Cath news report- Lapsed Catholics and those who only come to Mass at Christmas and Easter outnumber practising Catholics, with only one in seven Australian Catholics going to Church every Sunday, reports the Age.
Many parishes use the Holy Week to reach out to occasional visitors. At the start of Lent, Boston's Cardinal Sean O'Malley launched this year's ''Catholics Come Home'' campaign - credited with persuading 200,000 Americans to return to the church.Of the five million-plus Australians who identified as Catholics in the 2006 census, only 13.8 percent go to church every Sunday - and local parishes ready themselves for this, the paper adds.
Sydney's Archbishop George Pell sent a research team to the US in January to see if the campaign, with its heavy use of FaceBook, Twitter and TV commercials, could work in Australia.
On a smaller scale, Brisbane's Liturgical Commission has published a guide to welcoming ''new and occasional Catholics'': ''Easter Masses are one of the key times for connecting with those who attend church infrequently,'' it reads.
The guide recommends ''hospitality ministers'' on the doors, and warns against filling the weekly parish newsletter with ''in-house'' news or ''churchy'' language.
There is no organised ''welcome back'' campaign in Melbourne, but many parishes make an extra effort to welcome the walk-ins.
''Most parishes at least double and sometimes treble'' over Easter, says Father John Salvano, Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral. At Easter, the cathedral prints extra booklets ''with literally every response you need'' to follow the service.
''After all this time, the words still come back to you,'' says Nicole Mitchell, 35, who started going to Mass this year - for the first time since her teens - because her oldest daughter is in prep at a Catholic school.
Ms Mitchell brought both her daughters to St Patrick's ''so they could see something special, with the beautiful music and the candles''.
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