Rita Ferrone is an award-winning writer and speaker on issues of liturgy and renewal in the Roman Catholic Church. She is a former parish and diocesan RCIA director and served for more than 20 years as a team member with the North American Forum on the Catechumenate. Rita is author of the monograph On the Rite of Election (LTP), and co-author of the Foundations in Faith series for RCIA teams (RCL). Her commentary on the liturgical reforms of Vatican II, Liturgy: Sacrosanctum Concilium (Paulist), is used in teaching worldwide. Rita is a blogger here and at Pray Tell, and a columnist at Commonweal Magazine. She also edits The Yale ISM Review, a publication of the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. She lives in Mount Vernon, New York.
I recently had the pleasure of offering a workshop for participants in the permanent deaconate program in the Archdiocese of New York. We had a great couple of hours working on Scrutinies, and I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that many went home fired up to do more with these rites in the […]
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
QWe have a catechumen who would have been initiated at the Easter Vigil last month, except her husband’s annulment had not come through in time. Now it has come through. She has been in the catechumenate for almost two years now. Can we celebrate initiation outside of the Easter Vigil? What about the Rite of
Can we baptize outside the Easter Vigil?
A song Rory Cooney wrote, called “Christ the Icon” (WLP 2005), is well worth listening to and meditating upon. The first time I heard it, on the CD of the same name, I didn’t take much notice of it, to tell the truth. The music was fine, but I didn’t really hear what the song
A number of years ago, I wrote a little book about election (On the Rite of Election, LTP, 1994) for the Forum Essays series. I felt that divine election was an important concept to grapple with, and that—for a variety of reasons—our liturgical celebrations of election were missing the boat. The main problem at that
Rite of Election: How Are We Doing?
I recently conducted a catechetical session for a parish that is planning to build a new baptismal font. To begin, I asked those who came—a rather large group of about ninety adults and teenagers—to recall a memorable experience of baptism they either took part in or witnessed. Everybody had one! They shared warm, enthusiastic memories
