Can my children participate in RCIA with me?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Marnella
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OP, I would think the pastor wants to preserve your sense that this is a free decision all the way through the process–that is, that you could go all the way up to Easter Vigil and still decide in the end that you are not ready. When a family has a practicing Catholic in it, the children are allowed to go through RCIC while their other parent goes through RCIA because if the parent in RCIA decides not to go through with it, the children will still have a parent at home to make sure they get to Mass and support them in the practice of their faith. In your case, though–if you decide not to go through with this, where would your children be? That’s a reason to go along with allowing your children to wait to enter the church until you are there to be their sponsor. They are at the age of reason and have to make the decision on their own, but it would be intensely difficult or impossible for them to practice their faith with no Catholic parent.
 
I am open to whatever reasoning he has, and that quite possibly is his reason, the problem is he hasn’t given me a reason.

All attempts at communicating with him have gone unanswered or he has brushed me off in the case of last night when he said yes he got my emails and maybe we would discuss it later.

Perhaps he hasn’t communicated with me because he senses I would be disappointed with his answer, but that would be better than being ignored.

The decision is his, and I will have to do as he says, there is no other way. I will try and persevere.
 
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PetraG said:
OP, I would think the pastor wants to preserve your sense that this is a free decision all the way through the process–that is, that you could go all the way up to Easter Vigil and still decide in the end that you are not ready. When a family has a practicing Catholic in it, the children are allowed to go through RCIC while their other parent goes through RCIA because if the parent in RCIA decides not to go through with it, the children will still have a parent at home to make sure they get to Mass and support them in the practice of their faith. In your case, though–if you decide not to go through with this, where would your children be?
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They would still have their sponsors.
 
The sponsors are taking them to Mass every week from now until they go off to college?
 
We actually live right next door to the church, honest to goodness.
 
Marnella said:
We actually live right next door to the church, honest to goodness.
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The point is that your pastor is not going to let a young person take on the obligation to practice the faith when it is not clear that the child’s parents support the decision. That would constitute an undue pressure on you to get baptized even if you aren’t freely committed to doing it when the time comes. He needs to satisfy himself that when Easter Vigil comes you will be coming forward freely and without undue pressure that could have been avoided by exercising some patience. More to the point, it is preferable that you be your own minor child’s baptismal sponsor, even if the child has already reached the age of reason.

In the end, it is a pastoral decision, there are good arguments for having your children wait, and it is up to the pastor to decide what is the best course for you and your family.
Elf01 said:
Even easier then, assuming local sponsors. And the children wouldn’t need to be that old to be able to walk to Mass.
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But perhaps a pastor could be forgiven for wanting to avoid having minor parishioners attending unaccompanied on a regular basis, true? Or having the mother go through a baptism about which she has developed personal reservations in order to not let her children down? The more free her decision can be when the time comes, the better.
 
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PetraG said:
More to the point, it is preferable that you be your own minor child’s baptismal sponsor, even if the child has already reached the age of reason.
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A parent cannot be a baptisimal sponsor.
 
Elf01 said:
A parent cannot be a baptisimal sponsor.
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True.

In reality, however, it is the parent who does the sponsoring. Anyone here who has tried to practice the faith while living at home but with no support from their parents can attest to that. The pastor is not being too conservative by asking the one parent in the home who is converting to complete reception into the Church before having the children go through RCIC. (If one of the parents had already been recieved into the Church, we know it would be a different story.) Yes, he’s being conservative, another pastor might elect to handle the matter differently, but he is not being not out of bounds by any means.
 
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Yeah, at this point it’s more about how much of a nuisance I feel that he refuses to respond definitively at all. As I said, I can accept his reasoning, whatever it may be, I would just like him to give me a reason and not ignore me. I know we don’t always get what we want when we want it, I do have three children after all who I have had to teach this lesson to. It is discouraging that he acknowledged he received my emails though and just chose not to respond.
 
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I would get on that church’s Web site and look at the Bulletin. There will be a list of phone numbers in there, one of which should be a pastoral associate who is in charge of the RCIA program. Call him or her directly and ask for a face to face appointment ASAP.
 
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