Musings of a Catholic Convert

Our new year-round RCIA is still trucking along, with a new Catechumenate period beginning tonight.  It will be interesting to see how the dynamic changes, if at all, as part of our group heads into the Catechumenate.  I still like very much the idea of having something available year round to assist men and women at the various places along their journey.  This flexibility seems to be helping, especially to inquirers who appear in March, April, or May.  As we continue to tweak and improve the system, I'm looking forward to see how things develop.  

I'm still a big fan of the year-round Precatechumenate.  If we are later able to add additional team, this will likely be a reality as well.  God grant that our RCIA team will grow as He continues to entrust us with men and women exploring the Church and the Christian Faith.

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.