Rectory

The pastoral office is an office known in all major denominations of Christianity , which is regarded as essential for the fulfillment of the tasks of the respective church . At the same time designated parish and the parish office, so the Administrator of a church community.

Protestant church

In Protestantism , the pastoral office is understood to mean the service of preaching the word , administering the sacraments , teaching and pastoral care to a group of recipients that is specific and spatially limited as a parish (in the eastern member churches of the Evangelical Church in Germany and Switzerland) or parish , regardless of the person of the pastor who is currently in office.

The prerequisite for assuming a pastor's office is the ordination of the theologian . The act of installation in a specific vicarage is called investiture, installation or introduction.

Roman Catholic Church

In Catholicism , the pastoral office and the parish coincide in canonical law .

Ordination as a priest is a prerequisite for the transfer of a pastoral office by the bishop of the diocese concerned .

historical development

While the parish in Germany and Austria is a corporation under public law , the pastoral office has no direct relationship with the state or the municipality , i.e. it is not a public authority. It is an institution within the church in terms of the definition of its goals and its form. In Germany , this relationship was determined by the Weimar Constitution of 1919, after the state, namely the Prussian parish , as early as during the Kulturkampf in the 19th century, civil registry tasks such as B. had taken the keeping of a marriage register.

Since the 1960s, in addition to the classic parochial parish offices related to a particular territory, numerous new supra-congregational functional parish offices have emerged. B. in hospitals , prisons , for youth and for educational work .

Future prospects

In Western Europe there is a growing shortage of both priests and pastors, which will influence the filling of the parish offices and lead to restructuring.

Parish offices that remain vacant for a long time can be canceled. In the short term, there will be associations in which new pastoral care units are formed, e.g. B. in the form of pastoral communities .