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Franciscan at Home

Forming those who form others

RCIA: Questions, Answers, Issues and Advice

This page on Christian initiation is offered in each issue of The Sower as an on-going way to address specific questions that do not necessarily get addressed in more general articles and training resources. The questions all come straight from the field, and have two sources: 1) from readers like you; 2) from issues raised during seminars conducted by the Association for Catechumenal Ministry (ACM) over the past nine years in various dioceses.

In this issue we cover the following questions:

Q: Under what circumstances may a lay RCIA leader/catechist give a blessing or minor exorcism to a catechumen or candidate?

Q: An RCIA director is frustrated in her attempts to get a particular inquirer to come out of his shell. He is marrying a parishioner in ten months, and wants to become a Catholic to have peace in the marriage. What are some suggestions that might help her to get him to relate to the process and begin to foster conversion?

Q: What if a previous marriage of one of our RCIA candidates is determined to be valid, and a decree of nullity is not possible?

Q: An RCIA team is somewhat at a loss for how to handle, pastorally and catechetically, a participant who has a mentally disability. What would you suggest?

The rest of this online article is available for current Guild members.

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Dr. Bill Keimig is Deputy Director of the Catechetical Institute (CI) at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio. For 15 years, he served as Director of Religious Education at St. Mary’s of Piscataway Catholic Church in Clinton, Maryland. Along with this work, Dr. Keimig served as a master catechist in the Hearts Aflame and Faith Foundations catechist formation programs for the Archdiocese of Washington, DC. Dr. Keimig has served as a speaker in many other settings, including at the annual St. John Bosco Conference in Steubenville for over two decades, and at major venues in over 85 dioceses. He served for nine years as Director of the Association for Catechumenal Ministry (ACM) for many years, which assists dioceses in training clergy and laity to do RCIA ministry, and was the managing editor of ACM’s series of RCIA texts currently used in thousands of U.S. parishes and in many other countries. He also served for nine years as a volunteer counselor for a local crisis pregnancy center. Dr. Keimig holds a Doctorate in Ministry from the Catholic University of America, and Master’s Degree in Theology and Christian Ministry with a Certification in Catechetics from Franciscan University. He also holds a Master’s Degree in Public Management from the University of Maryland in environmental policy. He and his wife, Heather, have six children running around: Rose, William, Julianna, Theodore, Elizabeth, and Gregory.

This article is from The Sower and may be copied for catechetical purposes only. It may not be reprinted in another published work without the permission of Maryvale Institute. Contact [email protected]

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