there in the Eucharist, the respect for God and the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist is NOT there and the liturgy does not follow the true teachings of the Church. People who attend NO Masses are not being drawn up to God; they are being catered to by being handed the values of the world and not the values of Christ, who never catered to His sheep but challenged them to rise to Him. Most Catholics don’t know it because they were never taught the teachings of the Church and have never been challenged to rise out of themselves during Mass. Extraordinary ministers (NOT Eucharistic - many Catholics even get that wrong) were never meant to be the norm and no woman should ever be part of the liturgy for any reason, not even to read the scripture. How many Catholics know this? And as far as the Church permitting these things, well the Church apparently permits even blessings of homosexual unions and respect for the Koran now, so what the Church permits isn’t always what pleases God. Well catechized Catholics know the difference. And if you read my comment carefully you would see that I said people should take communion from the consecrated hands of a priest or deacon. No Catholic should be expected to attend a disrespectful Mass just because of its proximity to his home. And by the way, the church we attended in San Antonio before we moved away never closed during Covid, never followed covid protocols and never stopped the any of the sacraments. It’s an Anglican form, belongs to the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter with Bishop Lopes over it. When the archbishop of San Antonio closed all the churches under him and put a strict covid policy in place even when the churches re-opens, when none of those Catholics under his authority could go to confession or receive communion, guess which parish they flocked to? Our parish, where we still sat next to each other without masks, no limit to how many people could attend Mass, still went to the kneeler at the alter to receive communion on the tongue shoulder to shoulder with each other, where we still had confession three days a week. Would you have had those people who attended parishes under Archbishop Garcia-Siller, miss Mass and the sacraments rather than drive to the one parish in the city under another bishop and still offering the sacraments?
Ordinary Form Masses are Protestant but somehow Our Lord is present in the Eucharist there? Yeah, this discussion is over. You might be too far gone. Have a nice day.
I see you realize you have no answer to refute the points I made about why passing some parishes to attend an authentically Catholic Mass is perfectly ok for a serious Catholic to do, otherwise you would address the points I made and not resort to an ad hominem attack. Of course I meant NO Masses are Protestant in tone, not in reality. The Holy Spirit works through even a bad priest to consecrate the host. The Eucharist is valid even in a Protestant-like Mass. The issue with this article and with your attitude is that since Vatican II and especially since Pope Francis’ term as pope Catholicism has become confused and confusing unless one seeps himself in the Bible, the magisterium of the Church, the work of the church fathers, encyclicals and writings of past popes, and a catechism published before the 1990s. To say that a Catholic is church hopping when he merely wants to find a respectful liturgy and a Mass that respects the teaching of Christ and traditions of the Church completely ignores the Church muddied by the modernist thoughts and values of Church authorities that have permeated the Church for the past sixty years. We don’t have one Church, one teaching, anymore and so for the sake of one’s own soul he must seek out the priest and the liturgy that will help him to save his soul. Those would be the priest and the liturgy that follows tradition. And now we know that the even the church authority in Rome will appease secular authorities when asked to refuse the sacraments of the Church to Catholics (putting our souls at risk); finding the parish with the priest and bishop faithful and courageous enough to continue to offer Mass and the rest of the sacraments during such times is imperative. In addition to spending time with the resources I mentioned above I suggest you start listening to Fr Nix’s podcasts and reading his Substack articles. These resources will help you to understand the Catholic faith more deeply.
When the NO parishes are not teaching families how to build a domestic church how do you expect families to create the kind of domestic church that helps develop children’s faith. And when parents have learned elsewhere how to develop a domestic church which looks far different from the local NO parish children are going to pick up on the incongruities. This breeds confusion and mistrust.
Modernism and relativism are clamoring for our children’s souls they don’t need to be getting that from their local NO parish. Yes, God remains in the tabernacle of these NO parishes but with great suffering and at such a great cost. He is far too little reverenced and adored.
I go to the prayer chapel of my local NO parish to make reparations. And I do not estrange myself from local parishioners nor consider myself better than they. Like them I did not come to know what I did not know until I began attending the TLM during C0>€19. The FSSP parish was the only one in our area where we could physically attend and already our family was convinced that a live stream just would not do. I am grateful to the panic-demic for that opportunity that we otherwise would not have taken. After attending the TLM and falling in love with high mass, coming to understand the reverence and worship that God is due, it feels disrespectful to attend a mass that doesn’t honor God the way he deserves.
To be fair there are some NO parishes where the pastors have reinstituted as much tradition, reverence, orthodoxy, and Latin as is allowed where receiving Kneeling and on the tongue is encouraged and mostly the norm but even these parishes are few and far between. Unless you are fortunate enough to live near one, traveling to a faithful parish is the only option.
Ruth gets it. This is exactly the choice young families are facing.
We're blessed to live across the street from our traditional parish. But I don't assume it will always be this way. We expect to always make the commute to our current parish for the reasons Ruth listed.
We stick with our parish but it's hard at times. A flow of new priests, a music director that frankly makes me feel ill, and certain problems with the building like having no space for parents to take screaming children, all those make it penitential. But the longer we stay, and the more we help out, the stronger the bonds we create.
When we moved to our current town in Massachusetts (I’ll bit my tongue to say more about Catholic culture in MA), we knew we’d be raising our family here for many years. We parish hopped a little… always with a little guilt of knowing we aren’t really supposed to “shop” for the parish that WE liked the music, homilies, family-friendliness that most. We even thought about driving over an hour each Sunday to be a part of a very reverent, vibrant, family-filled parish. But ultimately, we felt God inviting us to invest into our parish. The one 7 minutes from our house. The one that had a primarily older demographic, with only a handful of families at Mass. We felt God inviting us to give of our talents, our time, and our money. Over three years later, I can say with confidence, Gods will (at least for OUR family) was to fight the discomfort and temptation to go elsewhere. It’s looked different than what we may have “wanted” or “dreamed of” but it is so clearly where God wants us to be and we’re grateful for it. Thanks for this article and looking forward to reading the book!!!
We recently switched from the trad parish in our diocese to the normie parish 5 min up the road from us, largely for logistical purposes of having two kids and trying to get a mass time that works with our kids. That said, you are absolutely right. There is something missing from modern day parishes that are largely formed of people selecting the church they want, instead of the church closest to them.
I recently finished E. Michael Jones book 'Slaugher of Cities' and his description of how the urban Catholic communities built around their parishes were dispersed into the suburbs is tragic. I long for the sort of Catholic community that once existed in the US.
The issue most people are taking with my article is they assume I mean the heretical syncretist church with no young people and an alcoholic pastor lol
There are parishes that are perfectly fine with a few cringe elements that just need a little love
We switched parishes three times before settling. The first one, we tried to start ministries and parish life, but got burnt out--a few parishioners joined us, but the pastor micromanaged us until the ministry died because it wasn't what we were actually wanting to do (or something that fit the community). We are still friends with some of the families that go there and see them in other settings though. The second one, the parish was almost entirely made up of the elderly and didn't have any sort of religious education for our children. The third one, our current parish, is welcoming to children (in that, when my children lose it during mass, my fellow parishioners are supportive), and non-territorial about ministries-- there's very little cattiness, and people are welcomed when they volunteer for stuff.
If we weren't raising children, I think I would have been more open to sticking it out in one of the first two.
Brilliant work here as always, Pat. Surprised to see any pushback on this as I feel like this should largely be an uncontroversial take? Of any branch of Christianity, Catholics above all should care most strongly about tending and caring for beloved institutions even if they’ve fallen into abusive hands - the great counter-reformers, anyone?
Of course, it’s easy to fall prey to the more Protestant “lets start over and do it ourselves” mentality - and the stubborn old local parish secretary can be a huge pain compared to that giant thriving parish an hour away - every family’s needs are different here, too! Good points made in your piece.
Speaking of the Protestants, even they come around every so often on this topic - I love RedeemedZoomer’s concept of the “Reconqusita” in his Protestant spaces (go ahead, go far back enough and you’ll make it to Rome…)
Are your thoughts on this topic the same beyond parishes, but also other Catholic institutions - publishing houses…dare I go there…universities? 😁
The sad reality is many parishes deserve to die. If the pastor, committee and secretary are going to ensure the church becomes a tomb, they made their bed.
The biggest trouble is this: When you have children, and you yourself may have grown up in a lukewarm Parish (as I did, and was poorly catechized as a result) -- you want something better for your children. You want to go to the Parish where there are other families living a devout life. Such Parishes are hard to find. It is extremely difficult to imagine raising our daughter at some of the Parishes around here, where she may quite literally be the only child in the entire congregation. This makes the idea of "hopping" to another Parish exceedingly attractive.
Of course I am with you in spirit. Intellectually, I agree -- we should stay put, work to improve our Parish Churches, and stay the course. But the realities of Catholic parenting make this extremely difficult, especially in rural areas where our Parishes are often actively dying.
From what I see there’s a few situations: 1) Different mass every weekend (least helpful) 2) Going to a different parish and staying there (remedial good) 3) staying at your home parish (ideal good)
Like a kid should be eating with his family. But if he can’t because it’s abusive it’s better to go down the road
Agreed, Mr. Hickman. Walking to mass with neighbors and their children would be the ideal. But gone are the days of assuming any given parish is teaching the dogma and respecting the liturgy.
There is such a wide spectrum of "teachings" from the clergy now.. This problem will be solved when seminaries are relatively uniform again and modernist intentions for the Church have returned to dust.
Are you conflating driving to the parish farther from our homes than others with church hopping? I'm not sure that comparison would hold water. There may be closer parishes that are liturgically disordered. If a family has committed to a parish farther away because that is the home where they hope to receive all sacraments for years to come, so be it.
This is not an endorsement of church hopping. I don't know any serious Catholics that do that.
I would say I am a dedicated “church-hopper”. But I make a pretty active effort to be involved in the parishes I attend.
If our Catholicism is truly universal, then I see no reason why I should not feel equally at home at my local parish as I do at a Chaldean church (and I do!).
That said, I recognize that the idea of growing, and maintaining, such a large “parish circle” as I do is probably not for everybody.
You don't really define what 'parish hopping' is. You seem to imply that "your parish" is your territorial parish assigned by the diocese based on how they decided to draw the geographic lines within the diocese. Yet for a lot of people who attend mass, they haven't gone to their territorial parish the second automobiles replaced horses. For some, their "parish" is the parish of their family, even if they themselves live 20 minutes away. For others it was the parish they were invited to and began practicing the faith. And yes, sometimes that parish is the one you chose after your existing community made crystal clear you were not welcome there, and in a world of limited time, you chose to build your community elsewhere.
You also try to say that it is "30 minutes", but what about 5 minutes? That's not your territorial parish, yet you still go. Are you "parish shopping?" In for an inch, in for a mile. Yes, our parishes are dying because of bad communities. There are also those communities which are thriving, where they take this to heart that the people are part of the parish, not a customer of that parish.
What you seem unable to do is demonstrate how you don't get to pick your parish in the eyes of the Church, and that it looks down on those who go outside their territorial parish, something the Church does not do. A parish is given a territory not because they get serfs, but because someone has to make sure spiritual care and the sacraments are provided to those individuals should needs arise.
I also find it bizarre that in times of declining faith, we're out to purity police people on what we think is ideal, but the Church does not. It is not by chance you see no documents from the Church, nothing from the code of canon law, etc on this subject here. It's all a bunch of opinions, and not very realistically formed ones at that.
Agreed. I was invited to adoration at a parish 15 minutes from where I live by my friend, not my territorial parish, learned about and experienced Catholicism there, and went through RCIA and confirmation there but never registered as a parishioner. Later, I fell in love with the Extraordinary Form of the Mass I visited at a parish 20 minutes from where I live and now I am a parishioner there. I also go to the school Mass at the parish connected to the school I teach at, and I go to special devotions, events, Masses, and adoration at the 24/7 Franciscan adoration chapel near where I work. I also still occasionally go to devotions or week day Masses at the parish I was confirmed in. I am however not involved in my territorial parish and never have been. What I love about being Catholic is that it is truly universal - though we do need a home base where we can consistently serve, raise a family, know others and be known, there is no canon law stating it must be your territorial parish. Historically, Catholics traveled to attend oratories, especially those of the Congregation of the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri, famous for their dynamic preaching, beautiful music (like Palestrina's), and spiritual vitality. The oratories attracted pilgrims and converts from across Europe to Rome and later to their houses in England, Spain, and elsewhere. I don't think we should accuse those pilgrims of "parish hopping." I feel like the whole message of this article is what Jimmy Akin has coined a "pious little legalism," ie. an interpretation or personal pious ideal that insists on a rigid uniformity that goes beyond what canon law actually says.
I look forward to reading this book. This topic has been a lot on my mind recently. I am so glad you're bringing this up. I think that there probably needs to be some type of canonical and catechetical reform to address this "parish hopping" or "parish shopping" phenomenon. There is a moral and Social Justice dimension that we're missing (e.g. schism, betrayal, racial/ethnic/age group/economic class segregation) and also it is neither healthy nor sustainable nor authentically Christian. There is also the problem now with "Zoom parishioners" who live in a different region 1,000 miles away but who take up lay ministry roles in a remote parish or attempt to influence parish meetings via the internet. Then favoritism is bestowed on them at the expense of local resident lay persons physically present. There is no clear ethic of when you move out of town that you are no longer part of the parish and you must go to the new one close to you to serve and befriend those other people. Then now there is Whatsapp groups where texting is not a healthy medium of communication because it is instant, no rules, unfair arbitrary censorship without process for reconciling, missing body language and tone of voice context. Then also the new threat of AI that is coming.
The central problem with this argument is its starting assumption: that Catholic life is fundamentally parish life. That is simply not theologically accurate.
Catholic life is ordered first to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Real Presence, and the faithful handing on of what the Church believes and worships. The parish exists to serve that reality. It is not an end in itself.
Most Catholics who leave parishes do not do so lightly or for trivial reasons. In my experience, they leave because they are not being fed. They encounter liturgies that lack reverence, preaching without substance, music that obscures rather than serves worship, and an overall absence of awe before the Real Presence. When the Mass is reduced in practice to a communal gathering rather than the unbloody re-presentation of Calvary, people rightly go elsewhere in search of nourishment.
To frame this primarily as consumerism or lack of commitment misses the point. A strong parish life normally flows from a well celebrated, theologically sound, reverent liturgy. It does not arise independently of it. Community built on weak foundations cannot sustain faith over decades, no matter how committed the laity may be.
There will always be a small minority who drift for superficial reasons. But treating that minority as representative avoids the harder question: why so many parishes no longer communicate, through worship itself, the reality of what the Church teaches about the Mass.
Catholicism is not a dinner that can be served anywhere. It is the sacrifice of Christ made present on the altar. When that reality is clearly seen, believed, and worshipped, people stay, families grow, and parish life strengthens. When it is obscured, people leave. That is not a failure of commitment. It is a rational response to spiritual hunger.
Every parish carries out the function of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. If it isn't, the bishop should be made aware that a parish is not engaged in providing the sacraments.
Which leaves the parish involvement in the community the variable to address. It isn't just about life in the parish. It's the ability to go grocery shopping and see your neighbor Catholic. Its volunteering for PTA and finding half the group goes to mass with you. It's signing kids up for extra curriculars and meeting coaches that attend your church. There's a ministry all its own in non-catholics being so close to a large group of connected Catholics. It changes the character of the community. It's part of outreach. And it's most effective when you know the Catholics in your own community.
I think this is where an important distinction is being missed.
Yes, every parish offers a valid Mass and the sacraments. But Catholic life is not sustained by validity alone. The Church has always distinguished between validity and fruitfulness, between mere sacramental availability and the faithful being genuinely formed, nourished, and drawn into reverence for what is taking place.
Appealing to the bishop as a corrective only addresses situations where the sacraments are absent or invalid. It does not address the much more common reality: Masses that are technically valid but spiritually thin, anthropocentric, poorly preached, and lacking any real sense of awe before the Real Presence. That is precisely where many faithful Catholics are struggling.
What you are describing about community life is real and good. Catholic social presence in a neighborhood can be a powerful witness. But historically and theologically, that kind of organic Catholic culture flows from shared worship that clearly manifests the truth of the faith. It does not substitute for it.
If the Mass does not visibly communicate that Christ is truly present and that Calvary is being made present on the altar, the surrounding social cohesion will not sustain belief over time. We have decades of evidence of that. Strong community without strong worship eventually produces nominalism, not discipleship.
So the issue is not whether parish life matters. It does. The issue is ordering. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is not one parish function among many. It is the source and summit. When it is celebrated reverently and preached clearly, people naturally stay, build relationships, raise families together, and form exactly the kind of Catholic social fabric you are describing.
When that foundation is weak, asking people simply to remain for the sake of neighborhood cohesion places the weight on the wrong thing. Catholic life is ordered first to worship, then to community. When we reverse that order, we misdiagnose why people are leaving.
On one hand, heretics deny the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharistic particles, with the false argument that they are too small, while on the other hand, they correctly believe in that a host can be consecrated with just one invisible atomic molecule of gluten (yet they don’t care about fake-consecration of so-callled “low-gluten hosts”, which have no gluten!):
Celiac hosts that are not capable of hosting Jesus
My experience had been that the pastor sets the tone of the parish and there's nothing to be done if the tone he sets us not great. If he doesn't like the Legion of Mary, it's gone. If he doesn't care about liturgy, you'll get what the songleader likes. If your peace doesn't rest in a town, Jesus told his disciples, shake the dust from your sandals and go to the next town. And that's in the Bible.
There’s something to be said about the dust shaking. Of course most catholic families are not missionaries the way the apostles were. You’re stuck with the parishes near you and if they’re all basically the same, you gotta pick one and stick with it
Yes, we couldn’t sit and have our children hear the homilies given by the radical leftist priests every week at our former patish, so we moved to a parish further away, Fortunately, those priests were finally moved and replaced by wonderful, holy priests, but we have chosen to remain at the parish where we sought refuge.
I'm still new to the faith but for the past few years in trying to volunteer at the parish like described above, I think you're 100% right Deacon Brad. Thank you for the Scripture reference too, I haven't thought of it that way before.
"Surely you know that if a man can't be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing
is to send him all over the neighbourhood looking for the church that “suits” him until
he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches." - Chapter 16 of C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters.
Thanks for a great article and important reminder.
Lewis may have been addressing protestants, since he was one. They have the luxury of denominational options in any given town. It's not as easy, especially in prior centuries, for Catholics to do so.
Ethnicity/race is more likely to determine which local parish a Catholic chooses. Up until recently at least.
There isn’t a single American Catholic in 2026 who is choosing their parish because of race/ethnicity.
Agreed. That's why I said it. In any town in past decades, American Catholics may have attended a parish because it was the Irish parish in town, or the Italian parish, or the French parish. Proximity may not have mattered. Was this also "church hopping"?
These days, families that don't have a family tradition with one parish may choose another because it fits the teachings of the Church that ring true to them. But to pretend that families have always attended a parish because of proximity to their home isn't accurate. I suspect it's an argument to boost dying churches.
It wasn’t church hopping because they were all first-gen Americans and literally spoke different languages. They didn’t choose a different parish because of vibes or bad preaching, as was the original point that Pat made. Ethnic parishes don’t exist anymore and you know it. You’re conflating then and now.
Ethnic parishes absolutely exist now, they’re just not European. The small, one mile stretch of town I grew up in that had ethnically Polish, Italian, and German churches now have 2 Korean churches and a Spanish- speaking church that has one English Mass.
You’ve missed the point. Of course they do, and you’ve missed the point.
I think you're missing my point. Between first-gen Americans, as you pointed out, their descendants attending masses of the same ethnicity, which happened in my childhood and is still happening in cities like NYC, and people's current preferences due to the wide 'spectrum' of church teachings out there, I'm arguing it's not as common as we're assuming that American Catholics have just always gone to the parish around the corner.
And you're mistaken if you don't think ethnic parishes exist anymore. Congrats on never having to leave your own to witness this phenomena.
Agreed. This quote strikes me in relation to contemporary Catholics in larger cities with lots of options since a lot of ‘em end up parish hopping looking for the “right” liturgy, music, preaching, etc. instead of pouring into the parish nearby.
There is something distinctly not Catholic about church-hopping. In fact, up until Vatican II, if you wanted to church hop, you had to essentially get permission to do so (in order to get any sacraments of initiation, you had to have permission from your priest. You still have to seek the permission of your bishop if you wish to get sacraments such as marriage outside the diocese.)
One of the critical issues of church-hopping is what we owe to our neighbors. We have all become a bit cavalier about the responsibility we have to build up our local community. Traditionally, one had to go to the parish in which they lived, regardless of the priest, quality of the liturgy, the facilities, or the youth group. This can be a deep penance at times, certainly. It's often the people closest to us that are the most irritating. And we don't get to choose them! How undemocratic is that! But its also the people whom we see at the grocery store, in our neighborhoods and who deliver our mail. The ones we are supposed to encourage, support and show up for.
That isn't to say there are no times when changing parishes is necessary. But it should be the rare exception, not the common practice.
What if the church in your parish, instead of the liturgy of the Mass on a Sunday near the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, has children dress in native costumes to Mexico and do dances, then afterward an “abuela” sits the children on the alter to tell them about the harm the Catholic explorers did to the Aztecs when they went to colonize Mexico? We walked out of this particular Mass and never returned to this church in our parish. Instead m, until we moved away from the city, we attended an Anglican form Mass in a church belonging to the Personal Chair of St Peter established by Pope Benedict XVI for Anglican converts that wanted to confer as a congregation. That liturgy didn’t go through the evolution of Vatican II and is as close to a TLM as possible without being a TLM. Church hopping, no. Finding a church that is respectful to God and that adheres to the teachings of the church, yes. Protestants church hop to find a church that suits their personal beliefs (I grew up Protestant). Catholics that search for a church outside their parish do so to find an authentically Catholic church, which are sadly becoming more difficult to find.
There will always be cases where joining a different parish is necessary. But, again. It shouldn't be the rule.
My wife and I are now parishioners of the Parish 2 mins away from us. Have been avoiding it for a whole year after moving into our new house mostly cause the architecture is horrendous. The Church is a legit circle with the altar in the middle of it. You can sit behind the priest or in front of him. The only nice part is that at least it's ad orientum for some lol.
But as someone who works in evangelization full time- I felt like a hypocrite telling people to live on mission and be disciple makers when my family and I were driving past the basketball arena parish to drive to another one. We are a couple months in now and are absolutely loving it- besides the architecture. We have another mission minded family coming to the parish alongside us and are ready to rock.
I think that's a critical piece of this- is finding at least 1 other mission minded family to go in with. It allows you to share the responsibility with evangelization and gives you a natural other family to build communities of fellowship with.
All in great post on a topic that is near and dear to my heart
This is 100% necessary. Having a solid community around you is key to rebuilding the parish. I like to think about it as building a "para-parish."
Now I would interested to hear your take on Catholic schools with a similar concept. To me the school verse, the parish are categorically different in that the school is a foundational element of a child’s catechesis. Now it’s different because it’s hard to extrapolate the school from the parish, but I think it’s necessary given where we are in Catholic education in parish life.
Yeah, I think you need to be much more careful with the parish school. I think we overestimate the catechetical effect of things like the priest's homily but underestimate the catechetical effect of the school, despite the fact that the former is 10 minutes a week (are they even listening) and the latter is 7 hours a day
Would love to see you write a similar one on schools (diocesan vs independent Catholic (Chesterton and the like) vs classical-charter)
This article did so well- that could be a major driver for meaningful convo
The problem is that too many parishes have priests who have been poorly formed, there is little reverence for the liturgy and heterodox sermons are the norm. This is not what a faithful Catholic parents want for their children.
It becomes imperative in this modernistic world to find a parish that teaches the orthodox Catholic faith and passes on the great patrimony of the church Jesus established through the apostles. I can tell you that where such parishes exist they are overflowing. Community exists, people from the elderly to children are engaged. And if that means driving by half a dozen or so parishes on the way, it is more important that we relearn the depths of our faith and teach our children truth than to attempt to coexist with heterodoxy.
Where there is not orthodox teaching and practice in liturgical norms the only thing that will result is poorly formed and confused children who are more likely to walk away from the faith.
Pray for your local parish but build community where there is right practice and the faith is not watered down or destroyed by modernism.
There isn’t a single data point that suggests that a parish is a prominent factor in keeping children engaged and practicing the faith into adulthood. The family domestic church is almost entirely responsible for that.
Data points are not the issue or even important. Data doesn’t mean anything to parents trying to raise truly Catholic children, and part of the home church is taking children to a Mass that reinforces what the parents teach and how they live the Catholic faith in the home. I know someone who started driving his family of ten (he, his wife, and their eight children) quite a distance to attend a TLM when his daughters started expressing interest in being alter servers because they saw other girls alter serving. Alter serving was always (and still should be, but no longer is) about introducing boys to the priestly duties to encourage vocations. Girls have no role to play in helping with the liturgy and they should not be encouraged to be alter servers - one of the many mistakes JPII made during his reign as pope. Of course a father who wants to teach the true faith to his children must make such a choice to drive far to a TLM. My husband and I, converts to the Catholic church, drive fifty minutes to attend a TLM and yes we drive by a few Catholic Churches on the way, but the NO Masses are so much like Protestant services, watered down liturgy for the taste of the poorly catechized congregation and disrespectful of the kingship of Christ who is very present there in the sanctuary in the consecrated host, that we cannot abide attending them. People stand up in line and hold out their hands to receive the body of Christ as if they are receiving a symbolic wafer as in the Protestant churches, no reverence at all, why should anyone stay and attend such a parish? If I understand this article correctly the author is more interested that people in a parish stay to make others feel welcome. That is NOT the point of the Mass nor the job of the people who attend Mass. The Mass is a holy event and it is for God, it is not for the people. It is to raise the people to God, not to lower God to the people. Until NO masses start respecting God again, and teaching the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist so that people kneel before Him and receive Him on their tongues from the consecrated hands of a priest or a bishop only, no one who drives past some Catholic churches to attend a respectful Mass need be criticized. The onus is on the priest and the bishop and the pope to form parishes where people feel the Mass is worthy of God, returning to truly Catholic tradition, so that people desiring to live their Catholic faith feel they can stay in their home parish and trust the Mass will be worthy of God.
If the Mass is for God and not for people, then why do you let people decide where you go to Mass? Surely the same God is present at your parish as He is present at the TLM parish where you attend. Your behavior of driving past several parishes to attend one that you like suggests that you are not willing to park your car in the church parking lot where your mouth is, so to speak.
Would you receive the Eucharist from a deacon? Does the minister of Holy Communion somehow change the reality of Christ's presence? I agree that Extraordinary Ministers are often a problem. But I attend a parish with a weekly Sunday Extraordinary Form Mass that uses an Extraordinary Minister to bring Holy Communion to the choir during Ordinary Form Masses. I am of the opinion that what the Church permits is permissible, always with necessary prudence and sound judgment.
Basically, I think we all just need to chill out. lol
You miss the point entirely. The NO Masses are Protestant, not Catholic, and though God is there and Jesus is there in the Eucharist, the respect for God and the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist is NOT there and the liturgy does not follow the true teachings of the Church. People who attend NO Masses are not being drawn up to God; they are being catered to by being handed the values of the world and not the values of Christ, who never catered to His sheep but challenged them to rise to Him. Most Catholics don’t know it because they were never taught the teachings of the Church and have never been challenged to rise out of themselves during Mass. Extraordinary ministers (NOT Eucharistic - many Catholics even get that wrong) were never meant to be the norm and no woman should ever be part of the liturgy for any reason, not even to read the scripture. How many Catholics know this? And as far as the Church permitting these things, well the Church apparently permits even blessings of homosexual unions and respect for the Koran now, so what the Church permits isn’t always what pleases God. Well catechized Catholics know the difference. And if you read my comment carefully you would see that I said people should take communion from the consecrated hands of a priest or deacon. No Catholic should be expected to attend a disrespectful Mass just because of its proximity to his home. And by the way, the church we attended in San Antonio before we moved away never closed during Covid, never followed covid protocols and never stopped the any of the sacraments. It’s an Anglican form, belongs to the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter with Bishop Lopes over it. When the archbishop of San Antonio closed all the churches under him and put a strict covid policy in place even when the churches re-opens, when none of those Catholics under his authority could go to confession or receive communion, guess which parish they flocked to? Our parish, where we still sat next to each other without masks, no limit to how many people could attend Mass, still went to the kneeler at the alter to receive communion on the tongue shoulder to shoulder with each other, where we still had confession three days a week. Would you have had those people who attended parishes under Archbishop Garcia-Siller, miss Mass and the sacraments rather than drive to the one parish in the city under another bishop and still offering the sacraments?
Ordinary Form Masses are Protestant but somehow Our Lord is present in the Eucharist there? Yeah, this discussion is over. You might be too far gone. Have a nice day.
I see you realize you have no answer to refute the points I made about why passing some parishes to attend an authentically Catholic Mass is perfectly ok for a serious Catholic to do, otherwise you would address the points I made and not resort to an ad hominem attack. Of course I meant NO Masses are Protestant in tone, not in reality. The Holy Spirit works through even a bad priest to consecrate the host. The Eucharist is valid even in a Protestant-like Mass. The issue with this article and with your attitude is that since Vatican II and especially since Pope Francis’ term as pope Catholicism has become confused and confusing unless one seeps himself in the Bible, the magisterium of the Church, the work of the church fathers, encyclicals and writings of past popes, and a catechism published before the 1990s. To say that a Catholic is church hopping when he merely wants to find a respectful liturgy and a Mass that respects the teaching of Christ and traditions of the Church completely ignores the Church muddied by the modernist thoughts and values of Church authorities that have permeated the Church for the past sixty years. We don’t have one Church, one teaching, anymore and so for the sake of one’s own soul he must seek out the priest and the liturgy that will help him to save his soul. Those would be the priest and the liturgy that follows tradition. And now we know that the even the church authority in Rome will appease secular authorities when asked to refuse the sacraments of the Church to Catholics (putting our souls at risk); finding the parish with the priest and bishop faithful and courageous enough to continue to offer Mass and the rest of the sacraments during such times is imperative. In addition to spending time with the resources I mentioned above I suggest you start listening to Fr Nix’s podcasts and reading his Substack articles. These resources will help you to understand the Catholic faith more deeply.
When the NO parishes are not teaching families how to build a domestic church how do you expect families to create the kind of domestic church that helps develop children’s faith. And when parents have learned elsewhere how to develop a domestic church which looks far different from the local NO parish children are going to pick up on the incongruities. This breeds confusion and mistrust.
Modernism and relativism are clamoring for our children’s souls they don’t need to be getting that from their local NO parish. Yes, God remains in the tabernacle of these NO parishes but with great suffering and at such a great cost. He is far too little reverenced and adored.
I go to the prayer chapel of my local NO parish to make reparations. And I do not estrange myself from local parishioners nor consider myself better than they. Like them I did not come to know what I did not know until I began attending the TLM during C0>€19. The FSSP parish was the only one in our area where we could physically attend and already our family was convinced that a live stream just would not do. I am grateful to the panic-demic for that opportunity that we otherwise would not have taken. After attending the TLM and falling in love with high mass, coming to understand the reverence and worship that God is due, it feels disrespectful to attend a mass that doesn’t honor God the way he deserves.
To be fair there are some NO parishes where the pastors have reinstituted as much tradition, reverence, orthodoxy, and Latin as is allowed where receiving Kneeling and on the tongue is encouraged and mostly the norm but even these parishes are few and far between. Unless you are fortunate enough to live near one, traveling to a faithful parish is the only option.
Ruth gets it. This is exactly the choice young families are facing.
We're blessed to live across the street from our traditional parish. But I don't assume it will always be this way. We expect to always make the commute to our current parish for the reasons Ruth listed.
We stick with our parish but it's hard at times. A flow of new priests, a music director that frankly makes me feel ill, and certain problems with the building like having no space for parents to take screaming children, all those make it penitential. But the longer we stay, and the more we help out, the stronger the bonds we create.
When we moved to our current town in Massachusetts (I’ll bit my tongue to say more about Catholic culture in MA), we knew we’d be raising our family here for many years. We parish hopped a little… always with a little guilt of knowing we aren’t really supposed to “shop” for the parish that WE liked the music, homilies, family-friendliness that most. We even thought about driving over an hour each Sunday to be a part of a very reverent, vibrant, family-filled parish. But ultimately, we felt God inviting us to invest into our parish. The one 7 minutes from our house. The one that had a primarily older demographic, with only a handful of families at Mass. We felt God inviting us to give of our talents, our time, and our money. Over three years later, I can say with confidence, Gods will (at least for OUR family) was to fight the discomfort and temptation to go elsewhere. It’s looked different than what we may have “wanted” or “dreamed of” but it is so clearly where God wants us to be and we’re grateful for it. Thanks for this article and looking forward to reading the book!!!
We recently switched from the trad parish in our diocese to the normie parish 5 min up the road from us, largely for logistical purposes of having two kids and trying to get a mass time that works with our kids. That said, you are absolutely right. There is something missing from modern day parishes that are largely formed of people selecting the church they want, instead of the church closest to them.
I recently finished E. Michael Jones book 'Slaugher of Cities' and his description of how the urban Catholic communities built around their parishes were dispersed into the suburbs is tragic. I long for the sort of Catholic community that once existed in the US.
The issue most people are taking with my article is they assume I mean the heretical syncretist church with no young people and an alcoholic pastor lol
There are parishes that are perfectly fine with a few cringe elements that just need a little love
Salt and light. Let us be salt and light.
In your view does a parish having no young people qualify for someone moving to another parish?
We switched parishes three times before settling. The first one, we tried to start ministries and parish life, but got burnt out--a few parishioners joined us, but the pastor micromanaged us until the ministry died because it wasn't what we were actually wanting to do (or something that fit the community). We are still friends with some of the families that go there and see them in other settings though. The second one, the parish was almost entirely made up of the elderly and didn't have any sort of religious education for our children. The third one, our current parish, is welcoming to children (in that, when my children lose it during mass, my fellow parishioners are supportive), and non-territorial about ministries-- there's very little cattiness, and people are welcomed when they volunteer for stuff.
If we weren't raising children, I think I would have been more open to sticking it out in one of the first two.
Brilliant work here as always, Pat. Surprised to see any pushback on this as I feel like this should largely be an uncontroversial take? Of any branch of Christianity, Catholics above all should care most strongly about tending and caring for beloved institutions even if they’ve fallen into abusive hands - the great counter-reformers, anyone?
Of course, it’s easy to fall prey to the more Protestant “lets start over and do it ourselves” mentality - and the stubborn old local parish secretary can be a huge pain compared to that giant thriving parish an hour away - every family’s needs are different here, too! Good points made in your piece.
Speaking of the Protestants, even they come around every so often on this topic - I love RedeemedZoomer’s concept of the “Reconqusita” in his Protestant spaces (go ahead, go far back enough and you’ll make it to Rome…)
Are your thoughts on this topic the same beyond parishes, but also other Catholic institutions - publishing houses…dare I go there…universities? 😁
The sad reality is many parishes deserve to die. If the pastor, committee and secretary are going to ensure the church becomes a tomb, they made their bed.
Exactly that......once the salt is lost
Thanks for this Patrick -- big fan of your work.
The biggest trouble is this: When you have children, and you yourself may have grown up in a lukewarm Parish (as I did, and was poorly catechized as a result) -- you want something better for your children. You want to go to the Parish where there are other families living a devout life. Such Parishes are hard to find. It is extremely difficult to imagine raising our daughter at some of the Parishes around here, where she may quite literally be the only child in the entire congregation. This makes the idea of "hopping" to another Parish exceedingly attractive.
Of course I am with you in spirit. Intellectually, I agree -- we should stay put, work to improve our Parish Churches, and stay the course. But the realities of Catholic parenting make this extremely difficult, especially in rural areas where our Parishes are often actively dying.
From what I see there’s a few situations: 1) Different mass every weekend (least helpful) 2) Going to a different parish and staying there (remedial good) 3) staying at your home parish (ideal good)
Like a kid should be eating with his family. But if he can’t because it’s abusive it’s better to go down the road
All things in their proper order
Agreed, Mr. Hickman. Walking to mass with neighbors and their children would be the ideal. But gone are the days of assuming any given parish is teaching the dogma and respecting the liturgy.
There is such a wide spectrum of "teachings" from the clergy now.. This problem will be solved when seminaries are relatively uniform again and modernist intentions for the Church have returned to dust.
Came here to say something similar. Well said.
Are you conflating driving to the parish farther from our homes than others with church hopping? I'm not sure that comparison would hold water. There may be closer parishes that are liturgically disordered. If a family has committed to a parish farther away because that is the home where they hope to receive all sacraments for years to come, so be it.
This is not an endorsement of church hopping. I don't know any serious Catholics that do that.
I would say I am a dedicated “church-hopper”. But I make a pretty active effort to be involved in the parishes I attend.
If our Catholicism is truly universal, then I see no reason why I should not feel equally at home at my local parish as I do at a Chaldean church (and I do!).
That said, I recognize that the idea of growing, and maintaining, such a large “parish circle” as I do is probably not for everybody.
I've long been opposed to church hopping. This essay sums up why. Thanks for writing this!
You don't really define what 'parish hopping' is. You seem to imply that "your parish" is your territorial parish assigned by the diocese based on how they decided to draw the geographic lines within the diocese. Yet for a lot of people who attend mass, they haven't gone to their territorial parish the second automobiles replaced horses. For some, their "parish" is the parish of their family, even if they themselves live 20 minutes away. For others it was the parish they were invited to and began practicing the faith. And yes, sometimes that parish is the one you chose after your existing community made crystal clear you were not welcome there, and in a world of limited time, you chose to build your community elsewhere.
You also try to say that it is "30 minutes", but what about 5 minutes? That's not your territorial parish, yet you still go. Are you "parish shopping?" In for an inch, in for a mile. Yes, our parishes are dying because of bad communities. There are also those communities which are thriving, where they take this to heart that the people are part of the parish, not a customer of that parish.
What you seem unable to do is demonstrate how you don't get to pick your parish in the eyes of the Church, and that it looks down on those who go outside their territorial parish, something the Church does not do. A parish is given a territory not because they get serfs, but because someone has to make sure spiritual care and the sacraments are provided to those individuals should needs arise.
I also find it bizarre that in times of declining faith, we're out to purity police people on what we think is ideal, but the Church does not. It is not by chance you see no documents from the Church, nothing from the code of canon law, etc on this subject here. It's all a bunch of opinions, and not very realistically formed ones at that.
Agreed. I was invited to adoration at a parish 15 minutes from where I live by my friend, not my territorial parish, learned about and experienced Catholicism there, and went through RCIA and confirmation there but never registered as a parishioner. Later, I fell in love with the Extraordinary Form of the Mass I visited at a parish 20 minutes from where I live and now I am a parishioner there. I also go to the school Mass at the parish connected to the school I teach at, and I go to special devotions, events, Masses, and adoration at the 24/7 Franciscan adoration chapel near where I work. I also still occasionally go to devotions or week day Masses at the parish I was confirmed in. I am however not involved in my territorial parish and never have been. What I love about being Catholic is that it is truly universal - though we do need a home base where we can consistently serve, raise a family, know others and be known, there is no canon law stating it must be your territorial parish. Historically, Catholics traveled to attend oratories, especially those of the Congregation of the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri, famous for their dynamic preaching, beautiful music (like Palestrina's), and spiritual vitality. The oratories attracted pilgrims and converts from across Europe to Rome and later to their houses in England, Spain, and elsewhere. I don't think we should accuse those pilgrims of "parish hopping." I feel like the whole message of this article is what Jimmy Akin has coined a "pious little legalism," ie. an interpretation or personal pious ideal that insists on a rigid uniformity that goes beyond what canon law actually says.
I look forward to reading this book. This topic has been a lot on my mind recently. I am so glad you're bringing this up. I think that there probably needs to be some type of canonical and catechetical reform to address this "parish hopping" or "parish shopping" phenomenon. There is a moral and Social Justice dimension that we're missing (e.g. schism, betrayal, racial/ethnic/age group/economic class segregation) and also it is neither healthy nor sustainable nor authentically Christian. There is also the problem now with "Zoom parishioners" who live in a different region 1,000 miles away but who take up lay ministry roles in a remote parish or attempt to influence parish meetings via the internet. Then favoritism is bestowed on them at the expense of local resident lay persons physically present. There is no clear ethic of when you move out of town that you are no longer part of the parish and you must go to the new one close to you to serve and befriend those other people. Then now there is Whatsapp groups where texting is not a healthy medium of communication because it is instant, no rules, unfair arbitrary censorship without process for reconciling, missing body language and tone of voice context. Then also the new threat of AI that is coming.
The central problem with this argument is its starting assumption: that Catholic life is fundamentally parish life. That is simply not theologically accurate.
Catholic life is ordered first to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Real Presence, and the faithful handing on of what the Church believes and worships. The parish exists to serve that reality. It is not an end in itself.
Most Catholics who leave parishes do not do so lightly or for trivial reasons. In my experience, they leave because they are not being fed. They encounter liturgies that lack reverence, preaching without substance, music that obscures rather than serves worship, and an overall absence of awe before the Real Presence. When the Mass is reduced in practice to a communal gathering rather than the unbloody re-presentation of Calvary, people rightly go elsewhere in search of nourishment.
To frame this primarily as consumerism or lack of commitment misses the point. A strong parish life normally flows from a well celebrated, theologically sound, reverent liturgy. It does not arise independently of it. Community built on weak foundations cannot sustain faith over decades, no matter how committed the laity may be.
There will always be a small minority who drift for superficial reasons. But treating that minority as representative avoids the harder question: why so many parishes no longer communicate, through worship itself, the reality of what the Church teaches about the Mass.
Catholicism is not a dinner that can be served anywhere. It is the sacrifice of Christ made present on the altar. When that reality is clearly seen, believed, and worshipped, people stay, families grow, and parish life strengthens. When it is obscured, people leave. That is not a failure of commitment. It is a rational response to spiritual hunger.
Every parish carries out the function of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. If it isn't, the bishop should be made aware that a parish is not engaged in providing the sacraments.
Which leaves the parish involvement in the community the variable to address. It isn't just about life in the parish. It's the ability to go grocery shopping and see your neighbor Catholic. Its volunteering for PTA and finding half the group goes to mass with you. It's signing kids up for extra curriculars and meeting coaches that attend your church. There's a ministry all its own in non-catholics being so close to a large group of connected Catholics. It changes the character of the community. It's part of outreach. And it's most effective when you know the Catholics in your own community.
I think this is where an important distinction is being missed.
Yes, every parish offers a valid Mass and the sacraments. But Catholic life is not sustained by validity alone. The Church has always distinguished between validity and fruitfulness, between mere sacramental availability and the faithful being genuinely formed, nourished, and drawn into reverence for what is taking place.
Appealing to the bishop as a corrective only addresses situations where the sacraments are absent or invalid. It does not address the much more common reality: Masses that are technically valid but spiritually thin, anthropocentric, poorly preached, and lacking any real sense of awe before the Real Presence. That is precisely where many faithful Catholics are struggling.
What you are describing about community life is real and good. Catholic social presence in a neighborhood can be a powerful witness. But historically and theologically, that kind of organic Catholic culture flows from shared worship that clearly manifests the truth of the faith. It does not substitute for it.
If the Mass does not visibly communicate that Christ is truly present and that Calvary is being made present on the altar, the surrounding social cohesion will not sustain belief over time. We have decades of evidence of that. Strong community without strong worship eventually produces nominalism, not discipleship.
So the issue is not whether parish life matters. It does. The issue is ordering. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is not one parish function among many. It is the source and summit. When it is celebrated reverently and preached clearly, people naturally stay, build relationships, raise families together, and form exactly the kind of Catholic social fabric you are describing.
When that foundation is weak, asking people simply to remain for the sake of neighborhood cohesion places the weight on the wrong thing. Catholic life is ordered first to worship, then to community. When we reverse that order, we misdiagnose why people are leaving.
On one hand, heretics deny the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharistic particles, with the false argument that they are too small, while on the other hand, they correctly believe in that a host can be consecrated with just one invisible atomic molecule of gluten (yet they don’t care about fake-consecration of so-callled “low-gluten hosts”, which have no gluten!):
Celiac hosts that are not capable of hosting Jesus
https://www.catholic365.com/article/50945/vatican-error-low-gluten-hosts-that-cant-host-jesus.html