Dear Fellow Parishioners,

From time to time, the parish office receives inquiries from people seeking information on their ancestors, whether in trying to complete a family genealogy, or to establish a claim of dual citizenship to another country through ancestry. (For example, since the birth rate in Italy is among the lowest in Europe, it’s relatively easy for any person with an ancestral claim to their homeland to achieve dual citizenship. (As always, the devil is in the details…)

A key resource for any Catholic wanting to trace their ancestry is through the sacramental registries of the church: Baptism, Confirmation, First Communion, Matrimony, Holy Orders, Anointing of the Sick/Extreme Unction. The Death Register records all funeral rites celebrated in a particular parish.
Since sacraments are only for the living, a funeral liturgy is not a sacrament unless it includes Mass and the Eucharist. This raises an interesting question: Are there circumstances in which a non-Catholic can – especially one married to a Catholic and the parent to Catholic children – have a Catholic funeral liturgy in a Catholic church or chapel? Absolutely.

In the off-chance that you may be interested, I’d like to describe the sacramental recording system which tracks the sacramental lives of over 1 billion Catholics alive today, not to mention the billions that have gone before us. The system isn’t perfect, because it relies on the efforts of imperfect humans to put it in practice, However, it is reliable enough that church sacramental records are regarded by civil authorities as being reliable enough to be deemed admissible as evidence in legal proceedings. For a complete discussion, please check out the “Sacramental Records Handbook” as published by the Archdiocese of Atlanta and available online.

The sacramental record-keeping process is, like so many other things in the Church, archaic but developed over centuries and the product of much thought and experience.

Baptism is the sacrament of salvation and the “gateway” to all subsequent sacraments. For that reason, the Baptismal Registry is arguably the most important of all the sacramental record books. The Baptismal registry is also the one in which subsequent sacraments are cross-referenced. For example, if one is baptized in Parish A, is confirmed in Parish B and is married in Parish C, those subsequent sacraments received in Parish B and C are also cross-referenced in the margins of the baptismal registry in Parish A.

Another example: My ordination is recorded in the parish where I was baptized. If I should try to marry in the Church, the fact that my ordination is recorded along with my baptism will prevent me from doing so. Also, if the records of any parish are lost or destroyed, these cross-referenced sacraments in other parishes can serve as second set of sacramental records.

Our SV parish records go back to our founding in 1857. They are handwritten in archaic cursive script, and until the 1960s or so, in Latin, including first names. (Hence the name “Louise” is rendered “Ludovica,” “Walter” is rendered “Gualterius,” and so forth. “Pater ignotus” means “father unknown,” which means the child’s paternity is in question.) Some of the earlier records, unfortunately, were not written in archival quality ink, and have already faded considerably.

Blessings,
Fr. Bill Donahue