A man who has recently converted to Catholicism calls the Busted Halo Radio Show looking for some advice about strengthening his faith and finding community in the Church: “I come from a non-Catholic family and have [mostly] non-Catholic friends, and I wanted to know if you have any advice for someone who might go quite a while without being in a Catholic community, except at Sunday Mass. I go to Mass every Sunday and have some great friends in the church, but my Catholic friends have families and stuff, so I don’t get to surround myself in that Catholic community as much as I’d like.”
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Father Dave offers several concrete suggestions for what this caller could do to find and build community:
- “Find something in addition to [your] participation in Sunday Mass that allows [you] to connect with the parish. Maybe the group isn’t necessarily through your parish and is a local Catholic charity or food bank.”
- “If you’re single and in your younger years, a lot of times there will be young adult groups in a given diocese [and not just on the parish]. So, maybe investigating if there are other people you could connect with who are like you — who don’t have the busyness of a family schedule.”
- “If you went through the RCIA, there might be folks who are ‘alumni’ of an RCIA program who desire to continue having that fellowship [that they had with their classmates], even after the formality of the sacraments of initiation [is over].”
- See if there are any groups of people who help the parish on a weekly basis, like the “folks who clean up the Church on Monday or the folks who count the collection or the folks who work on the website,” and don’t discount the fellowship you might find there, even if it sounds like you’d be signing up to do a chore or something tedious.
- “If you’re looking for something more theological or intellectual, you can find a Bible study or something like that.”
Brett and Father Dave also suggest the possibility that if the caller doesn’t see a group that works for him in his parish community, he could reach out to his pastor and see if he could start a group himself. (Original Air 10-10-17)