“Lead with the beautiful.” That’s what theologian Robert Barron told a roomful of catechists at the Los Angeles Religious Education Conference earlier this year. He insisted that our Catholic tradition is imbued with breathtaking beauty from our art, our music, our devotional practices, our care for the poor, and most of all our love for […]
Conversion and the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults
We didn’t have to travel far for our latest RCIA institute. We drove a little over an hour to the scenic Monterey diocese, our neighbors to the south here in California. We met with over 160 excited RCIA team members from around the diocese, along with a few participants from San José. RCIA and RICA
Monterey digs deep into RCIA…in two languages!
1. Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults Why is this book important? The Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults is the authoritative teaching of the church on the purpose and process of initiation. It is the Vatican II vision of the initiation process that answers the mandate of Jesus Christ to go and baptize. What
Top five RCIA resource materials for your team
After “our team is too small,” the next-biggest complaint I hear from RCIA teams is “we don’t have enough.” Enough budget, enough space, enough training, enough resources. I learned a lesson about this a long time ago. My first parish job involved helping with a long-term church renovation project. The renovation took several years because
Is your RCIA team too small? Do you long for more help? Do you wonder why more people won’t volunteer? Maybe you need to think about smallness differently. There are advantages to having a small team. Once your team grows past a certain size, you might have to become more of a manager and do
Embrace your smallness: the advantages of a lean RCIA team
I was standing in a bookstore with my mother; we were looking at Bibles. Who knew there were so many? I expected to find “The Bible.” The choices between “leather” and “leatherette” alone were enough to confuse me. We also had to consider paper and hardcover, red-letter and family, amplified and…I don’t know. Quiet? And
What a Catholic nun and a group of Evangelical teenagers taught me about the Bible
The neighborhoods around San José, California, are famous for their garages. Behemoth companies such as Hewlett Packard, Google, and Apple all started out in humble garages around here.The Steves (Jobs and Wozniak) didn’t sit around saying, “If only we had more help.” Instead, they said things like, “We’re here to put a dent in the
How to start up an RCIA process from a garage
Sometimes I fantasize about being the RCIA Czar. I don’t really want to be a czar. I just wish parishes could get closer to the vision of what the Second Vatican Council had in mind when it called for the restoration of the catechumenate. Now you might be wondering how I know what the Council
Six things that are probably wrong with your RCIA — and how to fix them
During a recent trip, I looked up a parish close to my hotel and headed over there for the 9 a.m. Sunday Mass. Just before the opening song, a parishioner went to the ambo, welcomed everyone to St. So-and-So, and then read the parish mission statement. Mission improbable The statement was kind of long, and
Do your catechumens know your mission? Do you?
