Every year we Catholics get a welcome jolt in the thousands upon thousands of new converts that enter the Church during Easter Vigil. In recent years approximately 100,000-150,000 people have become Catholic each year in this country. This is cause for great rejoicing and as one of those people I am very appreciative of my fellow converts. I can’t think of anything more joyous than being received into the fullness of the Catholic Church.

But there is a lesser-known and less-joyous aspect of all these conversions. I have heard from a variety of sources that almost half of all new converts are no longer regularly attending Mass just a year after their reception into the Church. Many who swim the Tiber are making a return trip out of Rome. For example, the former Episcopal bishop of Albany, who became Catholic in 2007 to much fanfare, has recently returned to the Episcopal church ^[1]. This is a serious issue and I would even say a crisis.

Most Catholic parishes pray for those to be received into the Church at every Mass leading up to the Easter vigil. But after the vigil, those prayers mostly dry up. We need to continue to pray for new converts that they maintain their relationship with Christ through the Church. We also need to work hard to make new converts feel welcome and do all we can to help them live their Catholic faith.

Next Sunday, if you see a recently-received Catholic at your parish, go up to them and strike up a conversion with them. You may very well be helping to stem a tide of swimmers going the wrong way across the Tiber.