My mother was in that category. For 20 years she wouldn't miss Mass or the daily rosary. Then her marriage situation was straightened out, he said, and she came back into the sacramental life of the church again. She was so, so grateful that she was greatly blessed with contemplative and mystical graces before she died. Father Scanlan specifically mentioned marriages outside of the church that often keep people from receiving the sacrament of the Eucharist.
People come back to the faith or join it for the first time for different reasons.
Father Scanlan recently talked with a woman who had been Episcopal. In her case, the saints are very important, the Communion of Saints, and she has such a love for St. Francis and for Our Lady. That is an added dimension to her, along with the Eucharist. Pastors, teachers and laypersons can study the beginnings of Christianity using a reservoir of early church documents, which leads them to roots in the Catholic Church. In the evangelical, pentecostal world, the tradition of Christianity from the birth of Christ to the 1200s or 1300s is absent.