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Volunteer leaders Antoinette Galindo, Joe Witherspoon and Tanya Roberts talk prior to a Landings meeting Jan. 23 at Our Lady of Angels Church in Burlingame. Landings ministry offers disconnected Catholics a forum for open discussion as they consider returning to the church. (Photo by Nicholas Wolfram Smith/Catholic San Francisco)
January 31, 2019
Nicholas Wolfram Smith
Nearly every Catholic knows a former Catholic. According to Pew Research Center, about 13 percent of U.S. adults said they were raised in the Catholic Church, but no longer identify with it.
How the church can respond to this mass exodus of members has been an ongoing topic of discussion. But one Burlingame parish ministers to disconnected Catholics by offering them the opportunity to discuss their concerns in a small group setting.
“Landings,” an international Paulist Fathers ministry started in 1989, is a discussion-based program led by laity at Our Lady of Angels Parish. It is designed to help people who have drifted away from the church or who attend a parish but feel disconnected from their Catholic faith.
“It really felt like home, like a safe place to be vulnerable about your fears, about the Catholic faith,” said Viennelyn Copero, who went through Landings two years ago after a long period of spiritual searching.
Copero told Catholic San Francisco she had grown up Catholic but left the church in college, feeling that she was not being “spiritually fed.” At other Christian churches, she found communities she liked but that ultimately left her feeling unsatisfied. A flyer at Our Lady of Angels told her about Landings, and led her back to the church.
Capuchin Father Michael Mahoney, Our Lady of Angels’ pastor, said people in Landings feel free to discuss their past experiences.
“They can voice their opinions or doubts without feeling they’ll be reprimanded for expressing what they know or feel.”
Father Mahoney added that many participants felt they left “a rigid, rule-bound church” and were surprised “they were able to express their views, even views struggling with dogmas of the faith.”
He added that “even if they cannot embrace the church and all its teachings and doctrines fully, they’re still welcomed. And sometimes that’s a revelation to them.”
The Landings program lasts for 10 weeks, with each meeting focusing on Catholic themes and questions. Early sessions discuss “Who is God?” and “Why follow Jesus?” while later sessions cover such topics as the sacraments and Catholic life.
Father Mahoney, however, said Landings is not a “teaching session” but a forum where people can re-examine and connect their own experiences to Catholicism and its doctrines.
“Rather than coming to them from outside, it comes from within the person themselves,” he said.
Tanya Roberts, Landings coordinator at Our Lady of Angels, said another strength of the program is its focus on group members sharing stories about their spiritual life.
“Each one of us has a story, and it’s super enriching and rewarding to hear other people’s stories. You realize even if you’ve wavered, gone off the path, drifted away, there are so many other people just like you who have had the same thing happen,” she said
Roberts understands where many of the people who join Landings are coming from, having left the church for about 20 years. She came back several years ago after seeing a church bulletin’s advertisement for a returning Catholics program.
“I went through that, and it was beautiful. It made it so much easier after so many years to go back to church and feel comfortable,” she said. After moving to Burlingame and joining Our Lady of Angels parish, she decided to start a returning Catholics program there.
The other volunteer leaders on Roberts’ team also reconnected to the church through Landings, which she credited with helping to strengthen the ministry.
Copero praised the program for creating a space for people like her to wrestle with their uncertainties about a church they had grown distant from. While not everyone who went through her program rejoined the church, Copero said for everyone Landings is “a good opportunity for introspection.”
“People either come back, or it opens them to explore again, and dig into their past, into faith,” she said.
Roberts said for both its leaders and participants, Landings shows the persistence of God’s love.
“What we’ve observed hearing all these different stories is people may leave the Catholic Church, but God never leaves us.”
For more information about Landings locally, please email landings@olaparish.org or visit the website for Landings International at www.paulist.org/ministry/landings.