[UPDATE: The survey is now closed. To see a summary of the responses, click here.]

Please answer the following questions as best you can, because TeamRCIA.com is developing new resources for your team. (If you scroll back up after you click on “submit,” you will be able to see a summary of all the responses so far.)

Thanks for all your insights and contributions to initiation ministry.

I’ve just finished the first draft of a new book for catechumens and candidates in the RCIA process. My goal was to help the catechumens and candidates understand what it means to see and respond to the world through Catholic eyes. The book isn’t a catechetical text. That’s what their parish formation sessions are for. This book is more about spirituality and lifestyle.

Now I’m in search of an effective title. The title has to be attractive to the buyer, which will be pastors and RCIA team leaders and members—people like you.

And the title also has to be attractive to the readers, which, of course, will be the catechumens and candidates.

So here are some suggestions. Please click on the most effective titles. You can choose more than one. And if you don’t like any of them, click on the comments link and offer your suggestions. Thanks very much!

Choose the most effective titles
So that we may bear witness: A field guide for catechumens and candidates in the RCIA process Royal priesthood: An introduction to the Catholic lifestyle for catechumens and candidates in the RCIA process Consecrated in faith: A guide book for catechumens and candidates in the RCIA process A spiritual journey: Guideposts on the way to becoming Catholic Drawn into the mystery: What it means to live Catholic The company of Christians: Expectations for catechumens and candidates in the RCIA process What do you ask of God’s church? A workbook for catechumens and candidates in the RCIA process Guided to the fullness of truth: How to see the world with Catholic eyes Training in the Christian life: A guide for catechumens and candidates in the RCIA process Filled with the light of faith: An overview of Christian living for catechumens and candidates in the RCIA process A living faith: Initial thoughts on Catholic practices for catechumens and candidates in the RCIA process Children of the light: A simple guide to a profoundly Christian life
	Current Results

I’m writing a guidebook for catechumens and candidates. My hope is to give them some ideas about how to look at the world through Catholic eyes. The book is not intended to be a “catechism” that gives them an outline of the faith. I figure you’re already doing that in your catechetical sessions with them. It’s more of an attempt to describe Catholic culture and spirituality to them.

How you can help

If you’d be willing, I’d like to get your help with two things.

• First, I’m looking for stories about catechumens. If you have a story about a catechumen you’d like to share, please post it in the comments or e-mail it to me at nick@teamrcia.com.
• And I’d like know what you think of the first draft of my book outline. What looks good to you? What is missing? What suggestions would you make?

Thanks for your thoughts!

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Scarcity and abundance
3. Consolation
4. Religious imagination
5. Catholic eyes
6. Seeing God everywhere
7. Word
8. Community
9. Worship
10. Service
11. What’s expected of you?
12. Preparing for baptism
13. Baptized Candidates
14. Reflecting on your baptism
15. Appendices

• Postures for prayer
• Catholic customs
• Annulments

Several people have reported trouble playing back the video. We have a few ideas that might help, but we are not too sharp about computer stuff ourselves. So if you have a techie friend, he or she can probably solve your problem more easily than we can.

That said, here are a couple of things to try.

Make sure you have the latest version of your browser installed. If that doesn’t work, try switching to a different browser. Diana uses Internet Explorer. Nick uses Google Chrome. Nick’s mom uses Firefox. The videos are playing fine on all those browsers.

IE http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/internet-explorer/products/ie/home
Chrome http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/make/download.html?brand=CHKZ
Firefox http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/new/
Safari http://www.apple.com/safari/

Make sure you have the latest version of Adobe Flash installed on your computer.

http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html

If you are viewing the video at work, try viewing it at home. Many work computers are set up behind firewalls that disrupt smooth video playback.

If you are viewing the video on a wireless laptop, iPhone, or iPad, try viewing it on a computer that has a hardwire connection to the Internet.

Start the video, mute your speakers, and let the video play through once while you work on something else. Then view it again with the sound on. Note there are two progress bars, one blue and one grey. The grey one is the download progress. If the download is slow, the blue playback progress bar will catch up to it and stop until the download progresses some more. If you play the entire video through once, it should play through the second time more smoothly.

Try viewing the video directly on the Vimeo site. To do that, click on the Vimeo icon on the bottom right of the progress bar.

If that doesn’t work, once you are on the Vimeo site, try switching to their HTML5 player by clicking on the link on the lower right below the video.

We sure hope one of those solutions works for you. If you have any other suggestions for folks to try, please enter them into the comments box. We can use all the help we can get here! Thanks everyone.

In preparation for the upcoming meeting between President Barack Obama and Pope Benedict XVI on July 10 at the Vatican, the USCCB media office has put together a nice summary of the 26 previous meetings between a pope and a sitting U.S. president.

What struck me most was the length of John Paul II’s pontificate, measured in presidential administrations. The first president he met was Jimmy Carter in 1979. The last was George W. Bush in 1991.

To see how you might use one of these points in your catechesis, read “How to lead a 90-minute catechetical session.”

The Way of Faith

Explain that the Resurrection of Jesus is the crowning truth of our faith, a faith handed down to us by the first disciples.

In the news

While Mexico or Havana beaches may be calling out to thousands of high school and college spring breakers, many are choosing to heed the call of God during their week off. Hundreds of students on spring break this week are hitting the Gulf Coast to help families still recovering from the devastation caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Ike. Others are also heading to the Midwest where flooding has destroyed hundreds of homes. (Spring Breakers Choose Outreach Over Vacation)

In the readings

He said to them, “Do not be amazed!
You seek Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified.
He has been raised; he is not here. (Mk 16:1-7)

In the tradition

The Church continues to sow the Gospel in God’s field. Christians, in the most diverse social situations, perceive the world with the same eyes with which Jesus contemplated the society of his time. The disciple of Jesus Christ deeply shares the “joys and hopes, the sadness and the anxieties of people today.” The Christian knows that every human event—indeed all reality—is marked by the creative activity of God which communicates goodness to all beings; the power of sin which limits and numbs people; and the dynamism which bursts forth from the Resurrection of Christ, the seed renewing believers is the hope of a definitive “fulfilment.” A world-view not incorporating these three elements cannot be authentically Christian. Hence the importance of a catechesis capable of initiating catechumens and those to be catechized into a “theological reading of modern problems.” (General Directory for Catechesis, 16)

The crack IT department here at TeamRCIA (pictured) appologizes if you’ve been trying to get on the site in the last 24 hours. There were some nasty coding and technical problems that we were up all night trying to solve. Okay, we were only up until midnight, and we were multitasking between fixing the site and watching Conan O’Brian, but we were on it. Everything should be alright now.

The latest newsletter of the North American Forum on the Catechumenate is now available.

Among the contents you will find:

• an appreciation and sampling of pictures from Forum’s Fifth International Convocation, November 6-8, 2008, in Cleveland, Ohio
• a fine reflection on the Catechumenate in relation to all catechesis
• 3 important resource reviews
• the 2009 calendar of Forum’s incomparable formation institutes taking place in dioceses throughout the U.S. and Canada
• and pics of Nick, Diana, Sr. Miriam, and other Forum members you may have met on an institute

Download the pdf newsletter (2.7 MB) here.

Reading II

2 Pt 3:8-14

But according to his promise
we await new heavens and a new earth
in which righteousness dwells.

The way of faith

• By death the soul is separated from the body, but in the resurrection God will give incorruptible life to our body, transformed by reunion with our soul. Just as Christ is risen and lives for ever, so all of us will rise at the last day. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1016)
• The church is holy: God is her author; Christ, her bridegroom, gave himself up to make her holy: the Spirit of holiness gives her life. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 867)
• The grace of the Holy Spirit confers upon us the righteousness of God. Uniting us by faith and baptism to the passion and resurrection of Christ, the Spirit makes us sharers in his life. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2017)

To see how you might use one of these three points in your catechesis, see “How to lead a 90-minute catechetical session.”

• Teaching secrets from the ancient church
• The Four Essential Doctrines the Liturgy Teaches

Under normal circumstances, the folks at TeamRCIA think big fonts are a good thing. But not when the fonts are typefaces that make the Web site look like a large-print edition of Reader’s Digest. If the Web browser you are using is Internet Explorer, you’ve been seeing a pretty ugly Web site here for the last several days. We apologize for the inconvenience. It took our IT department (pictured) a while to figure out what was wrong. We finally went to “font school” to get some answers. Click on the link below to access the learning center.

If fonts were human