How is a new Catholic church founded?

Factual Questions
1

Let’s say the Catholic population of This Town is growing and the existing Catholic infrastructure can’t handle them all. Do the local Catholics appeal to their diocese, who forwards the matter to Rome? Does the local diocese employ a guy whose job is to monitor attendance and see where new churches are called for?

Also, architecturally, who decides the square footage, the style, the placement of rooms (offices, restrooms, all that)? Who procures the art, relics (if any), and all that jazz for the new building? The same guy who decided to put it there in the first place?

2

The bishop decides whether a new parish is needed, and chooses the priest for it (though of course he might well honor the request of the parishioners, if they have a particular priest in mind). The higher levels of the hierarchy need not be involved at all. The parishioners are generally in charge of raising funds for the new building, getting it designed, furnishing it, etc.

The parish I’m a member of split off from another Irish parish over a century ago, and they made it a point to hire an Irish architect and Irish sculptors, to prove that we were just as good as any other people.

3

This actually happened in my town, one of those “planned communities” that launched in the 60s. There was one congregation, and it met in school cafeterias and empty restaurants for a couple of years until the diocese got a church built circa 1972. It looked like a ski lodge and was a multi-purpose structure, but it was primarily a church. 7-8 years later, it was really crowded and someone doing a crap job parking backed into my dad’s car. One thing led to another and a new church was soon under construction elsewhere in town. This was my first big clue that my dad had a lot more influence in that town than I had thought.

As for the architectural decisions and art and relics, no idea. It never occurred to me that there weren’t enough people on the Bishop’s staff to make those calls. My art professor in college had a lucrative side gig designing Stations of the Cross for a new parish. My mom was often prevailed upon to design and make felt banners for specific events, but these would hang for a few weeks and go into storage. I kind of assumed the Monsignor made the final call for these decisions, but I haven’t been active with the Church in over 40 years and am a little out of touch with the day to day of it. I do know it doesn’t just go to the lowest bidder; a new door or bathroom fixture or baptismal fount has to be solid, with the intent of being used hundreds of times a day for the next century. There are contractors who specialize in church work.

4

What others said.

None of this goes to Rome.

The diocesan bishop erects (and suppresses) parishes, alters their boundaries, etc, while taking account of needs, resources, viability, local wishes, etc as best he can. He also decides what priests will staff parishes.

As regards financing the construction of the church — in theory a parish is supposed to be financially self-sustaining, and so able to supply its own church. In reality new parishes are usually established with the expectation that they will, in time, become financially self-sustaining but they aren’t initially, and the diocese usually assists in funding the construction of a church for a new parish. But that may be partly by way of loans that the new parish is expected to pay off over time.

As regards art, design, etc — there are rules and guidelines in canon law about what should or should not be in a church, how the various parts of the building should relate to one another, etc. Ecclesiastical architects will generally be familiar with these. There’ll also be a budget for the project. After that, on all decisions the ultimate authority is with the bishop, but he’s someone with many calls on his time and on an issue like this he will usually satisfy himself with approving decisions made by others. The more the parish is paying for its own church, the more likely it is that the bishop will defer to the wishes of the parish on matters like this. The parish priest/parish council/a committee assembled especially for the purpose will usually be the primary point of contact with the architect, builders, contractors, etc.

Apart from parishes, there’s also the matter of monasteries, convents and religous houses of various kinds that often provide parish-like services to the communities in which they are situated. These are provided and operated by religious orders, The bishop has less of a role here. A religious order needs the permission of the local bishop to establish a house in his territory but, once that permission is given (and not withdrawn) the financing, operation etc of the house is their business, not the bishop’s. As a matter of practice they may co-operate closely with the bishop/the diocese, but that’s on the basis of mutual agreement, not because one of them is subordinate to the other. In general the religious order concerned finances, designs and builds any church or chapel that may be included in the house. The diocese may assist with financing or other material support (e.g. providing a site) if there is an agreement that the religious order will do things that, if they weren’t there, the diocese would need to do — operate a school, staff a parish, that kind of thing.

5

One neighbourhood where I grew up back in the 60’s when Toronto was bursting at the seams, I gather the bishop or someone designated a new parish; more and more people had to travel too far to the nearest church(s). They would have mass in the local (Catholic) school gym while the congregation raised money for a new church, which took several years. So presumably, this was a proactive action on the part of the (arch?)diocese. Ontario has a Catholic school board system as well as public, so the school was built according to population need by the board, earlier.

6

That would be typical, in most countries. Newly-populous neighbourhoods don’t appear spontaneously; national and local governments have development plans, infrastructure programs, etc that are publicly known. So we know where the new suburbs are going to be, and the larger churches will make plans to serve them.

Often this is a staged process, with the formal establishment of a new parish coming quite late in the piece. Earlier on they will do things like appoint additional priests to the existing parishes that now have a larger population, plan an extension to an existing school or develop a satellite campus that in time will become a separate school. Sometime a second church building is built as what’s called a chapel of ease so the parish conducts services in two different locations; when a new parish is erected that becomes the parish church.

7

Yikes. Did anyone ever see the guy who hit your dad’s car again? :smirking_face:

8

Well, not at the new parish…

9

Have they checked the concrete in the basement?

(not sure if you got I was making a Mafia joke :laughing:)

10

CofE anecdote. 5 years ago I rented a vicarage while they were looking for a new vicar. There was a problem with the heating and the engineer who came out got 95% of his work from the Bishop. We also had problems with some tree branches getting too close to the roof. The tree surgeon who came out also gets most of his work from the church too.

Between churches, vicarages, and church halls I guess the diocese has a lot of buildings to maintain so it makes sense. But the idea of someone being the Bishops tree surgeon just amused me.

11

Under canon law, dioceses are “particular churches”, which means that a diocese is (at least notionally) not merely a subdivision of the church; within its territory, the diocese is the Catholic Church. The practical effect of this is that the diocesan bishop wields pretty much the entire administrative jurisdiction under canon law within his diocese, and can, as others have said, establish new parishes. There’s only a limited range of functions that are reserved to Rome.

12

Sometimes the church simply buys an existing house of worship.

13

At the time (60’s) a large segment of the immigrant population was coming from Italy (and Portugal), so even more impetus to add a parish.

14

Also note that parish boundaries aren’t necessarily purely geographical. For most of the US’s history, different ethnicities had different parishes, often holding services in immigrants’ native languages. My mom goes to a church a bit south of her house, for instance, because that is (or at least, was) the local Irish parish, while the neighbor three houses to the south goes north to church, because that’s the local Italian parish. And for both of them, the actual closest Catholic church is the (relatively) new Spanish-speaking parish.

Something like that happened in my parish in Bozeman. We liked our location, right on the edge of downtown, but the building needed to be expanded and have a bunch of improvements installed. At the same time, a Lutheran community a block away was also expanding, and had built a new, larger building out on the edge of town. So we bought their old building, held our services there while work was being done on our original building, and then afterwards kept the formerly-Lutheran building as a place to house our Sunday school and some other programs.

I’m sure that, theoretically, the bishop had to approve this whole process, but especially since we raised all the money ourselves, that was mostly just a formality.

15

Many of these parishes are “national parishes”. From Wikipedia:

National parish is a type of Catholic parish distinguished by liturgical rites or nationality of the congregation; it is found within a diocese or particular Church, which includes other types of parishes in the same geographical area, each parish being unique.[1] A national parish is distinguished from the commonly known type of parish, the territorial parish, which serves a territory subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the territorial parish priest. A national parish is an ecclesiastic subdivision which serves a community of people but is not necessarily a geographic subdivision.

In the town I grew up in there was an Italian national parish which drew its parishioners from a number of local territorial parishes. Masses in Italian, although I think they had a few in Latin to satisfy the little old Italian ladies. They also had their own elementary school, run by the same order of nuns who ran the nearest regular parish school.

16

Oh, and this probably goes without saying, but even with territorial parishes, not all Catholics in that geographical area are members of the parish, and not all members of that parish are in that geographical area. There are all kinds of reasons why a person might belong to a more distant parish: That’s the parish they grew up in before they moved, or they like the priest at that particular parish, or they have friends there, or they can get a discount on tuition for their kids at the school associated with the parish, or they want to be involved in the community outreach programs, or whatever.

17

These days, with declining membership, bishops are more often ending rather than creating parishes.
But it’s more commonly done by combining parishes:
They may merge parishes – often with a new name, keep whichever church building needs the least repairs (or possibly buy/build a new church, but usually both congregations were financially strapped), and assign one priest to that church (often a new one, with both previous priests moved elsewhere).
They may create joint parishes, where one priest serves as the pastor for both parishes. Both parishes continue to operate separately, but with one priest, often Sunday Mass schedule is reduced.
Or for old & declining parishes, the bishop will just not assign a priest, but have priests from nearby parishes & visiting priests take turns on Sundays. (Sometimes called orphan parishes.)

Sometimes churches may go from one of these to others over time.

The parish in my hometown where I went as a child is now one of 5 churches, in 5 towns, that is served by a group of 3 priests.

18

Sort of Catholicism’s answer to the circuit preacher.

There’s a church building in my town that, until a decade or so ago, was St. Somethingorother Catholic Church. I can’t imagine they had more than 50 people at mass on Sunday mornings near the end. I imagine they were served by a priest in a similar situation to what you just described.

The building is now an independent evangelical congregation.

19

The parish where I grew up in Chicago was closed a few years ago. As I understand it from my sister (who now owns the house where we grew up) it was merged with two neighboring parishes under a new name. I’m not sure what happened with the church and school buildings; there was also a convent on the property, but I think that might have previously been closed.

My sister was not happy about the change.

20

Around here, most of the old parish school buildings have been bought up by charter schools.

Church buildings are more difficult: Nobody wants to tear them down, but there’s also not much you can repurpose a church building for, so a lot of them end up just standing empty.