Father Michael White is one of the many blogging priests in the Archdiocese of Baltimore. He’s also the the Pastor of Church of the Nativity in Timonium. Recently, he blogged about an article in “Outreach” magazine about America’s largest churches. In it,  a researcher for the Pew organization was asked why, when discussing “mega-churches,” (defined as churches with weekend attendance of over 2,000) Catholic churches are never included in the count. 

That seems odd, because there must be a lot of Catholic churches in America with weekend attendance over 2,000.  You may very well even minister and/or worship at one. So, why do sociologists not even count Catholic churches in the “mega churches” movement?  This particular researcher simply answered, “Well, all the Catholics do is come to church, they’re not part of a movement.”

And, that is a damning accusation.  We can not settle for just getting Catholics (and young Catholics) to come to church – - and that is a challenging enough task – - but we need to invite them into full, conscious and active participation" as individuals collective into a movement of faith. Discipleship ain’t just showing up on Sunday, it overflows out of your life 365/24/7.