One thing I’ve learned in this ministry is that everyone comes to it with certain expectations. This is one of the biggest challenges when working with your initiation team in moving to a year-round process. But your team and your parish leadership are not the only ones with certain expectations. Your seekers also come to […]
Is your RCIA open all year-round? Managing RCIA seekers’ expectations
Q: What is the history of the Easter Vigil being the moment for the elect celebrating initiation? A. This is a great question! I wish there were an equally great answer. The truth is, it’s complicated. There are really two questions here. When did the church start celebrating the Easter Vigil, and when did the Easter
Q&A: Why does the RCIA say that Easter Vigil is when we should baptize?
Rosie Rundell has been a Pastoral Associate for Seven Dolors Catholic Church in Manhattan, Kansas, for 21 years. She has been involved with RCIA ministry for over 30 years in four different parishes. She received her undergraduate degree from Benedictine University, Atchison, Kansas; a Masters degree in Pastoral Ministry and a certificate in Spiritual Direction
A year-round, apprenticeship model for RCIA gives me confidence that we are forming disciples
Q: How do we “see” the signs of readiness with children and youth for celebrating the Rite of Acceptance into the Order of Catechumens? A. This is a great question. Thinking through the process of discernment for children and youth really challenges us to understand why discernment is important in the first place. In the
Q&A: How do RCIA teams discern the readiness of children for becoming catechumens?
Don Roberts has been the RCIA Team Leader for the Parish Community of St. Joseph in Belmont, NH, since 2012. In the 1980s, he and his late wife Pat introduced the process to their suburban Albany, NY, parish. After a 15-year stay in Virginia, they returned to RCIA in their retirement in New Hampshire. Don
We’re flexible: How our parish does year-round RCIA
Jess Panlener is on the Discipleship Team at St. Charles in Hartland, WI, outside of Milwaukee, where she is the RCIA (Becoming Fully Catholic) director, baptism coordinator, and adult and family minister. She holds a master’s degree in historical theology from Marquette University, but she is a Wisconsin Badger through and through. Jess and her
Jesus’s timing is perfect—one parish’s experience of year-round RCIA
The renewal of the catechumenate is key to the renewal of our parishes. That was one of the points made in a recently released Vatican document, “The Pastoral Conversion of the Parish Community in the Service of the Evangelizing Mission of the Church” (Congregation for the Clergy, July 20, 2020). Given the time it takes
How the RCIA will renew our parishes after the pandemic
Q: How do we handle the reception of baptized candidates into full communion once the quarantine is lifted? A: Baptized candidates present us with a conundrum. In the United States, Canada, and most parts of Australia, the majority of those in our formation processes are baptized Christians. And the majority of the ritual text, the
Q&A: What is the right rite for baptized candidates in the RCIA?
Like all of you I’ve been hard at work at finding ways to keep our initiation processes going while our churches have been closed and social distancing has become the norm. But even as challenging as that can be, the greater challenge has been working with those elect and candidates who were expecting to be
Is your RCIA open all year-round? Managing expectations in a changing world
The Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults envisions the initiation process as a journey of faith (see RCIA 1). As soon as a seeker takes the first step on that journey, the reality of time changes. This shift in time, however, is not always obvious to either the seeker or the parish initiation team. Often,
Two kinds of time in an ongoing (year-round) initiation process
