Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend
Inviting the fallen away back to the church
Personal experience and objective ministry has given Lorene Duquin the heart to invite the fallen back through her unique ministry (Photo by Kay Cozad)
By Kay Cozad
FORT WAYNE — For every Catholic attending Sunday Mass there may be one who chooses not to participate in the sacraments of the church.
The myriad of reasons why one turns away from the church has not gone unnoticed by author and speaker Lorene Duquin, who unabashedly admits she herself was a fallen-away Catholic for a time and has written extensively on the subject.
Born in Buffalo, N.Y., the oldest of three, Duquin recalls growing up in an Irish Catholic neighborhood where she attended Catholic schools. Later as she earned her degree in English at the Jesuit Canisius College, Vatican II changes were taking place within the church. That’s when she says she dropped out of the Catholic Church, and recalls, “I had a sense that they had been lying to me all along. I wanted to find out what the real world was about.”
Following graduation, Duquin took a job in a bank, where she met Richard, a confessed fallen-away Protestant. The two eventually married in the church at their parents’ request, but did not attend regularly. As the family grew to include four children, they began to feel pressure from both sides of the family to join a church.
Interestingly, they chose to have all four children baptized together in the Catholic Church as a result of the misconception that they, as parents, wouldn’t have to participate in their spiritual formation. “We thought we could float through,” Duquin says sheepishly.
As the children grew old enough to participate in religious education (RE), they found they enjoyed it. But Duquin and her husband only attended Mass as spectators to watch their sons serve as altar boys.
“We were marginal Catholics,” she says.
A wake-up call for the Duquins came when the boys invited the parish priest home for dinner. Confronted by the priest as to why as an educator Richard would allow his boys to attend RE without knowing what they were being taught, he accepted an invitation to attend classes at the church. By February of that year he had made the decision to convert to Catholicism.
Duquin accompanied her husband to the classes that fall of 1987 and realized that fallen-away Catholics do not belong in RCIA. But she knew now that her entire family was excited about being Catholic, and she had some faith work to do.
After freelance writing for several specialty magazines, she was asked to write publicity for the church’s adult education committee. And later through a series of events, she found herself researching Catherine de Hueck Doherty, who is being considered for sainthood, to write a profile on her. As she learned how God worked in Doherty’s life, she had a personal conversion and found her faith once again.
Three years later she stopped writing for the secular media and became involved in outreach to fallen-away Catholics. The “Come back to Church” program was offered twice each year within her diocese and what began with one church grew to include not only the entire region but outside regions as well.
And for the next 10 years, Duquin and others traveled the diocese and beyond, to minister to those who sought reconciliation with the church.
The program was based on the needs of the participants and included breakout sessions led by area priests addressing issues such as annulments, confession, Bible basics and more. Soon they were receiving calls about family and friends who had left the church, and a session was designed to address that important issue.
By 2000 Duquin was exhausted and chose to take the next year to read about evangelization and revamp the program.
In 2001 the broader based outreach, “Come and See” began to meet monthly in one parish with a specific theme each night.
During those years of outreach, Duquin found some common truths about why people come back to the church.
“Number one is a crisis in their lives,” she says. “Number two is the influence of a family member or friend.”
She adds that Catholics must be aware of being positive about their church when approaching others. “It’s not what you do but what you radiate.”
Other reasons for a return to church are experiencing a sense of God’s presence, as during a sacramental rite, good liturgy and preaching, and adult education and special events.
For those who wish to assist others in rejoining the faith, Duquin enthusiastically says, “Invite, invite, invite! We can make the church more welcoming — work on the people in the pews.”
For those who live with a fallen-away Catholic, Duquin offers this advice: Don’t nag, keep praying, be positive about the church and continue to invite the person to events.
It is also essential, Duquin says, to have an active ministry for children and teens in each parish. To ensure youth involvement, families must attend Mass regularly and find other avenues such as musical participation to include them in their faith. One out of five people come back to the church through receiving information for their children.
Duquin continues to write for several magazines and has authored eight books including “When a Loved One Leaves the Church.”
She is director of parish life at St. John the Baptist Church in Lockport, N.Y. and offers workshops on outreach to inactive Catholics across the United States.
Her objective, she says, is, “to change the focus for them from Catholic is God and me — to God, me and other people. It’s bigger than you and God.”
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