In the accounts I read, there were many complaints about the welcome experienced when attending a Catholic parish (or rather, the distinct absence thereof). Many stories were told of abysmal music and of incoherent, boring preaching. There were laments concerning the lack of community and the lack of ongoing Christian formation. There were also unfortunately quite a few incidents described where people felt poorly treated by priests, catechists and other parish staff. Careless words can cut extremely deep and have serious consequences..<\/p>\n
![\"leave](\"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/leave-church.jpg\")
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The Challenge<\/h2>\n
I began this series by quoting a series of statistics concerning Catholicism in the United States. There was one important statistic, however, which I omitted. Of those in the US who profess to be Catholic, only 23% regularly go to Mass. The US Council of Catholic Bishops recognized an important point concerning this:<\/p>\n
“Those 77% absent from the eucharistic feast each week are not strangers: They are our parents, siblings, spouses, children and friends”<\/i>\u00a0– USCCB Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis<\/span><\/p>\n So, what can be done to draw these people back to the Sunday liturgy and the practice of their faith?\u00a0Over the next few days I would like to distill the experiences of my own wanderings into a list of suggestions. It is my hope that these suggestions might help you guide those you love and encourage them to come home to the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n 1. Know your faith<\/strong> “[The church]\u00a0has a constant need of being evangelized, if she wishes to retain freshness, vigor and strength in order to proclaim the Gospel<\/span>“<\/em>\u00a0– Evangelii Nuntiandi, 15<\/span><\/p>\n There is an old Latin phrase “Nemo dat quod non habet”<\/em><\/span> which means that you can’t give what you don’t have. This is why we must first know our faith before we can share it with others.<\/p>\n 2. Be a life-long disciple<\/strong> However, we have not \u201carrived\u201d this side of Heaven. There is always more to learn and, as Frank Sheed said, each new thing we learn about God is just one more reason to love Him.<\/p>\n 3. Know Sacred Scripture<\/strong> \u201cIgnorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ\u201d<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 St. Jerome I remember being horrified by the complete ignorance of Scripture often demonstrated by many Catholics. If Catholics wish to draw non-Catholics to the Church they must love the Bible just as much as, if not more than non-Catholics. Here is what the Second Vatican Council said about Sacred Scripture:<\/p>\n “The Church has always venerated the divine Scriptures as she venerated the Body of the Lord<\/span>\u2026 the Word of God…[serves]\u00a0the children of the Church as strength for their faith<\/span>, food for the soul<\/span>, and a pure and lasting fount of spiritual life<\/span>\u201d<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 Dei Verbum, 21<\/span><\/p>\n So, I’d invite you to join a Bible Study group, purchase some study materials and, most importantly, spend time each day privately reading the Sacred Scriptures.<\/p>\n 4. Receive the Sacraments<\/strong> I’ll pick this up again tomorrow…<\/p>\n Part 1<\/a> | Part 2<\/a> | Part 3 | Part 4<\/a> | Part 5<\/a> | Part 6<\/a><\/p>\n The article Catholics Come Home: Part 3<\/a> first appeared on\u00a0RestlessPilgrim.net<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Over the last two days I have briefly shared a portion of my faith journey. During this retelling I have particularly focussed upon my ecclesiastical wanderings, mentioning some of the things which pushed me away from some congregations and drew me towards others. As I mentioned in the initial post, this blog series was originally a talk I gave at<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[38,2251,2255,171,1886,2969,2257,2256],"class_list":["post-20114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","tag-catholic-church","tag-catholics-come-home","tag-evangelii-nuntiandi","tag-evangelism","tag-evangelization","tag-featured","tag-frank-sheed","tag-paul-vi"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20114","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=20114"}],"version-history":[{"count":43,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54938,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20114\/revisions\/54938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nBefore one can<\/span> evangelize, one must be<\/span> evangelized. In his Apostolic Exhortation, Pope Paul VI wrote:<\/p>\n
\nAt no point should we ever think that our formation is over.There’s obviously a lot more which could be written on this subject and, honestly, it goes far deeper than we could say here. At this point in Church History we have had decades of either substandard or non-existent catechesis.<\/p>\n
\nCatholics are stereotyped as not knowing the Bible. It\u2019s high time this stereotype was obliterated<\/a>. The Early Church Father and biblical scholar, St. Jerome, gave this pithy truism:<\/p>\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\nDraw upon all the sources of grace available. It is the food for the journey. We should be nurturing our love for the Eucharist, \u201cthe medicine of immortality\u201d<\/em>, as the First Century martyr and Bishop, St. Ignatius of Antioch, described it. One can endure all the more easily terrible music, troublesome parishioners and boring preaching if only one truly loves this \u201cgift of God\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 (<\/span>Ibid).<\/p>\n