![\"leave](\"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/leave-church.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThere are many worrying statistics concerning the Catholic Faith in the USA.\u00a0One in ten Americans consider themselves ex-Catholics. In fact, if “ex-Catholics” were counted as their own religious group, they would be the third-largest denomination, right after Catholics and Baptists. As many as 100,000 drift away from the Faith each year. These figures should give us serious pause for thought since, as Christians, we are called to evangelize the world, to witness to Jesus Christ and His Church.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Today I’d like to begin a series of posts which are based on a talk I recently gave at my parish. The talk was entitled\u00a0“Catholics Come Home”<\/em><\/span>.<\/p>\n Over the next two posts, I would like to tell a little bit my own story, of my journey away from and eventual return to the Catholic Church. I’ve told parts of this story before, but in this retelling I hope to focus on some of the things which attracted and repelled me along the way. In subsequent posts, I’ll attempt to pull these experiences together and distill them into a list of suggestions as to what can be done to draw people back to the Church.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I was fortunate enough to grow up in a strong Catholic parish. It was vibrant, diverse, joyful and family-friendly. There was considerable lay involvement in ministry and many parish groups. As a child, I was part of a thriving and creative Children’s Liturgy which I enjoyed very much.<\/p>\n After receiving my First Holy Communion, I followed the natural progression in the parish and became an altar boy. It was a pretty sweet gig! Being an server had lots of perks; every year we would have a group trip to somewhere fun and on every major feast day we would each receive a considerable amount of chocolate! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n When I was ten, I started at a new school. A little while after, my family began to attend Mass at the Abbey to which my new school was attached. I continued to serve on the altar. I really enjoyed the fellowship and camaraderie\u00a0among the other servers. We were put under the charge of a wonderful monk and my love for the liturgy began to deepen.<\/p>\n At the age of fifteen I was confirmed by the monastery’s Abbot and took the name “Peter”<\/em>. Sadly, the Sacrament of Confirmation often marks the end of the Mass attendance for many Catholics. After having “got their Sacraments”<\/em>\u00a0a large number are rarely seen at Mass again, having been sacramentalized but not evangelized.<\/p>\n In contrast, I continued attending Mass. \u00a0I remained for several reasons. It was expected of me, but I also quite enjoyed the liturgy. I was drawn to the architectural beauty, the chant, and the peaceful stillness I found after Communion. It certainly didn’t hurt, however, that there were a few attractive females who also attended Mass each week. Praise God for His beauty which is made present in the world in so many varied and wonderful ways! \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n After completing school, I took a year out, getting a job to raise funds for University. Twelve months later I left home to begin my Computer Science degree.<\/p>\n Leaving home for the first time is another one of those moments when people can start to drift away from their faith. However, with my mother’s encouragement, I quickly became connected with the University Chaplaincy. The Catholic Chaplaincy would have Mass every Sunday evening and we would all have dinner together afterwards. It was a novel experience for me to have a community of Catholics around me of my own age. The Chaplaincy also had morning prayer during the week and this soon became part of my regular schedule.<\/p>\n At the beginning of my second year of University I became involved with a Catholic group called Verbum Dei (“Word of God”<\/em>). The missionaries exuded a holiness which I found very attractive and desired for myself. One of them in particular was an excellent speaker and Bible teacher and she had a profound impact upon me.<\/p>\n I began to go to the Group’s prayer meetings and during one of these evenings<\/a> there was awoken in me a very profound need for God. I eventually started going to their “School of Apostles”<\/em> which basically consisted of more in-depth teaching and longer times of prayer. Our prayer was always prayer with Scripture and my love of the Bible really grew during this time. I was part of a community and my faith was growing. Things were good.<\/p>\n I’ll pick up the story again tomorrow…<\/p>\n Part 1 | Part 2<\/a> | Part 3<\/a> | Part 4<\/a> | Part 5<\/a> | Part 6<\/a><\/p>\n The article Catholics Come Home: Part 1<\/a> first appeared on\u00a0RestlessPilgrim.net<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are many worrying statistics concerning the Catholic Faith in the USA.\u00a0One in ten Americans consider themselves ex-Catholics. In fact, if “ex-Catholics” were counted as their own religious group, they would be the third-largest denomination, right after Catholics and Baptists. As many as 100,000 drift away from the Faith each year. These figures should give us serious pause for thought<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53376,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[2251,171,1886,2969,86,2252,1231,256],"class_list":["post-19411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faith","tag-catholics-come-home","tag-evangelism","tag-evangelization","tag-featured","tag-journey","tag-lapsed","tag-story","tag-usa"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/FeaturedCatholicsComeHome.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19411"}],"version-history":[{"count":45,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53388,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19411\/revisions\/53388"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Early Years: A good start<\/h2>\n
The Wonder Years: The university community<\/h2>\n