Archive for the ‘Inquiry’ Category

How do you know if your inquirers are ready to celebrate the Rite of Acceptance? The RCIA gives us some clear guidelines to help us discern. Discover what they are in this brief video. See also these related articles:

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 [...]

ARE YOU SOMEONE OR DO YOU KNOW SOMEONE WHO… Has expressed an interest in becoming Catholic? Has a child over the age of seven who has not been baptized? Was baptized Catholic as a child, but has not celebrated the Sacraments of Confirmation and Eucharist? We offer an opportunity to come together in a small [...]

Is your initiation process “closed” for the summer? Try these four steps to get inquirers involved without adding a lot of extra work for your team. Invite the inquirers to come to Mass Invite the inquirers to parish events Invite the inquirers to parishioners’ homes Invite the inquirers to help with a service project See [...]

Why do we need inquiry for children? In the cases of younger children, it seems pointless. The parents have made up the children’s minds for them. They will enter this process and finish it because their parents said so. Why not start these children with Christianity 101 and go on from there? Thanks for your [...]

Here’s the scenario: You’ve just finished a long but wonderful Easter Vigil. After months of weekly meetings, leading dismissal sessions, and doing discernment interviews, all the Elect have been baptized, and you’re looking forward to the last few gatherings of the RCIA post-Triduum before you take a well-deserved summer break. As you’re gathering up all [...]

What should we do with people who just want to be baptized without participating in any formation sessions or rituals? Some people are shy and do not want to be put on the spot. Should we just baptize them because they desire it, or do we put them through an individual program, ignoring the benefits [...]

I was at a party recently, and I knew very few people. I was wandering around from conversation to conversation, trying to pick up a thread I could contribute to, and not having much luck. Then I realized I was standing next to a man who, I had overheard someone else say, was a tennis [...]

What do you do when an inquirer wants to get to the “nitty-gritty” about the Catholic Church and “God” and does not really want to faith share or hear other’s stories about God in their life? In the precatechumenate, the inquirer sets the agenda. So I’d answer whatever questions he had, nitty, gritty, and otherwise. [...]

One of the reasons often given for doing only a partial RCIA process is a lack of volunteers. So let’s look closely at how you can redeploy your current volunteers more efficiently. I’m going to imagine you have a team of three people, plus sponsors or godparents as needed. You may have fewer than that, [...]