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The visible Church

The Church which Christ founded is not an idea. She is the Body of Christ alive in the world: present on every continent, praying in every tongue, offering the Holy Sacrifice from the rising of the sun to its setting. The one Church of Christ, constituted and organized in this world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, governed by the successor of Peter and the bishops in communion with him.ⁱ What is visible can be found, entered, and served.

This work attends to that visibility, and to nothing else. It records each diocese and eparchy, each parish church and cathedral, the hours of Mass, and the institutes of consecrated life, under the names and abbreviations given in the Annuario Pontificio.

Further: on the visible Church

The diocese

In the law of the Church, a diocese is a portion of the People of God entrusted to a bishop, who, with the cooperation of his priests, shepherds it in the name of Christ.ⁱⁱ Gathered by its pastor in the Holy Spirit through the Gospel and the Eucharist, it is a particular church in which the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church of Christ is truly present and operative.

Here the dioceses and archdioceses of the Latin Church stand beside the eparchies and archeparchies of the Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with the See of Peter: each with its territory, its see city, cathedral, and bishop.

Further: on the diocese

The bishop

Bishops, by divine institution, succeed the apostles. Through the Holy Spirit they are constituted pastors in the Church: teachers of doctrine, priests of sacred worship, and ministers of governance.ⁱⁱⁱ A diocese without its bishop is a diocese waiting; a record of the Church without her bishops would be a record of buildings.

Each see is joined to the bishop who holds it. Where a see stands vacant, the vacancy itself is recorded: the widowhood of a church is a fact of her visible life, not a defect of the record.

Further: on the bishop

The parish

A parish is a stable community of the Christian faithful within a particular church, entrusted to a pastor under the authority of the diocesan bishop.^iv For most of the faithful, the parish is where the Church is met for the whole of life: there they are baptized, there absolved, there communicated, confirmed, married, and buried.

Each parish church is set within its diocese with its title, address, and, where it can be established with confidence, the times of its Masses.

Further: on the parish

The cathedral

In every diocese one church holds the cathedra, the chair of the bishop from which the building takes its name. The cathedral is the mother church of the diocese and the sign of its unity: there the bishop presides at the sacred liturgy, there the holy oils are consecrated, there his priests are ordained.

The cathedrals of the United States may be studied here in particular, each see church located, described, and set on the map of its diocese.

Further: on the cathedral

The churches of the East

The Catholic Church is a communion of churches. Beside the Latin Church stand the Eastern Catholic Churches sui iuris, heirs of the Alexandrian, Antiochene, Armenian, Chaldean, and Constantinopolitan traditions: equal in dignity, governed by their own hierarchies, and in full communion with the Roman Pontiff.^v Their liturgies are among the oldest prayers the Church possesses.

Their eparchies and archeparchies stand here beside the dioceses of the West: each under its proper Church and rite, with its hierarch and cathedral, wherever its faithful are found.

Further: the twenty-four Churches in communion

The title of the church

No church is anonymous. Each is dedicated under a title (a mystery of the Lord, an invocation of the Blessed Virgin, an angel, or a saint), and that title is not lost.^vi These titles form a geography of devotion: where the parishes of Saint Patrick are thick on the ground, or those of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the history of a people can be read from the doors of its churches.

Each parish is set down under its title, so that whoever seeks the churches of a particular saint may find them gathered, and the saint beside them.

Further: on the titles of churches

The hours of Mass

The Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life.^vii A record of church buildings that omitted the Mass would omit the very thing for which the buildings stand. Sunday and daily Mass, confession, and adoration are kept here so that a traveler in an unfamiliar city may find the altar. For the Masses of the dead, for marriage, and for the Way of the Cross, the appointed readings are set down by Lectionary number and citation.

Further: on the hours of Mass

Sources

What is here comes from what dioceses and parishes publish about themselves, and from the references of the Holy See, among them the Annuario Pontificio.^viii

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