Franciscan at Home

In this issue Bill Keimig answers the following questions:
Q. Is it liturgically appropriate to formally allow catechumens to choose a baptismal name earlier than the Holy Saturday Preparation Rites?

Q. The Code of Canon Law (CIC 865) says that adults to be baptized should be exhorted to have sorrow for personal sin. My pastor has the unbaptized elect and the baptized candidates both go to Confession prior to the Easter Vigil. His reasoning is that as adults even those not yet baptized would benefit from participating in this sacrament and would better understand how life-giving and freeing it is. Is there any problem with this?

Q. What would you recommend in terms of ensuring that a baptized participant has gone to Confession prior to making a profession of faith and receiving Confirmation and Eucharist?

Q. Where can the provision be found for Christian initiation of a person in danger of death?

Q. A person who is a strong, lifelong Christian meets with you about becoming a Catholic. He is absolutely positive that he wants to be a Catholic; he tells you that he has studied many books and listened to many tapes and is totally convinced that he wants to join the Church. He doesn’t have any close Catholic friends. He is upset by the idea that it might be many months before he is allowed to enter the Church and receive the sacraments. He asks if he really has to go through the entire RCIA process and all the rites.

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 eight years in various dioceses.

This issue's questions are:
Q. What is ‘Breaking Open the Word’ or ‘Reflection on the Word’? Where is this discussed in the guidelines to the Rites?
Q. Can the Oil of Catechumens be used to anoint candidates for blessings and minor exorcisms?
Q. Can baptized Christians be received into the Church outside of the Easter Vigil?
Q. What is the acronym RCIT used to refer to?
Q. What are the pros and cons of allowing a participant with a pending annulment case to go through the Rites of Acceptance/Welcoming. What about the Rites of Election/Call to Continuing Conversion? Are there any directives for this?

Susanne Lehne reports on recent research undertaken in US parishes on the catechumenal initiation of children.

During the past four years, The Sower has been publishing an ongoing series of articles about the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. In these articles, William Keimig expertly presented a comprehensive overview of many different aspects of catechumenal initiation of adults. The present contribution presumes that this background will be familiar and attempts a brief sketch of some of the issues and challenges arising from catechumenal initiation of children of catechetical age.

This page on Christian initiation is offered in each issue of The Sower as an on-going way to address specific questions. The questions all come straight from the field from readers and from others working in RCIA.

This issue addresses the following questions:

Q. A Catholic spouse, who happens to be very devout and knowledgeable in her faith, would like to be the sponsor for her husband. He is hesitant, but does not seem to have any strong objections during your meeting with the two of them. What would you do in this situation?

Q. How can I recruit godparents and sponsors for the RCIA process?

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 twelve years in various dioceses. This issue's questions:
Q. Our RCIA team wanted to explore some ways to more fully explore and make present Catholic prayer traditions and practices in our RCIA sessions. Any ideas?
Q. In years when we have teenagers coming into the Catholic faith through our parish, we’ve more and more felt the need to offer some kind of “follow-up” experience to help them jump in with both feet. At least we’d like to have a stronger neophyte year to “enliven” our teens with all the good stuff going on in the Church. What suggestions would you have?

The Compendium is Christ-centred and can be used in RCIA to draw people into communion with Christ and his Church.
This article explores the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church in relation to the Christian initiation of adults. Emphasis will be placed on the initial period of the RCIA and the on many useful ways in which the Compendium can be at the service of drawing persons to Christ and the Church.

The previous article to this series (Conversion in Purification and Enlightenment: A New Cross Embraced, April-June 2007 issue), included the following comment: ‘The sacraments of initiation are the climax, but not the end, of the process of conversion….The grandeur and exhilaration of the Easter Vigil…should be the beginning of a Catholic life of growing intimacy with God and self-gift to others that becomes ever more complete — a life, in short, of greater and greater holiness.’ Mr. Keimig explains this in more depth here.