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Reason 2: "Some did not experience warm, personal caring relationships in their encounters with Catholics. To them the people seemed cold, the services boring."
The primary point of contact between God and ourselves, and between ourselves and our neighbors in faith is when we gather for the celebration of the Eucharist. Yet our Eucharistic celebrations follow a certain pattern. There is an order to our worship that brings familiarity but can also produce the deadening effects of routine. We know the importance of order and routine in everyday life. They are necessary to a good, productive life. And we have all experienced using the same words or phrases over and over even in our most intimate relationships. How often have we spoken or heard an "I love you" or a "Thank you" in conversation with a spouse or a child. Yet, at times, we recognize that we or they are merely going through the motions, that the words are being used from habit.4
The same may become true of our participation in worship. Each of us has to take seriously our baptismal commitment to participate fully, actively and consciously in our Catholic liturgies with attentive minds and hearts. Our authentic participation in the Mass, the Liturgy of the Hours, and our traditional Catholic devotions will extend to our attitude as a community that lives the faith it celebrates. Our public worship nourishes our private prayer; our private prayer leads us back to Christ who always leads us to our brothers and sisters. We need to reach out to new parishioners, visitors and those who are taking another look at the Church.
Paulist Father John Hurley recently said: "Many drop away with the hope that someone will notice, and with large congregations in many parishes, often no one does. Would you want to join a church that doesn't care when you fall away?"5
We need to ensure that our local parishes are welcoming communities for all of God's people. Our communal worship must lead to apostolic works of mercy and love, especially on behalf of the marginalized.
Reason 3: "Others did experience the complex religious system that seemed to lack relatedness to their lives and, for many, a lack of ministers appreciating their language and culture."
Each week as we worship we pray together the creed crafted by the Fathers of the Church at Nicea. We say, "I believe in one, holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church." These four descriptive words -- one, holy, Catholic, Apostolic -- are sometimes referred to as marks of the Church. The word Catholic comes from two Greek words meaning worldwide or universal. The Catholic Church is the one worldwide or universal family of God.
When you see the Holy Father celebrating Mass outside St. Peter's Basilica, you notice the Bernini columns on St. Peter's Square which symbolize the arms of the Church reaching out to the whole world. All of us need to support the Church in all its cultural and linguistic contexts, always realizing that our experience of distinct cultural expressions of the faith -- when rooted and balanced -- helps to expand and enrich our own faith.
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