A paróquia na história: elementos para uma visão de conjunto

The 50th anniversary of a parish in the Diocese of Porto led to this wide reflection about the parish, from the early Christianity to our days. Considering the meaning of the word and holding as its starting-point the way in which the old Christian communities organized themselves, this essay addresses the issue of the multiplication of churches within the context of the Christianisation of rurality at the early Middle Ages, the diocesan and parochial organization of the high Middles Ages, the development of a parochial network of territorial nature at the time and as consequence of the Gregorian Reform, the crisis of this structure between the late Middle Ages and the Modern Age, the shaping and perpetuation of the Tridentine parochial paradigm until its questioning in the Contemporary period, and the new shaping of the parish subjacent to the II Vatican Council, which stresses its communitarian and apostolic features as part and parcel of a diocese, regarding its precedent territorial and beneficial perspective.