Franciscan at Home

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.