Archive for the ‘Candidates’ Category

The Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults includes a Rite of Welcoming the Candidates as an optional rite that welcomes baptized but previously uncatechized adults (411). However, there is no rite for welcoming baptized catechized adults. As a result, the catechized candidates are often folded into the welcoming rite for the uncatechized. Who are the [...]

I was in a parish outside my diocese recently, and I read a bulletin announcement similar to one that appears in thousands of parishes every Sunday. The announcement invited all those who had never been baptized, or who had been baptized in another tradition, or who had been baptized Catholic but not received the sacraments [...]

People often ask me who they need to have on their RCIA teams. By that, they generally mean, what job descriptions do they need to fill. In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins makes the point that getting the right kind of people is more important than filling the right job descriptions. If you [...]

We have a new pastor, and he told us that we are not supposed to be confirming adult Catholics at the Easter Vigil. If confirmation is an initiation sacrament, what’s wrong with celebrating it at the Vigil? Your question raises a larger issue of who should be celebrating sacraments at the Easter Vigil. I’ve seen [...]

The news outlets are filled with speculation and commentary about Barack Obama’s transition team and his choice of cabinet members and White House staff. Yesterday the stock market rose 500 points simply because Obama announced who his Secretary of the Treasury would be. There are a lot of reasons that knowing who Obama plans to [...]

This past weekend, I was helping to lead a Concerning the Baptized institute, which was cosponsored by the North American Forum on the Catechumenate and the Diocese of Monterey. As described on the Forum Web site, the institute explores the “suitable paths to Eucharist for both baptized-catechized adults and baptized-uncatechized adults.” While I was there, [...]

One of the little-known (and oft-ignored) directives of the U.S. National Statutes for the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults is found in number 2, which states unambiguously that baptized Christians who are received into the full communion of the Catholic Church are NOT to be called converts. The term convert is to be strictly [...]

Apparently, Pope Benedict XVI was looking for ways to celebrate Saint Paul’s 2,000th birthday. After the Vatican Fire Marshal nixed the idea of a giant cake with 2,000 candles (the pope may be infallible, but not inflammable), the pontiff decided to declare this “The Pauline Year.” The festivities begin on June 29, 2008 and run [...]