Educational Resource
Catechetical Sunday Resource: Keys for Welcoming Catholics Back to the Lord's Table (2012)
Catechetical Sunday, September 16, 2012
Keys for Welcoming Catholics Back to the Lord’s Table by John and Therese Boucher (John is Associate Director for Evangelization, Ministry of Catechesis and Evangelization, Diocese of Trenton. Therese is an author, adult faith formation speaker, and catechist trainer.)
"Ever wonder why the path from religious education sessions to Sunday liturgies is too complicated or uninteresting for many parents? Ever wonder what we can do to help? We are not alone. The 2008 Sacraments Today: Belief and Practice among U.S. Catholics study reports that only 23 percent of American Catholics regularly attend Sunday Mass. This means that 77 percent are missing and are in need of invitations to come back and see themselves as invaluable members of our local parishes. We propose seven doors that lead to the Lord’s Table and that we can help unlock for those who do not regularly attend church. Together we hold many keys to faith, if we choose to use them in the name of Jesus, the Christ.
The Universal Church encourages us to reach out to all the baptized. “The time has also come for a new evangelization in the West, where many of those baptized lead totally unChristian lives and more and more persons maintain some links to the faith but have little or a poor knowledge of it . . . ‘This particularly concerns countries and nations of the so-called First World, in which [conditions promote] a life lived ‘as if God did not exist’” (Synod of Bishops, XIII Ordinary General Assembly, The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith, Lineamenta, no. 9, www.vatican.va/roman_curia/synod/documents/rc_synod_doc_20110202_lineam enta-xiii-assembly_en.html)."