A blog post at Whispers in the Loggia drew my attention to Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana. I had never heard of him, but I’m glad now that I have. Turkson is Ghana’s first cardinal and was the spokesman for October’s Synod of Bishops for Africa. He may soon be heading up the Vatican congregation
Notional Christianity vs. radical conversion
In June, New York’s new Archbishop, Timothy Dolan, came to welcome the participants at a Forum Institute held at the Passionist Center in Riverdale. (I was there.) He said a lot of positive things about the RCIA. (Click here to read his comments.) Archbishop Dolan is a church historian as well as a pastor. He
I was in a parish outside my diocese recently, and I read a bulletin announcement similar to one that appears in thousands of parishes every Sunday. The announcement invited all those who had never been baptized, or who had been baptized in another tradition, or who had been baptized Catholic but not received the sacraments
Why no one should join the RCIA
I’m going to tell you the secret to starting and sustaining a successful RCIA team: Break bad habits That’s it. That’s all there is to it. Sounds too simple to be true? Well, you’re partly right about that. It sounds simple, but it is also difficult. Have you ever told a smoker to stop smoking?
The secret to a successful RCIA team
People often ask me who they need to have on their RCIA teams. By that, they generally mean, what job descriptions do they need to fill. In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins makes the point that getting the right kind of people is more important than filling the right job descriptions. If you
Who do you need on the RCIA team?
Thank you for the great job you’ve been doing! Last week, I was helping to lead a training session for catechumenate teams, sponsored by the North American Forum on the Catechumenate. I was so impressed by the dedication and commitment of the participants. Some of them have been at this 20 years or more. And
Kent Schaffer, on the Church Relevance blog, has posted the top 13 reasons seekers choose a church. The top three are: preaching teaching hospitality This would be a great discussion to have with your team. As you are making plans to start or improve your catechumenate process, how can you make the seekers’ top three
Several people have reported trouble playing back the video. We have a few ideas that might help, but we are not too sharp about computer stuff ourselves. So if you have a techie friend, he or she can probably solve your problem more easily than we can. That said, here are a couple of things
Troubleshooting video playback
Pope Benedict XVI has just written a letter to all of us about the current economic crisis and the solutions required to fix it. Download your free preview to the Reader’s Guide of this ground-breaking letter. Free preview of introduction section as PowerPoint (2.1 MB) (When prompted, click Open to view the file, or Save
Free preview of reader's guide to Caritas in Veritate
In preparation for the upcoming meeting between President Barack Obama and Pope Benedict XVI on July 10 at the Vatican, the USCCB media office has put together a nice summary of the 26 previous meetings between a pope and a sitting U.S. president. What struck me most was the length of John Paul II’s pontificate,
