Parochial law

The Parochialrecht allow a religious group to make the affiliation of its members to certain municipalities alone of their taking up residence dependent, so after the Parochialprinzip to organize, so it's the state-canonical response to the self-organization of a denominational after Parochialprinzip.

A member is therefore always part of the local community of this religious community or denomination; this community membership changes automatically when moving to the area of ​​another parish. Whether or not this right is exercised also depends on the personnel and financial resources of the respective denomination, so it is possible that a "classical" denomination that is only being organized B. is only just beginning to arise through immigration, does not initially make use of this right until it is able to do so through its development.

Parochial law is a corporate law, i.e. This means that religious communities with corporate status are entitled to it, e.g. B. in Austria all state-recognized denominations and religious communities. For religious communities with a smaller number of members and only a few local congregations, parochial law is of the utmost importance, as otherwise they would completely lose contact with their members, although it can still happen that parochial law is not used due to a lack of organizational possibilities, according to the current status in Germany 2008. An example of the use of parochial law is the Evangelical Church HB in Austria , which covers the entire national territory of Austria with only nine parishes.

Younger religious currents, such as Evangelicals or Baptists, do not know parochial law, but are organized in personal congregations, so a member remains a member of “his” congregation even in the event of a move, provided that he does not terminate his membership himself.