Parish: from the Judaic-Hellenist-Christian origins to the Second Vatican Council

Abstract

Parish’s historical genesis and its structural development in relation to the history of the Church is the central question to which this text is subordinate. For this reason, the text starts from the etymology of the parish term to the understanding of its origins and patterns into the early Christianity and its biblical roots conception, without the intention to show critical and reformulations about the parish structure. This study uses as basis the Church’s periods and its historical facts to characterize and to contextualize the parish's development, which, since its beginnings, is subordinate to the Church structures and authorities. This text also uses important documents that contextualize the view, foundation and organization of the parish as essential part of the ecclesia’s body as well as conceptualizes legally this community of faith, cell of the Particular Church. After an ecclesia genealogy's explanation, with the parish's development, this study contextualizes the view that the parish took into the Ecclesiology of the 21st Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church, the Second Vatican Council and the Code of Canon Law of 1983 in comparison to the Pio-Benedictine Code. This text attempts to provide bedrocks for futures studies and question the ephemerality.