Catholics Return Home offers free workshop

By John Robb
Catholics Returning Home (CRH) is a program designed to help lay parish leaders and clergy invite inactive Catholics back to Mass and the sacraments. The program’s founder, Sally Mews, will be the keynote speaker at a special Southeast regional CRH boot camp to be held Saturday, Jan. 31, 2015, at St. Ignatius Paris in the Archdiocese of Mobile, Ala.
“I’m so excited about the great response Alabama and Mississippi volunteers have gotten in just a few years, that I feel called to personally help you take CRH to the next level,” said Mews. About 200 returning Catholics have participated in CRH sessions in Mobile. Many have returned to the sacraments.
Some CRH “graduates” sponsor their unbaptized spouses, children and siblings in the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, (RCIA) to prepare them to enter the church. CRH has proven to be a fruitful companion program to RCIA since many candidates for each often come from the same families.
Both processes also share the same goal: bringing people to Christ. This organic link between CRH and RCIA will be just one of the workshop topics.
Mews has ministered to inactive Catholics for more than three decades and served on the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Evangelization Committee that produced its definitive directory: A Time To Listen … A Time To Heal. She has also written several books about reaching inactive Catholics. CRH is offered across America, Canada and world-wide as far away as Australia. In the Mobile Archdiocese, CRH is now offered by seventeen host and co-sponsor parishes.
The regional CRH Boot Camp for parish volunteers and workers starts at 9 a.m. Saturday Jan. 31st at St. Ignatius Parish on Springhill Avenue.
The workshop is free and includes a free continential breakfast and box lunch. Attendees must reserve a place by contacting John Robb, 251 605-9710, or john.robb@raymondjames.com.