By Michael Motes

(One in a series)

What began as a simple parish project has gained national recognition and more than 600 requests for "how to" information for Father Dan O'Connor, pastor of St. Thomas Aquinas in Roswell.

The project was "Operation Homecoming" and the idea was to get people to return to their Church, especially those whom Father O'Connor calls "RCRs" -- Roman Catholic retired.

After months of preparation, "Operation Homecoming" began in August of last year and spanned a four-month period of evangelization, culminating with a week-long series of parish events in November.

Father O'Connor spent three years planning the event, which he presented to his parish council for approval before officially launching "Operation Homecoming."

"The idea began to focus about a year after I became pastor of St. Thomas," he says. "I was asked by a parishioner what was being done about all the Catholics in the area who were not attending church. Frankly, I had to admit that nothing was being done. It was as simple as that!"

"About the same time," he recalls, "a woman spoke about a party in their neighborhood. We jokingly refer to the subdivision as a 'Catholic ghetto' because so many of our members have moved to it. Someone at the party began to count the Catholics there who did not practice their faith. There were about three or four couples. One man referred to himself as a 'retired Roman Catholic.' That term seemed to fit, and we've used it ever since."

Basically, the program was to have two objectives, Father O'Connor says. The first was to stress the fact that at baptism every Catholic receives a mandate to preach the gospel, which leads to the second stage, reaching out to those who no longer practice their faith and to try to help them.

With these goals set, Father O'Connor assembled representatives of the various parish organizations to work on an outline for the program.

"We knew of no parish which had done this before, so we had no guidelines to go by," he says. "This was our biggest handicap and we knew it."

A second meeting resulted in "the shell of the program," which Father O'Connor describes as:

1) Setting a budget, since the program was, in essence, a "marketing campaign." A budget of $2,000 was established, but the costs did not reach that high.

2) A "czar" had to be appointed to run the program. It was the pastor's idea, but he needed a key figure from his parish to supervise the numerous details involved.

3) The pastor had to be willing to run the risk of criticism from both within and outside the parish, ranging from "Why are you doing this?" to hurt feelings of well-intentioned parishioners who would not be asked to take key roles in the campaign.

Another important outcome from the meeting was the understanding that parish "regulars" would be heavily relied on to get the job done.

By September, everyone had been assigned a job and a timetable of events had been established. The following month, Father O'Connor "pitched" the program from the pulpit for three weekends, distributed a special "homecoming prayer" card and asked his congregation to fill out "prospect cards," giving the names and addresses of those personally known as "RCR's" by his parishioners.

"The soft-sell from the pulpit was a disappointment," Father O'Connor points out. "Although there appeared to be much interest in the program, parishioners were not turning in the prospect cards and after three weeks we only had 20 names."

As a final attempt at "pulpit selling," Father O'Connor decided to have a lay member of the homecoming committee speak at all Masses, distribute the prospect cards while he was talking and push hard for RCR names.

This idea worked, and an additional 110 names were received. By the time homecoming week started, all of these had been sent special invitations to attend the week of Homecoming events.

"Of the 110 RCRs identified," Father O'Connor says, "approximately 50 were names turned in by parishioners who were going to make the contacts themselves. Presumably, most of these contacts were made. Of the 60 other cards, we do no know how many were called nor do we have an exact count of how many parishioners were contacted personally."

"Our best guess is that 75 RCR's were called and about 25 were contacted personally. The fact that we were not prepared to 'log' our calls and visits properly was a serious deficiency in our planning."

While Father O'Connor admits that the figures aren't staggering, he is pleased that the first operation homecoming brought at least 20 RCRs back to their faith and put him in contact with approximately 100 others whom he hopes to "retrieve."

"It's amazing how many people really want to talk about their faith and the problems they face with it," he says. "Our next campaign will begin during Lent and with all that we learned the first year, we're really excited about the next homecoming."

To date, Father O'Connor has received over 600 requests for information on operation homecoming from all over the country. Undoubtedly hundreds of "RCRs" nationwide are once again united with their faith thanks to a simple idea that began in Roswell.