Over the past two and a half years, I have had the privilege of working with Dr Trudy Dantis, Dr Stephen Reid and Leith Dudfield at the National Centre for Pastoral Research (NCPR) towards the publication of Absent from the Table, a national study commissioned by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, exploring why Catholics in Australia who once attended Mass regularly no longer do so.

This morning, at the report’s launch at Mary MacKillop Place in North Sydney, I was invited to offer some reflections on its pastoral implications for the Church in Australia, particularly what its findings might mean for our approach to evangelisation, parish life and the renewal of our missionary culture.

While the report presents some sobering challenges, I believe it also offers real grounds for hope. Many Catholics who are absent from Sunday Mass have not lost their faith or their connection with the Church entirely. The question is how we respond to these connections, accompany people in their lives and invite them towards a deeper encounter with Christ. The full Absent from the Table report is available here.

Thank you and congratulations once again to the National Centre for Pastoral Research and all who contributed to this important work for the Church in Australia.

What strikes me about Absent from the Table is that, while it presents a serious pastoral challenge, it is not a report without hope. It reveals something perhaps surprising: absence from the Eucharistic table does not necessarily mean absence of faith.

Two-thirds of respondents say their faith remains important to them. Almost two-thirds pray regularly. And more than three in five retain another connection with Catholic life – through schools, hospitals, prayer groups, religious communities and elsewhere.

So what does this mean for evangelisation?

First, we should resist writing people off.

We can too easily divide Catholics into those who practise and those who have “left”. The reality is more complex.

Disengagement is often gradual. Leaving school, moving house, having children, work, caring responsibilities, COVID, disappointment with a parish, or simply the pressures of life can loosen one connection after another.

People don’t generally wake up one Sunday and decide, “Today I will become a lapsed Catholic”. They simply come less often. Relationships weaken, other priorities take over, and eventually absence becomes normal.

So, we cannot simply ask, “Why aren’t they coming to us?” We must also ask, “How are we going to them?” We “go” through relationships already present in their lives. We equip parishioners to invite friends and family. We create accessible places to explore faith before expecting someone to walk straight back into Sunday Mass. We accompany families beyond baptism, First Communion and Confirmation rather than allowing these to become points of departure.

The path back to the table will often begin with a person rather than a program.

Second, hospitality matters because small experiences accumulate.

Young parents in the report speak about the exhaustion of bringing children to Mass, anxiety about noise, or feeling judged when a child cries. Anyone who has sat near a two-year-old at Mass knows they do not always display an instinctive appreciation for liturgical solemnity.

But these experiences matter. For someone whose connection with the Church is already fragile, a cold welcome or sense that their family is an inconvenience can determine whether there is a next Sunday.

Hospitality is therefore more than someone at the door with a name badge. Who notices the new family? Who learns their name? Who introduces them to others? What invitation comes next?

This is not about choosing hospitality over reverence. We need both. The stranger, the restless child and the person who doesn’t know when to sit or stand are not interruptions to our mission. They are a part of our mission.

Third, evangelisation cannot be confined to the parish.

One striking finding is that 74 per cent of respondents value Catholic school communities, compared with 50 per cent who value parish communities.

Many Catholics absent from Mass are therefore not entirely absent from the Church. We encounter them in schools, hospitals, social services, youth ministries, cultural communities and increasingly online.

We sometimes consider these places “the peripheries”. But for many Catholics, they are actually the front door through which they encounter the Church. So, what happens at those front doors matters. A school enrolment, hospital encounter, sacramental program or digital interaction can remain a transaction – or they become the beginning of relationship, invitation and encounter with Christ. If people are there, our missionary imagination needs to be there too.

Fourth, we need renewed Eucharistic catechesis rooted in encounter.

Only 55 per cent of respondents affirmed the Real Presence, a quarter understood the Eucharistic elements symbolically, and a further fifth were unsure.

We could conclude, “Clearly we need another catechetical resource”. And, as someone who works in an evangelisation centre, I am professionally obliged to say resources can be wonderful. But I suspect another PDF alone will not save us.

The Eucharist still carries spiritual and emotional resonance for many respondents. Perhaps some have not rejected the mystery so much as never been accompanied deeply enough into it.

So yes, we need good catechesis. But we also need beautiful and reverent liturgy, preaching that connects the Gospel with life, personal testimonies that demonstrate conversion is indeed possible and life-giving, Eucharistic prayer and communities whose life makes credible what we proclaim at the altar.

People need not only to be told what the Eucharist is – they need to encounter the One who gives himself to us in it. And this leads to a central pastoral implication of the report.

We need to move from maintenance to mission, from a Church organised primarily around those already present to a Church that actively seeks out, welcomes and forms new disciples.

Maintenance asks how we can care well for those already in our pews, sustain our activities and meet the needs of our existing communities. All of this matters. But if these become our only concerns, we risk becoming a Church preoccupied with serving ourselves rather than reaching those who have yet to encounter Christ.

Mission asks a different set of questions. Not simply how we keep people coming, but how we reach those who are not. Not only what our existing parishioners prefer, but what might help someone encountering the Church for the first time to feel welcomed, hear the Gospel and take a step towards faith.

Mission looks at the empty places and asks: Who is missing? Where are they now? What might be keeping them away? And what must change in us so that we can draw near to them?

This is not simply about filling empty pews, but sharing in the mission of Jesus, who came “to seek out and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10).

The encouragement of this research is that there is often something there in those absent from the pews: a prayer that never quite disappeared; a Catholic identity still claimed; a childhood memory of faith; a connection through a school; a desire for belonging; a question about God. Even disappointment with the Church tells us something: the Church still matters enough to disappoint!

These are not simply remnants of a disappearing Catholicism but starting points for a renewed evangelisation.

Our task is to build pathways from contact to relationship, from relationship to invitation, from invitation to encounter, and from encounter to discipleship and the sacramental life of the Church.

So, the challenge of Absent from the Table is not simply to devise better strategies to get people back into our pews. It is to become a Church that goes out to meet people where they are, listens to their experience, accompanies them patiently, invites them personally, and offers them a clear next step towards Christ.

Ultimately, we hope to accompany people back to the table – not because Mass attendance is an institutional KPI but because at that table Christ gives us himself.

The empty places matter, and perhaps this report’s invitation is simple: don’t merely count the empty places, but ask who used to sit there. Go looking for them. And trust that, long before we arrive, the Holy Spirit is already at work in their lives and that, as we pray in the Eucharistic Prayer, “God never ceases to gather a people to Himself”.