For most catholics their parish is their most sustained encounter with the Church. Even after their children leave school, the parish remains a centre and it is there, too, that one can hope to find a reasonably stable community. Even so, parishes are also complex communities. They change with emerging needs and variable resources and they display different approaches to liturgy and outreach sometimes even within the one community.  

For most people, the parish will be the community in which ’synodality’,  envisaged in the final document of the recent Synod  (Oct. 2024), will be experience and practiced or not.  Jesuit Parishes have the rich spiritual patrimony and missionary vision of the Society of Jesus to draw upon. While they will have much in common with diocesan parishes, they will also have features that are distinctively Jesuit.  

This essay, “The Jesuit Parish as Mission”, was based on a talk that Fr. James Hanvey, the secretary for the service of Faith, delivered online to a conference of Jesuit Parishes organised by the UMI province of the Society in the USA. Although it speaks to a specific constituency and experience, it is offered here in the hope that it will help to stimulate a reflection on the importance of the Society’s parish apostolates wherever they are or whatever the circumstances in which they have to minister.

About the Author

James Hanvey SJ

Secretary for the Service of the Faith for the Society of Jesus

His particular research and teaching interests are in the areas of Trinitarian Theology, Pneumatology, Ecclesiology and Catholic Social Thought as well as Ignatian Spirituality.

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