Nothing wrong with any of that. You knew when the liberals left and no longer desired pastoral oversight.
It was the philosophy underlying this quote that gave me pause, " Parish priests generally, hopefully, have better and more important things to do with their time than sweep through their membership lists to remove inactive names. "
I submit that knowing who is in the flock and who isn't is integral to pastoral care, and in the smaller church that is going to fall upon the priest or pastor.
Please read my post above. When I arrived I did try to reach these people and my previous post describes what happened.
AS for priorities. Both taking care of the sheep who do come and reaching out to the lost, I submit, take a much higher priority than going after lapsed members from 12 years ago.
When you come into a church you have no idea why people left years ago. Just because they stopped coming does not mean they are lost; they very well could be attending another solid, believing church. In my case, I couldn't even find 90% of the people.
Second, as for those you do reach, once you have let them know leadership has changed and invite them to return, there is little else you can do.
Third, sometimes people come back at a price. This actually happened to my predecessor. “I’ll come back but only if this or that or the other thing has changed…” These types are not really willing to commit to the church, they are committed to a church reshaped in their image. If you bow to that you’ve sold yourself and the direction of the church to the most dysfunctional of members.
Fourth. I’ll repeat this because it bears repeating, the first priorty is sharing the gospel with people who’ve never heard it, making disciples and teaching them to obey the teachings of Christ. If you spend more effort trying to find lapsed members than reaching out to non-believers, you are failing to keep the primary charge you’ve been given.