Every year I struggle with whether or not to ask child catechumens to come during their Christmas vacation for dismissal sessions on Sunday morning during Mass. By this time of year, the families usually need a break and my family often goes out of town over Christmas. It’s easier just to not meet during Christmas. It’s easier to not be committed during Christmas. It’s easier for everyone to just be on vacation.

Do we take a break from discipleship?

But, then I start thinking about what that teaches child catechumens. Does it teach them that Catholics don’t go to church when school is not in session? That disciples of Jesus are on vacation during Christmas? That it’s okay to skip Mass and the Scripture readings aren’t that important for us to discuss anyway?Of course, we don’t want to give child catechumens any of those messages.

What should we do on Christmas day?

Furthermore, this year (2011) is even more complicated because Christmas is on Sunday. Do we do a dismissal session (also known as breaking open the word) on Christmas? Even though I am urging you to do dismissal sessions during Christmas vacation, I have to admit that we don’t do dismissal on Christmas. Please, comment in the box below and let us know if you do dismissal on Christmas! We’d love to hear about your experience. Instead, here is what I recommend for the Christmas season with child catechumens.

• Give catechumenal families a reflection and discussion guide for the readings of Nativity. In this way, even though you don’t do dismissal on Christmas, the child catechumens can talk about the readings with their family.
• If Christmas is not on Sunday, I urge you do the dismissal on the Sunday after Christmas. This is the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. The readings are so great for kids! Don’t miss the opportunity to reflect upon these readings with your child catechumens. The characters and the messages are riveting – especially for kids.
  • The magi, Herod, and Joseph’s dream to take the family to Egypt (Year A).
  • Sarah gives birth to Isaac; Simeon, Anna and the presentation of the child Jesus in the temple (Year B).
  • Hannah and Samuel; boy Jesus found in the temple (Year C).
• Give a little Christmas gift. I like to give the child catechumens a little gift on the Sunday after Christmas. A tiny Nativity set is my favorite.
• Do dismissal on the first Sunday in January. It’ll be the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God or Epiphany. Again, these readings are especially engaging for young catechumens and carry significant messages for disciples-in-training.
• You don’t need to have a catechetical session after the dismissal session. Celebrate the Liturgy of the Word, do the dismissal session, end with a blessing of catechumens and go home.

Don’t be a slave to the school calendar

Overall, I simply want to encourage you to do dismissal during Christmas vacation. Don’t get caught in the school year calendar that says kids are on vacation during Christmas. Sure, it’s true they are on vacation. But, being a disciple of Jesus Christ is a 24-7 commitment. And, our Sunday worship is part of that commitment. By doing dismissal with catechumens during the Christmas season, we help to reinforce the Catholic Christian way of life.

After you dismiss the catechumens from the liturgy, what happens? I’ve heard lots of folks refer to “dismissal catechesis.” Are you doing catechesis during the dismissal session? Are you doing breaking open of the word? Do you ever “break open” anything besides the word—the opening prayer or the opening song, for example?

Click here for a description of how I have done the dismissal session.

Share your thoughts about what you do in the comments box below.

1. Honoring the Baptized
2. Is my pastor right about dismissal?
3. Eucharist and communion—what’s the difference?
4. Five things your RCIA team may not know about the dismissal
5. Time to recover the prophetic power of the RCIA dismissal
6. A powerful conversion process for baptized candidates in the RCIA
7. What happens during dismissal?

Silence is awkward. Remember the last time you met someone new? After you exchanged names, your new friend asked, “What do you do?” You replied, “I’m a catechist.” Looooong silence. Awkward.

When we’re meeting with inquirers or catechumens, we try to avoid awkwardness. We don’t want to feel awkward ourselves, and we certainly don’t want the inquirers or catechumens feeling awkward. So we talk. We fill up the silence with chatter.

Sometimes that’s a good thing, especially during inquiry. The new folks usually don’t want to be responsible for the conversation. Often, they have come to listen to you tell them what they are supposed to do. Chatting can help put the inquirers at ease. There comes a moment, however, when we have to stop talking. For many of us, that’s difficult.

Do try this at home

I don’t have all the answers, but I have some suggestions. First, we have to be comfortable with silence when we are alone. How much time each day do you spend just being silent? No reading, no television, no Internet, no Facebook. Just you and silence. For me, it’s not much time at all. I suppose I could say my prayer time is silent, but usually I’m reading a psalm or going over the list of people I promised to pray for. I’m lining up my day in my head and asking God to help me with all my tasks and projects. If anyone else were in the room, they might say I was silent. But in my head, there is a lot of noise going on. True silence is difficult. Even so, if we are going to be comfortable with silence with the inquirers and catechumens, we have to practice being silent with ourselves.

Listen up

The next step is to listen. When I was in college, I learned about “active listening.” Most of us have had at least a little training in active listening. If you haven’t, see this article. I’m not claiming I’m very good at active listening, but in order to know when to stop talking, we have listen to what the other person is saying. If we are listening well, we will hear the needs, wants, and dreams of the person we are listening to. We will also hear a lot of what is not being said. Listening well will help you to ask insightful questions that will spur more conversation from your inquirer or catechumen.

Wait for the answer

Now this is really important. Once you ask a question—stop talking. This is where I get tripped up a lot. If I ask a question that is anywhere close to a vulnerable spot in the inquirer or catechumen, their response is going to be silence. They don’t yet trust me enough to share their vulnerability. So they have to think about it for a second. They have to decide if they want to answer and then carefully phrase how they are going to answer. All this usually takes about five seconds. But five seconds is often way too long for me to wait. I tend to jump in and fill the “awkward moment” with a clarification of what I meant or a change of subject. At that point, the other person is off the hook and feels no need to answer me. So here’s something to try. Next time you ask a question, wait 10 seconds. Then, after you get comfortable with 10 seconds of silence, bump it up to 20 seconds. I guarantee you that in your next conversation, if you can insert just three meaningful questions, each followed by at least 10-seconds silence, you will learn way more about your “quiet” inquirer than you ever thought you would.

Slow down

Another tip that works for me is to talk slower. When I get nervous, I tend to be thinking of the next point I want to make, even as I’m making my first point. To mitigate that, I try to think of my conversation in blocks of threes. For example, suppose you want to tell an inquirer something about your pastor. Think of three qualities of your pastor. Describe the first quality in as much detail as you need to. Then imagine yourself taking a sip of water. Or, actually take a sip of water. Then describe the second quality. Take another sip of water. Finally, describe the third quality. Don’t be surprised if, while you’re sipping, your inquirer begins talking!

Keep your recorder running

My final tip about silence I learned from a journalist. He would tape record all of his interviews while at the same time taking notes. When the interview was over, he stopped taking notes, but he left the tape-recorder running. He said that the most compelling part of the interview often happened after it was “over.” The subject would often relax and say something in a less guarded way because the reporter no longer seemed to be gathering information. You might think that sounds a little duplicitous, but you are not using a tape recorder and you are not looking for a scandalous scoop. You are just using your new skill of not talking to give your inquirers and catechumens a chance to say something meaningful. So, when your session is over, thank the inquirers or catechumens for coming, stand up, gather your things, but keep your mental tape-recorder running. And try not to say too much.

Mother Teresa said, “We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence…. We need silence to be able to touch souls.” Try some of these tips for being silent and see how deeply you will touch souls.

How do you do it?

And please offer your own tips. In what ways have you used listening skills and silence to lead people to a deeper experience of Jesus? Share your thoughts in the comments box, because your experience will help others in their conversations.

One of the things I love about the catechumenate is the sense of community that happens within the formation group. The team bonds more closely together, inquirers take that “leap of faith” together in the Rite of Acceptance, baptized candidates share their common love of Christ and how they find the fullest expression of that love in the Eucharist, and sponsors come to a level of faith they never thought possible.

It is an amazing and awesome process to be a part of. It humbles me and fascinates me still, after more than 30 years of doing this.

Cocoon-based conversion

But for the last few years, something has troubled me. It seems to me that the teams I’ve been a part of have been very good at creating a “faith cocoon.” We created a safe place where all of us in the process—no matter where we are on the faith journey—can share and grow more deeply in our faith. We experience conversion.

The problem is, the rest of the parish isn’t undergoing a similar ongoing conversion. Would that they were, but that’s not what is happening in most places. What often happens, then, is that neophytes and new Catholics are set free from that safe warm cocoon sometime after Easter. We shoo them off into the larger parish that is, by comparison, somewhat cold, large, and unfamiliar. Sometimes the new Catholics feel disoriented. Sometimes they want to stay in the catechumenate. Sometimes they drift away. Sometimes they find another congregation—often Evangelical or Pentecostal—because they feel a strong sense of welcome and vibrant faith there.

What has bothered me about the way I have led teams in the past is that I began to feel like the inquirers were joining the “RCIA” more than joining “St. Flocellus Parish” or the “Roman Catholic Church.” Of course what they are actually joining is Jesus Christ. The problem is that while they learn to find Christ in the small-group experience of the catechumenate, they have difficulty finding Christ in the parish church or the universal church.

What do you think?

I’d love to hear about your experiences. Do your neophytes and new Catholics immediately feel at home in the parish after their initiation or reception? Do they feel lost without the catechumenate group to support them? How have your sponsors and godparents been helpful with all of this?

When I first heard about the dismissal of the catechumens from the Sunday Mass, it was an “I-could-have-had-a-V8-smack-on-the-forehead” moment. I instantly saw the catechetical value for parish communities. If mid-pew Catholics saw people processing out of church in the middle of Mass, what would they think? How would they deal with the disruption? Who would they ask about what is going on? Would they become curious enough to explore their own reasons for staying?

Is the RCIA dismissal prophetic?

That was a very long time ago, and now, more than 30 years later, the dismissal ritual has lost much of its prophetic edge. The focus has shifted from the dismissal itself to what happens with the catechumens after the dismissal. But note that the what the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults says that they do and what they actually do in many cases do not align.

Here is what the rite says:

After the dismissal formulary the group of catechumens goes out but does not disperse. With the help of some of the faithful, the catechumens remain together to share their joy and spiritual experiences. (67)

Here are some of the things we often say, but the RCIA does not say. The catechumens are not necessarily dismissed to:

• break open the Sunday readings
• do lectionary-based catechesis
• do dismissal catechesis
• be nourished by God’s word
• form community with one another as a small group

Some of those things could happen after the dismissal, but the rite is not asking for them. All the rite asks for is that the catechumens be dismissed and that they do not disperse so that they can share their joy.

So what’s going on here? Why have we made such a big deal about what takes place after the dismissal and paid such scant attention to the dismissal itself? To answer that, we have to put our liturgist hats on. Remember that everything in the liturgy is, in and of itself, catechetical. That is, the way we do liturgy teaches us what we believe. For most of us who were raised in western educational systems, our tendency is to think of liturgy mostly as a celebration and to think of it less as a catechetical event. So, once the catechumens are dismissed, we tend to think we must “break open” the word of God so they understand it. We don’t often think of the dismissal session as a time to just say, wow, that Liturgy of the Word was totally awesome!

How does the rite teach?

To make “Awesome, dude!” an authentic response to the word, the Liturgy of the Word would have to be celebrated in an way that is actually awesome. That is usually something that is out of our control as RCIA team members, so we focus on what we can control—the dismissal session itself. But let’s imagine we live in a parallel universe where every Sunday in your parish the Liturgy of the Word is off-the-hook amazing. What would happen at your place? What would happen next? Do you imagine parishioners would just nod to each other in silent approval? What happened to you last time you really experienced the word of God at Sunday Mass in a way that made you soul shiver?

What happened to me is that I felt moved, compelled, to “share my joy.” The way I do that, Catholic that I am, is to offer my joy as a sacrifice of praise that culminates in sharing in eucharistic communion with the Body of Christ. But the catechumens cannot yet do that. Still, if the word does what it is supposed to do, they catechumens will have a compelling urge to “share their joy” as well. So instead of requiring them to just sit on their hands while the rest of us are offering praise like crazy, they are “kindly dismissed before the liturgy of the eucharist begins” (RCIA 75.3).

The dismissal, then, and the sharing of joy that follows, is a profoundly liturgical act in the same way the gathering of the faithful around the altar of sacrifice and praise is liturgical. All of us—catechumens and faithful—are converted by God’s word. We are all compelled to respond in praise and thanksgiving. However, the way that we do that is determined by our differing roles in the worshiping assembly.

What we learn from all this

What the catechumens “learn” from their dismissal is that a joyful response to God’s saving word is required of us. What Catholics learn is that our sharing in the sacrifice of the Mass is both a privilege and a responsibility of baptism. The challenge for those of us on RCIA teams is to influence our parish worship in such a way that that liturgy—especially the dismissal—teaches that by the way it is celebrated.

1. Honoring the Baptized
2. Is my pastor right about dismissal?
3. Eucharist and communion—what’s the difference?
4. Five things your RCIA team may not know about the dismissal
5. Time to recover the prophetic power of the RCIA dismissal
6. A powerful conversion process for baptized candidates in the RCIA
7. What happens during dismissal?

The very first time I heard about the RCIA was at a diocesan information meeting in St. Louis in 1982. I don’t remember a lot about the meeting, but the one thing that really grabbed my attention was when the presenter said that we would be dismissing the catechumens from Mass after the homily. At the time, that was such an unheard of idea that I knew instantly it would cause a great stir in parishes. And indeed, it did cause an initial shock in parishes that implemented the dismissal. Many other parishes decided to simply not do it because it was such a radical departure from the way we had always done things.

It seems like we have gotten over the initial shock, but there is still a lot of resistance to the dismissal. There is also a lot of confusion about it. So here are a few thoughts of mine about why I think it is important. I’d love to hear yours as well.

Hostility or hospitality?

I don’t hear this as often, but there used to be a refusal to dismiss catechumens because it seemed inhospitable. I hope that thinking has died out. We are not sending the catechumens away because they are somehow unworthy. We’re sending them out to do the work that is appropriate to their order in the Body. The job of the Order of Catechumens is to hear the Word of God. During the dismissal session, they focus more intently on the Word, listening deeply to God’s call to them. This is an essential part of their training in the Christian life.

Don’t do catechesis

Another reason for not dismissing is parishes say they don’t have enough catechists. This is a confusion. The dismissal is not a time for catechesis. It is a time for reflection, prayer, and faith sharing the flows from God’s Word at that moment. The leader does not need to be a catechist. He or she only needs to be someone who can lead a reflection on faith. That could be a youth minister, a first communion preparation catechist, a choir member, a lector, someone from the parish council, a Bible study participant, or a member of the Women’s Guild. It could even be a catechumen who has some experience with the dismissal process. Or it could be a neophyte who has been through at least a year’s worth of dismissals already.

A single exception

A somewhat legitimate reason to skip the dismissal that sometimes comes up is that a parish has only one catechumen. I think you could do a dismissal session with only one or two catechumens, but it is true that having a few more participants is beneficial. If you decide not to dismiss the lone catechumen, it is still important to break open God’s word with him or her. You would simply do it after Mass instead of after the homily. After Mass, you could gather a few of the baptized to also share faith and the catechumen will not seem so isolated.

Keep the baptized candidates in the Mass

Here is one of the biggest confusions. Oftentimes, a Protestant who is married to a Catholic—and who has been going to Mass for years—decides he wants to become Catholic. Too often, the pour soul is stuck into the catechumenate and is then sent forth from the liturgy every Sunday without his wife. These people almost never belong in the catechumenate. Someone who has been to Sunday Mass regularly for years is catechized. They might need more catechesis, but they do not require the beginning conversion level of catechesis that the catechumens need. And since they are not in the catechumenate, these catechized Protestants would not be dismissed from Mass.

Keep the Catholics in the Mass

And, of course, parishioners should never be dismissed. That’s seems obvious, but we still get lots of questions about sponsors, spouses, and other team members. The only baptized person who should leave with the catechumens is the dismissal leader. By way of adaptation, baptized uncatechized participants in the catechumenate might also be dismissed. But my preference is that even these folks stay with the other baptized members of the assembly as a sign that they are in a different order—the Order of the Faithful.

So what happens in your community? Are you dismissing catechumens every week? What about in the summer? And what are you doing with the children? Please share your thoughts.

1. Honoring the Baptized
2. Is my pastor right about dismissal?
3. Eucharist and communion—what’s the difference?
4. Five things your RCIA team may not know about the dismissal
5. Time to recover the prophetic power of the RCIA dismissal
6. A powerful conversion process for baptized candidates in the RCIA
7. What happens during dismissal?

In the current TeamRCIA newsletter, we announced two Advent resources for faith formation—one for adults and one for children. What we neglected to do was give you link where you could find the resources!

So here is the offer, with the appropriate links!

(If you didn’t get the newsletter and you’d like a copy, sign up here.)

If you’re not already a SuperBundle customer, then here’s your chance to get a taste of what so many catechists have been raving about! Order the Faith, Life, & Creed Advent Bundle (Year A).

• Breaking Open the Word sessions for the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Sundays of Advent
• Catechetical Session: Overview of Advent
• Catechetical Session: Incarnation
• Catechetical Session: End Times and Heaven, Hell, and Purgatorgy
• Catechetical Session: Mary, Model Disciple

Each session includes clear, complete notes for the team and group leader. Each session also includes appendices filled with outstanding sample stories to help you prime the pump.

The usual price for all this material is: $36.74

But from now until November 30, 2010, your price is only: $30.99.

And here’s a bonus! If, after experiencing Faith, Life, & Creed during Advent, you would like to purchase the entire year, the amount you paid for Advent will be credited to your full-year sale.

 

Click here to order your Advent Bundle of Faith, Life, & Creed.

 

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Another Advent special: Children’s catechesis

Order the Friends on the Way: Children’s Catechumenate Resource Advent Bundle (Year A).

The FTW Advent Bundle includes all dismissal and catechetical sessions for children for all four Sundays of Advent.

Each session is self-contained and includes:

• A dismissal/breaking open the word segment based on the Sunday readings
• A lesson plan that also flows from the Sunday readings and a link to a doctrinal teaching from the Catechism of the Catholic Church
• An optional intergenerational activity that can be done on-site or at home with the family
• A handout to give to families to help them reflect on their faith together

Friends on the Way is usually sold as an annual unit of 52 Sundays for $130.00.

However, from now until November 30, you can order just the four Sundays of Advent for just $7.69.

And here’s a bonus! If, after experiencing Friends on the Way during Advent, you would like to purchase the entire year, the amount you paid for Advent will be credited to your full-year order.

Click here to order your FTW Advent Bundle.

This weekend, I’ll be leading an institute in the Los Angeles archdiocese that focuses on the cathechumenate period (sponsored by the North American Forum on the Catechumenate). One of my presentations is on the minor rites that might be celebrated during that time. Lately, I’ve been using an online service, Prezi.com, to create my presentations. It’s much more fun than PowerPoint. See what you think, and offer your comments!

For Christmas, a friend gave me The Complete Robuchon, which is 800 recipes for “French home cooking for the way we live now.” My friend and I both love to cook, although she is much more serious about it than I am. She takes classes from important chefs, stocks her pantry with sea salts from around the world, and has more All-Clad pans than some women have shoes. Still, she gave me this very serious cookbook as “re-gift” because, she said, I’m more of an artist than she is in the kitchen. And this is a book about art.

The art of eating

You’ll have to come over for dinner some night to determine which of us is more the artist. I thought her comment was odd, though, because I’m what folks call a “recipe cook.” Because she is better trained than I am, my friend can whip up wonderful meals without a cookbook in sight. I’m constantly double-checking myself against the “experts” as I cook. Whether you wing it or cook by the book, however, Joel Robuchon says something important about “the art of eating”:

Proper nourishment calls for a certain balance, within each meal and from one to the next. To be healthy, then, as well as engaged by the singular pleasure of eating, we must all find ways of varying what we eat. We may think of meat or fish as the center of a meal, but fruit, vegetables, dairy products, and grains should find their way to the table whenever we sit down to eat. The proportions may vary according to individual tastes and nutritional requirements, but no single food alone makes a satisfying meal.

He then goes on to explain the intangibles that go into the art of, not eating, but feeding others:

• You must first of all avoid overwhelming them, especially with heavy dishes served from beginning to end.
• At the same time, try to find something that will tie the whole meal together such as a common flavor note struck in several courses.
• You must also take into consideration your guests’ tastes, inevitable allergies, and religious requirements.
• Don’t forget that you will want to spend some time with your friends or family, away from the kitchen.
• The finest meals are planned with the season in mind.

A recipe for formation

I know you won’t be shocked when I tell you I think this is very similar to how we should think of our formation efforts. If we think of formation as meal-sharing, we can learn a lot. You can be a “recipe cook” when it comes to formation and still be an artist. The key is balance—and keeping the needs of your guests at the forefront of your planning. There is no one form of catechesis that is going to be satisfying. You need to vary what you are feeding the catechumens. Specifically:

• You don’t want to overwhelm them with heavy doctrines from beginning to end.
• Inquirers need a lot of appetizers—small but enticing bites of the best of our faith.
• Along with the main doctrinal courses, catechumens need plenty of side dishes of customs and practices along with well-matched wines of sparkling community and enlivening friendships.
• The elect need to be taught how to harmonize their faith the way the French balance a chorus of cheeses between the main course and dessert.
• And the neophytes are to be indulged in the eternal sweetness of God’s saving grace—much like a kid in a candy store.

Cook for who is coming to dinner

The thing that moves this method of formation beyond recipe and into art is knowing when to put down the book and take up the relationship. An artist doesn’t put a meal on the table just because some French chef said this tastes good with that. An artist starts with the question—what would my friends like to eat? What would delight them? What would feed not just their stomachs, but their spirits as well? What would make them leave the table completely satisfied and at the same time longing for so much more?

If we can serve up that kind of dish for the catechumens, we’ll all be artists of faith.

1. What research says about teaching adults in the RCIA
2. The right way and the wrong way to do a “teaching Mass”—according to the pope
3. How to provide a complete RCIA catechesis: use liturgical symbols
4. What does the RCIA mean by “uncatechized”?
5. Reimagining catechesis for RCIA
6. A French chef’s guide to the RCIA
7. A step-by-step guide to mystagogy
8. Mystagogy My Mother Could Do

On this All Saints Day, I have a proposal. Let’s not rename the catechumens with saint names. Many of them come to us with saint names already, but not all of them do. As I said in The Way of Faith, I once had a child catechumen named “Pebbles.” Let’s just say the topic of renaming came up.

The reason the giving of a baptismal name is even an issue stems from the 1917 Code of Canon Law. Well, it probably goes back farther than that, but most of us don’t date back that far ourselves, so it will do for an arcane reference. The old code says:

Pastors should see to it that the person to be baptized is given a Christian name; but if they are unable to fulfill this, they should add to the name given by the parents the name of some saint, and they should inscribe each name in the baptismal register.

Long before the 20th century, the practice of the pastor insuring the child had a saint name morphed into the giving of a new name even if the child was already named after a saint. So, in fact, many of us have two saint names. And it goes on. When confirmation was split off from baptism as a separate sacrament, the tradition of adding a saint name went with it. The end result: Most baby boomer Catholics have three saint names.

The 1983 Code of Canon Law changed the rules. Now the only requirement is that pastors make sure the child’s name is not “foreign to a Christian mentality.” In other words, if you don’t name your child something like “Son-of-Satan,” you’re good to go. So we baptized Pebbles as “Pebbles.”

The post-Vatican II sensibility of the 1983 code is reflected in both the Rite of Baptism for Children and the Rite of Confirmation, neither of which include an option for giving an additional name. And the United States bishops specifically reject the notion of giving the catechumens a new name (see RCIA 33.4).

Even so, I have to tell you, I was having a little trouble with “Pebbles” when I first realized this could possibly be the name of a future saint. Then I read this paragraph in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

God calls each one by name. Everyone’s name is sacred. The name is the icon of the person. It demands respect as a sign of the dignity of the one who bears it. (2158)

Pebbles loved her name, and she loved Jesus. In the end, it was a great joy to see her become one with the Lord, named for Christ with the name she had known all her life. That’s when I resolved to never rename a catechumen.

Here are some previous posts from TeamRCIA that have to do with naming:

• Choosing a confirmation name
• Should the elect choose a baptismal name?