One of the topics tackled by the USCCB (when the bishops weren’t riding the teacups at Disney World) was how to woo back lapsed Catholics.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch talked to a few experts about that:

In the St. Louis archdiocese, church leaders are reaching out to lapsed Catholics.

St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke established the archdiocese’s office of the new evangelization last July. Its director, Hector Molina, said he has spent the last year talking to parishes about how to evangelize — something he said doesn’t come easily to many Catholics.

“Unfortunately, for many Catholics it (evangelism) has a negative association,” he said. “Over the last couple of decades, there’ve been televangelists, some aggressive proselytizing from fundamentalist Christian groups, and the tactics of non-Christian groups like Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons, who try to convince Catholics to abandon our faith to join them.”

Michele Dillon, author of “In the Course of a Lifetime: Tracing Religious Belief, Practice, and Change,” said Christians who leave church for political or lifestyle reasons often return later in life.

Those who leave in their late teens and early 20s sometimes return after starting families in order to introduce their children to their faith. Some leave again in middle age when they have other Sunday activities — travel, golf — to entertain them, but return again later in life when church becomes a social outlet.

Others leave because they disagree with an aspect of church teaching, Dillon said, but some return “because they don’t believe that’s enough to break their ties.”

The St. Louis effort to bring lapsed Catholics back to church has been going on quietly for years. Monsignor Francis Blood, director of the archdiocese’s Propagation of the Faith office, said many pastors take advantage of large crowds on Easter and Christmas to try to entice Catholics who attend church only on those holidays to come regularly.

Monsignor Patrick Hambrough, pastor of St. Mark Catholic Church in south St. Louis, does just that. St. Mark’s “Catholics Returning Home” program invites lapsed Catholics, during the Easter and Christmas seasons, to try the church again. For five Mondays after each of the holidays, those who have left can come back and try to get comfortable with church again.

“Some stay for the entire program and get active again,” Hambrough said, “and some struggle still and don’t continue.”

“There are a lot of people out there not coming to Mass on Sunday, and sometimes it’s not a real serious thing that’s keeping them away,” Hambrough said. “They just needs to be prodded a little, or invited, or encouraged. And once they get there it’s like coming home again. There’s something about it they miss.”

There’s more at the link, so check it out.