The Great Catholic Bakeoff: Parishes

Over the weekend, Daniel Ang and I dropped our latest episode of our podcast Awkward Asian Theologians.

In this episode, we looked at the parish as the most basic contact point between the ecclesial reality of the Church as the lynchpin of faith, and the individual believer.

Going further, we looked at the theological basis for defending the fundamental importance of the parish. We based it on the nature of our salvation. Our salvation, we suggested, is not merely spiritual, but personal. Because it is personal, salvation takes up into itself all space and time, as we profess at the Rite of the Paschal Candle at the Easter Vigil liturgy (all time belongs to him, and all ages).

Furthermore, because salvation is personal, it also takes up our social nature, which then gives salvation an unavoidably communal dimension, taking up seemingly banal things like schedules, car parks, and other people.

Taken together, the parish is not simply the place where “churchy” things happen. It is constituted communally in a concrete piece of geography, and nurtured over time. As such, the parish constitutes the concrete site in which our personal salvation unfolds. It unfolds in the context of a shared life together with members of the body of Christ, which is instantiated in something as simple as negotiating the parish carpark.

The Great Catholic Bakeoff can be listened to in full on Spotify, Amazon Music and Apple Podcasts.