Questions from a rookie

[LeahInancsi]

Br. Rich SFO:

Candidates can if they choose to, but are never to be required to leave if they do not want to.

In my parish, candidates and catechumen have been lumped together. This has not been a bad thing.

In fact, it has been a good thing. When the group leaves Mass to “reflect” on the scripture, the candidates have had as many or more questions than the catechumen. The candidates, also, haven’t seemed to be anymore familiar with the scripture than the catechumen.

Although, I’m an “elect” (formerly a catechumen), I know much more about Catholicism than most of the candidates. It’s very erroneous to assume that the catechumen are ignorant of Christianity or that “Protestants” are more knowledgeable of Christianity.

Be it not for my mother marrying out of the Church, I would have been a craddle Catholic. All extended family is Catholic.

End of rant.

 

[puzzleannie]

in this parish we “lump” everyone together because experience has shown the best time for everyone to meet is Sunday morning, and we typically only have one adult for baptism at any one time. We also find that everyone in the class agrees they would rather start with the basics and learn in a systematic manner, and even the “best educated”, that is Catholic adults needing Confirmation and non-Catholic Christians seeking full communion with the Church find as they go along they have a lot of questions on the very topics they thought they understood well. The contributions made by those in the class who are more versed in scripture can make are astounding and a great blessing (these are usually the Protestants in the group).

We have also found that those admitted into the Church after a minimal participation in a class, usually for pastoral reasons, who have not had a chance to become integrated into the community and parish life, after 5 years are no longer parishioners and in most cases are no longer practicing Catholics. This holds for children as well as adults. Also, those who do not come back after initiation for the 6-8 weeks of mystagogy are usually not practicing the faith and attending Mass regularly a year or so later.

what we do not do is celebrate the rites belonging to the unbaptized with everyone. we explain several times during the process why this distinction is made. We also do not have a rigid “hey it’s a two year class, like it or lump it” policy. Everybody moves at their own rate, we welcome people in all through the year, the class continues all through the year with a break in July.

the Bishop has reserved adult confirmation of the baptized to himself so that celebration is once a year, so sometimes there is a wait, but it works out because those people have time to regularize marriage situations, and become active in parish life–which is the single strongest predictor, in my experience, of whether they will still be practicing Catholics 5 years down the road.