By Paul Dailing
Naperville Sun
December 20, 2009
http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/napervillesun/news/1949036,6_1_NA20_CATHOLICS_S1-091220.article
Illinois -- If you plan on attending Mass for your annual Christmas visit, the Catholic Church has begun an initiative that intends to make it more than a one-time trip.
This week saw the launch of the Catholics Come Home program in northern Illinois, backed by a $1.35 million advertising burst. The series of television commercials launched Dec. 16 will run throughout the Rockford and Joliet dioceses and the Chicago archdiocese until Jan. 24.
Jeni Pierce prays Friday evening at the chapel at SS Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Naperville after getting off work. "I feel home when I'm here," Pierce said. Pierce is a recent convert to the Catholic faith.
(Jonathan Miano/Staff Photographer)
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| Jeni Pierce prays Friday evening at the chapel at SS Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Naperville after getting off work. “I feel home when I’m here,” Pierce said. Pierce is a recent convert to the Catholic faith. |
The target is lapsed Catholics, people who once filled the pews but now fill the rest of the world come Sunday morning.
Locally, parishes have been training and preparing for the expected increase in the flock.
"Christmastime is when people start thinking about their lives and faith," said the Rev. Thomas Milota, who has been with SS Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Naperville for two years. "All of a sudden, every Mass is absolutely packed to the rafters, and so this (Catholics Come Home) understands the special place people are in during this season."
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According to a recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, one in 10 American adults is a former Catholic. Comparing this to Pew's breakdown of American religion, there are more lapsed Catholics in America than there are affiliated Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Orthodox Christians, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses and Presbyterians combined.
And now, the local church is hoping market research-based advertising will help fix a problem prayer hasn't.
"It's scheduled to be on every cable system that serves northern Illinois, and it will even bleed into southern Wisconsin and the Quad Cities," said Rockford Diocese Communications Director Penny Wiegert. "We figure that the average person will see the spots 12 times."
But exposure like that costs. Rockford and Joliet are each paying $250,000 for the commercials. Chicago is paying $850,000.
The price tag is steep but worth it, said Doug Delaney, executive assistant to Bishop J. Peter Sartain, leader of the Joliet Diocese, which includes Naperville.
"You have to bite the bullet and pay the price," Delaney said, "but this is the best time."
He added that Sartain and Cardinal Francis George of the Chicago Archdiocese first heard of the program at a conference of bishops.
"We just heard about it, and we found the Web site, looked around and saw what it was," Delaney said.
"I think the diocese is hoping for two things. The first is that people thinking about coming back to the church, this might encourage them," Delaney said. "The other thing is that it will encourage and strengthen the people who are part of the Catholic Church."
Catholics Come Home founder Tom Peterson said the commercials were designed for people who just stopped going to church.
"Secularism crept into their lives, and they got out of the habit," Peterson said. "Ninety percent of people who have come home in dioceses, they said, 'I just drifted away.'"
Of course, asking people who happily returned to the church about why they left is like asking a group of people happily eating anchovy pizza if they like anchovy pizza. People with really serious objections wouldn't even be in that group.
In the Pew Forum study, 71 percent of former Catholics (the ones who didn't join another group) listed "just drifting away" as one of the important reasons they left.
It was the most common answer. But when the people were asked to write their main reason for leaving, "just drifted away" plunged from 71 percent to 4 percent.
Trouble rolling out of bed Sunday morning might be common, but it alone isn't enough to draw millions away from the church.
The most common main reason was that 54 percent of respondents disagreed with the church's religious and moral teachings.
Common disagreements with the church concerned: abortion/homosexuality (56 percent listed this), birth control (48 percent), the treatment of women (39 percent) and the clergy sex abuse scandal (27 percent).
Members of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests decry the campaign, but according to the survey, only 2 percent of former Catholics named the sex scandal as the reason they moved away from the church.
Their own stories
Tricia Loughlin of Naperville was raised Catholic on the South Side of Chicago. She was one of eight siblings, most of whom are still practicing the faith. Loughlin, however, migrated toward community churches and now attends Community Christian Church in Naperville.
"I did visit St. Thomas (the Apostle Catholic Church in Naperville) because I'm a godparent to two of my nieces and nephews (who go there)," said Loughlin. "I went for two months, and it was the first time I was in a Catholic church in probably 15 years."
Loughlin found that other churches better communicated "a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. It was the difference between the head and the heart."
Kneeling, repeated prayers and other traditional elements of a Catholic Mass were a hurdle for Loughlin.
"When I went to a Catholic church to try to keep that (personal relationship) alive, a lot of those things there got in the way," she said. "Your mind can kind of go blank."
On the other hand, Naperville's Jeni Pierce, a 40-year-old single mother who was raised Episcopal but hadn't regularly attended a church since high school, found the Catholic Church to be warm and welcoming when she began searching for a spiritual home.
"It was kind of a long time coming," Pierce said of embracing SS Peter and Paul after attending her first Mass there 10 years ago. A friend who already attended the church brought her to a new evangelization meeting at the end of last summer. After that, she began to regularly attend adult religious education classes.
"What's great about these classes is it explains everything to you," said Pierce.
As for the church as a whole, Pierce said she "liked that they put family first.
"I'm divorced, and I kind of understand that one of the things that holds family together is to have God in it," she said. "The Catholic Church really believes that God binds you in that union."
Pierce has two daughters, the youngest of whom, at 13, is attending children's education classes at SS Peter and Paul.
"She really likes it, and that really surprises me," Pierce said.
The Rev. Joel Fortier of St. Thomas said although the Catholics Come Home initiative is targeting former Catholics, local parishes will welcome new believers "however they come.
"Our role is to be alert and respond to inquiries and to be a community that when people want to come home, they have some place to come home to," he said.
Other people's people
Does this raise any concern among other denominations that the Catholics Come Home campaign will appeal to their disgruntled followers, especially those upset over issues such as abortion and homosexuality?
Not in the eyes of Pastor David L. Miller, whose St. Timothy Lutheran Church in Naperville belongs to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
"The Roman Catholic Church is a place that becomes a spiritual home for some who might leave Protestant communities, like the Lutheran or Methodist churches, because it does have a more traditionalist take on issues such as homosexuality, such as abortion, such as birth control," he said. "But we don't see something like (Catholics Come Home) as a threat. It really isn't. We don't see ourselves in competition with Rome."
Miller said the ELCA has run print and TV advertising in the past, but that it has been aimed at the general population.
"These seem directed at that considerable piece of humanity in this country who were baptized and confirmed in the Catholic tradition but have drifted away," he said.
That is how Milota sees it.
"Our specific purpose is to welcome back Catholics," he said. "We're not here to get other people's people."
To be more welcoming, SS Peter and Paul has established a series of educational programs for people at varying levels in their faith.
"We have deeper programs for practicing Catholics to courses for those who need an introductory or a refresher," said Milota. "They're not ready to get into the heavy stuff but are interested in what the Catholic Church is about."
Often, that interest increases this time of year.
"Always people are willing to return to their faith at Christmastime," Fortier said. "But our effort is to bring them to a relationship that is more."
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