For loss or gain

 

Loss or Gain: The next time you complain about your parish priest who still does not know your name.

"What is a parish?" asked the 13th century canonist Henery of Susa; a place . . . whose inhabitants belong to a single church." There and there alone a man was baptized and married, attended Sunday Mass, paid his tithe . . . was buried when he died. No one received the sacraments in any church but his own". A stranger could be barred from the parish church and so effectively barred from the sacraments. The parish priest knew every member by sight and name. All strangers except for noblemen and beggars could be expelled. Those who managed to be buried outside their own parishes could be exhumed and brought back to their own church yards. The Lateran council of 1215 forced every layman to make his confession once a year to the parish priest and to no one else. The right of medicant orders to hear confessions was hotly contested. Confessions were not private. The actual words were inaudible, but were open and not in some private place, especially in the case of women as the synod of Nimes ordained in 1284. The priest was advised to probe further, if he suspected further undeclared sins.

Pilgrimage: An Image Medieval Religion, Jonathan Sumption