Jon, sorry it has taken me so long to post back I’ve been dealing with one sick child after another and then when you think its all over it starts again, ugh.
Anyways, the church that I go to now has the policy like a welcome wagon, you have certain parish members who have vounteered to be the ones who call and see how your doing since joining, have any questions or concerns etc. This is the first parish that has done that, as I’ve been a member to several parishes as we moved around quite a bit with college etc. in our early marriage and I never heard anything and had a really hard time getting to know anyone and I felt very overwhelmed so this was so cool when I got this call about 2 weeks after letting the parish know I was new and would like to be a member at this church, I got a very lovely call, asking how me and my family were doing, did we feel the church was doing all it could to help us know what kind of things it offered etc. and of course I was given lots of ideas on how to get to know people better what groups there were for couples my age and kids my kids age and wow, that was nice, I really think all churches should have something like that, those bigger parishes is exactly where someone can easily be over looked and that is when another religion can present itself, as I know I have some aunts who left the Catholic faith for some pretty different religions because they were lured away by all the “friendly people” and they were not feeling like they were even known at their Catholic church, so in my opinion if we are to keep people Catholic we have to reach out to them and some people are alot more touchy than others and they really need to be reached out to, I’ve seen some of that, just my opinion.