NO…but maybe!
(In practice the answer is YES!)
Unlike many Protestants, most Catholics do not generally choose a parish. The issue arose for me when I retired from a small rural town (with one Catholic church) into a large city which has ~forty parishes.
My new home is almost equidistant from 3 Catholic churches. I love aspects of each of them, but the parish in which I ‘territorially’ reside is not the one I prefer. (Readers of my article about the Traditional Latin Mass might guess that I gravitate to a more conservative, traditional style — though my preference is still the Novus Ordo Mass.)
CANON LAW
Can. 518: As a general rule a parish is to be territorial, that is, one which includes all the Christian faithful of a certain territory. When it is expedient, however, personal parishes are to be established determined by reason of the rite, language, or nationality of the Christian faithful of some territory, or even for some other reason.
Clearly, this allows exceptions to the territorial parish rule. The majority of ‘personal’ parishes are related to being in a specific community — such as being part of an emigrant Hungarian or Spanish-speaking population. Also, one can still join a ‘personal’ parish because it provides the TLM.
The church acknowledes that many people have ready access to transportation so they may not even know which is their ‘official’ parish.
THE STATS
It went on to note that: “when searching for a new church or house of worship, the top five factors for all U.S. adults were: quality of sermons (89 percent); feeling welcomed (79 percent); style of services (79 percent); location (70 percent); and education for children (56 percent).”
2020 VATICAN GUIDELINES on Parishes
The Vatican revised it’s guidelines on parish life in 2020.
The full document is available [HERE].
Kevin Hay
You can follow Kevin on 𝕏 ( Twitter / Twi𝕏 ) @ kevinhay77