Musings of a Catholic Convert

Back from vacation and, as expected, I'm swamped with work.  The workday hasn't even started yet and I already feel the weight of what is about to fall on me.  Oh well.  I had a good vacation and I enjoyed seeing my grandmother.  I'm even a bit relaxed.  

NOW ARE YOU READY?

Dudes, we are in EASTER!  I would love to hear about your parish's Easter Vigil celebrations, especially from those of you who have recently been brought into the Church.  DETAILS PLEASE. I would love to hear from any "Catholic convert" out there.  What is your story?  Seriously, people, join this Catholic blog community and share your story with us.  If you know people who have just come into the Church, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE ask them to consider creating a free Catholic blog on this site.  Not only will it be encouraging for us to read their conversion stories, but it will be great for us to be able to minister to their families through our prayers and encouragement.

This is going to be fun!

This year in RCIA we’ve launched into offering a year-round precatechumenate. Practically speaking, this means there will always be an RCIA “cohort” for seekers to join, any time of the year. Our main program still pretty much runs August to June (including Mystegogy and Neophyte sessions), but now we have a second group that began 3 weeks ago.

These two teams run independent of one another. It is possible that these candidates (we do not currently have any unbaptized persons in the new group) could come into the Church in July or August. However, what we are trying to do is to be faithful to what the Church has taught about RCIA. It is not a cut and dry “set” program or even fit into one particular timeframe. People come to RCIA from many different backgrounds and bring different levels of openness and spiritual maturity. Some persons are spiritually formed as Catholics and probably would not need nine months before being received. Others might need more than a year, and maybe two or three before they are ready. By making our RCIA more flexible, we hope to better accommodate these differences and address properly the individual needs of the seeker.

This is a learning process for the RCIA catechists. Not only is this the first time we’ve officially done this, it is also one of the few RCIA programs attempting to offer year-round RCIA. Finding practical tips from other parishes has been sparse. If your parish offers the year round RCIA, I’d love to hear from you.

In fact, why not create a blog and network with us! I can put you in touch with our DRE.