I am currently reverting to the Catholic Church. We have been in a Protestant Church for almost 16 years. My husband and two sons are interested in converting to Catholicism and have been attending Mass with me for the past several months. I understand RCIA for my husband but I’m confused about how this works for my boys. I spoke with the director of Faith Formation at our local church and she was very helpful. She said that since my sons have not been baptized that they will go through RCIA beginning in the fall. Will they receive all their Sacraments through RCIA? Will they go all the way through Confirmation? They will be in 6th and 7th grade in the fall of 2013.
Thanks!
Elise in NC
Hello, Elise! Congratulations on your journey home to the Catholic Church!
I am the RCIA coordinator for my parish. The way we *usually *handle this is we would enroll the children in the parish’s religious ed program, and we would make arrangements for their Baptism through that process.
Our rule of thumb is to work through the religious ed. program for kids young enough to be part of it (K-8th grade), while older kids/teens would join us for RCIA. This is just a rule of thumb though, and we can (and sometimes do) handle things differently on a case-by-case basis.
It sounds like your parish does it a bit differently than we do, so my best recommendation is to ask your RCIA or religious ed. leaders how it will work. But here are my thoughts about the answers you might get:
If your parish/diocese does Confirmations pretty close to your kids’ age, or younger, then I would assume they’ll just do ‘the whole shebang’ at the end of the RCIA program – Baptism, Confirmation, first Eucharist. This is certainly the way we do it in my parish, but we don’t normally have pre-Confirmation-age kids in the program.
If Confirmation is usually done with older kids in your parish/diocese (I’ve heard of some where it’s normally in the teenage years), then they might use the RCIA program to prepare your children for Baptism and first Eucharist, but hold Confirmation until the usual age. I think this is probably unlikely…but it’s a possibility.
Like I said, your parish folks should be able to give you better guidance.
God bless!
