Last Monday, Aug. 16, we celebrated the feast of St. Stephen of Hungary. Stephen grew up in a rather non-Christian part of Eastern Europe. However, along with his father, he converted to the Catholic faith at the age of 10. Stephen eventually succeeded his father as leader of the Magyar people and was made the first king of Hungary. One of his first tasks as king, under the direction and approval of Pope Silvester II, was to carry out the ecclesiastical ordering of Hungary. In other words, King Stephen began to divide Hungary into dioceses, arranged for parish churches to be built and established collections for the poor.

Although King Stephen lived almost a millennium ago at a time when Christianity was intimately intertwined with the prevailing culture and there was much crossover between governance of church and state, the ecclesiastical ordering of countries into dioceses and dioceses into parishes continues to be the way that the Catholic Church is organized today. The parish in its turn is an “umbrella community” under which flourish small Christian communities — different ethnic and age groups, lay associations, ministry and apostolic groups and, of course, the numerous family cells which the Church refers to as the “domestic church.” Thus, each level of church is a community of communities.

This organizational structure did not occur overnight. For the first four centuries, the only parish that existed in any region was the church of the bishop together with the urban community of priests, deacons and lay people who constituted its congregation — “parish and diocese were coextensive,” and identified with a city or a large town. However, with the end of the early persecutions of Christians and the spread of the faith, it became necessary to establish permanent, smaller jurisdictions.

Eventually, Pope Gregory VII, who died in 1085, took the existing parish structure and refashioned it into the form which has remained substantially unchanged to the present day. the Code of Canon Law (No. 515) defines a parish as “a certain community of the Christian faithful stably constituted in a particular church, whose pastoral care is entrusted to a pastor as its own shepherd under the authority of the diocesan bishop.”

The Second Vatican Council emphasized that the parish exists to provide pastoral care of the faithful. As special cooperators of the bishop, pastors are entrusted with the care of souls under the authority of the bishop. In carrying out their duty of teaching, sanctifying and administering, pastors and parochial vicars assist the faithful in understanding that they are members of the diocese and of the universal Church. The Vatican II document, “Decree on the Bishops’ Pastoral Office in the Church” (“Christus Dominus”) states that pastors “should collaborate with other pastors and priests who exercise a pastoral office in the area (such as vicars forane and deans), as well as with those engaged in works of a supra-parochial nature. In this way the pastoral work in the diocese will be unified and made more effective.” Furthermore, “Christus Dominus” explains that pastors, with the help of the laity, are encouraged to foster a missionary spirit in order to reach out to everyone living within the boundaries of the parish.

Another Vatican II document, the “Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity” (“Apostolicam Actuositatem”) sheds light on the role of the laity in the parish when it notes that the parish brings together the many human differences and unites them into the universality of the Church. The decree clarifies: “(1) The laity should accustom themselves to working in the parish in union with their priests, (2) bringing to the Church community their own and the world’s problems as well as questions concerning human salvation, all of which they should examine and resolve by deliberating in common.

“As far as possible the laity ought to provide helpful collaboration for every apostolic and missionary undertaking sponsored by their local parish. They should develop an ever-increasing appreciation of their own diocese, of which the parish is a kind of cell, ever ready at their pastor’s invitation to participate in diocesan projects. Indeed, to fulfill the needs of cities and rural areas, (3) they should not limit their cooperation to the parochial or diocesan boundaries but strive to extend it to interparochial, interdiocesan, national, and international fields.” (No. 10)

With this background, we see how two of the subthemes of the upcoming diocesan synod, “parishes are interrelated” and “called to support each other,” come from a long and rich history. We pray that the Holy Spirit may guide us as we discern how parish communities can collaborate with each other more effectively, especially those that make up a deanery or a cluster of neighboring parishes. We also pray for light as to how parishes can assist each other to be accountable to the larger needs of the diocese and the universal church.

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