Is your parish shrinking? Maybe the pews are the wrong place to look. If you count the other parishioners – the ones we blithely call non-practising – you could get a different view altogether.

There are more inactive than active parishioners in any parish: 10 potential returning Catholics for every non-Catholic who is received into the Church. A large number of these would like to come back but do not believe they can; many of those who believe they can, do not know how. At least two out of every three Catholics today have left the Church, taking with them their much needed gifts and talents. Many of them feel an emptiness in their lives and a longing to return. Build bridges to them, and your parish will swell.

This is what happened in my parish of St Joseph’s, Upminster, in east London, back in 1995. With three others, I was part of a team supporting candidates on the programme known as RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults). In October, we met our priest, Fr John, to explore the idea of a new ministry: we wanted to reach out to Catholics in the parish who had become alienated from the Church. We did not then know how we would do it; all we knew was that, while RCIA was right for new Catholics, returners had particular needs and wounds that called for something else.

We contacted 20 people, from whom emerged a team of 14. We met weekly to ponder together the Gospel reading for the following Sunday. We asked ourselves: why do Catholics come to believe that they no longer belong in the Church? We narrowed the answers down to four different – but often overlapping – triggers of separation. Some had never really heard the Gospel, or had heard such a distorted view of it that they had rejected it. Some had been scandalised by the behaviour or attitudes of Catholics they had known – including priests, nuns or bishops. Some had experienced deep hurt and rejection at some stage in their lives, because of what they had done or failed to do. Others found some aspect of church teaching or regulations impossible to stomach.

Sounds familiar? It did to us. Our first discovery was that we had all known at least one of these triggers in our own lives. Who has not had a less-than-loving model of Christ mediated to them? Who has not been shaken by scandals in the Church? And all of us, even those who felt a strong sense of belonging to our parishes, had at times shaken our heads in confusion or indignation at some church regulation whose application in this or that circumstance seemed inhuman or incoherent. There were dark corners in all of our lives as Catholics; the mystery was why some of us felt we belonged to the Church in spite of sin – ours or other people’s – while the same sin had persuaded others to stay away. As the weeks went by, little by little we realised that practising and non-practising Catholics are bound together by a shared human experience of faith and its trials.

Then came news of a scheme being used by another parish. Its priest had done a survey of his area, identifying the lapsed households. He trained a group to make home visits in twos, and sent each household a letter explaining why the visits were taking place. If they did not want to receive a visit, all they had to do was telephone the parish. Only five out of every 100 did. Most of the rest were delighted. One in three wanted to make some kind of return to the Church, but did not know how or where to start.

Buoyed by these statistics, we decided to try a similar scheme, now known as Roots. Our parish of St Joseph’s had about 1,200 Catholic households, making 3,000 Catholics in all, 900 of whom were at church on Sundays. We divided the parish into areas and sections. It took five meetings to compose the letter we would be sending out. Two artists in the group designed a laminated bookmark to be included with the letter, and we posted both about two weeks before the planned visit.

We began our first tentative knocks on doors in October 1997. We looked for signs of life – a light; a car in the drive; noises – and stood nervously in the drives and porches: waiting, watching, listening.

“It’s my wife you want”, said a formidable-looking gentleman at the first door we knocked on. “And she’s not in.”

We scuttled away like startled rabbits. But confidence soon came, inspired by the warmth which greeted us almost everywhere. People seemed delighted and surprised that they were on our lists, that they had not been forgotten or given up as lost causes. Some, of course, were angry; many were in pain. With a representative of the Church in front of them who was keen to listen, some of them vented their frustration – sometimes at the Church’s marriage laws, or the shortage of places in the local Catholic school.

We listened, and told our own stories in turn. We learned of difficulties over faith, prayer, church teaching, the challenges of being a parent, the trials of sickness and age. We replied with our own stories, pointed them in the direction of RCIA or the Alpha course or the parish priest if there was a need for him, and left enormously enriched, convinced that the simple act of visiting was of infinite value and worth.

The more visits we made, the more we started to realise how absurd is the term “non-practising”. Listening, we discovered that Catholics who do not go to church have not ceased to be people of faith; often the faith is deep but unexpressed, or lived out at home and in the office, at school and on the football pitch, but without the strength we Massgoers derive from the faith community and the sacraments. These Catholics struggled on their own, often unsupported. But they taught us that there is a profound witness, frequently hidden, in the lives of many alienated Catholics, and that all of us, Massgoers or not, were “practising” Catholics.

But to make contact, we discovered, was just the beginning. There was no map showing the way home. We needed to be able to show a way to rejoin the church community. In the spring of 2001 we saw a Tablet advertisement for a programme in the United States specifically designed to welcome inactive Catholics back to the Church. Four of us attended the Landings training course in Ealing Abbey in west London and, with the support of our parish priest, began the programme the following January.

Landings was developed by an American Paulist priest, Fr Jac Campbell, 15 years ago. He spent three years studying why Catholics stayed away and how they could best be invited back. He realised that fear of rejection and bad information were two of the most important factors; he also realised that parishes are afraid of people who have been away. There had to be a method of overcoming that fear by bringing returners into contact with parishioners in small groups where everyone could tell their stories of faith. It was important that these groups be lay-led, and based on eight to 10 structured weekly meetings which included faith sharing, prayer, Scripture reading and the Creed.

The programme organisers suggest that ideally there should be between two and three returners to every six to eight active Catholics. In these groups, non-churchgoing Catholics can ask any questions, raise any issues and allow themselves complete honesty without the need to commit themselves. At the end of the course, during a day or weekend together, there is an opportunity for the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Sometimes this is enough; sometimes people want to attend the next course.

We found it was important to involve the parish in the Landings programme. We displayed posters in the church, Mass-centre, social centre and school playground where the mothers gathered to collect their children. We spoke after all Masses one weekend, inviting parishioners to take home an insert which we had included in each newsletter, and to pass it on to any non-churchgoing Catholics they thought might be interested. Further copies of the handbill were left in the church porch and given to parish catechists involved in sacramental programmes. From our Roots visits we knew several possible candidates for the course; these we wrote or spoke to, inviting them to an informal information evening in the parish clubroom. Four enquirers came along and all decided to enrol for the course which began the following week.

The end of the Landings course coincided with Holy Week: there was no better time for our enquirers to experience a church liturgy again. One of them – he had been away for 40 years – could not believe his eyes: women readers! Girls serving at the altar! Lay people helping with Communion! Another returning member had been an altar server in the past. That Good Friday he was invited to carry the Cross: walking home that night, his face wet with tears, he was unable to stop smiling.

At the end of the course we held our own special group celebration of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, followed by a house Mass and a party. All four returners participated in full – and decided they wanted to do the course all over again.

Another information evening was held at the end of April and a further six returners enrolled, making it necessary to form two groups. And so it went on. A bridge had been built.

article published in The Tablet 07/06/2003
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