RCIA Sponsor Question (required to attend two masses a week)

[Casilda]

A lot of Catholics these days have to practice their faith alone. I think this ought to be talked about more openly at confirmation and RCIA and the candidates advised on how best to do this. It’s great to have a group of supportive Catholic friends in your life or an appropriate ministry at church to slot into but not everyone will find these.

Apostolates can be vibrant ministries. Many have individuals that have taken Christ’s command to forsake everything for the gospel. My husband has traveled three continents with his apostolate and reaching worldwide through electronic means. Our parish is simply, home base, not our world.

 

[goout]

Apostolates can be vibrant ministries. Many have individuals that have taken Christ’s command to forsake everything for the gospel. My husband has traveled three continents with his apostolate and reaching worldwide through electronic means. Our parish is simply, home base, not our world.

In our parish the RCIA team does a good job of teaching and initiating. Potlucks are a good idea to have a social setting. Plus it’s something the candidate/catechumen can contribute to. We try to match people’s personal lives with a mentor.

The difficulty in our parish is after the Easter Vigil. The parish office struggles to get new people involved. Only people of a certain outlook are asked to start helping. Others are simply ignored. Specifically, people who are explicitly “on fire” are not welcomed. They just don’t fit the paradigm of the parish staff/office.

My wife and I have experienced this and we have been Catholic our whole life. When I reverted I believe I scared some people.
We’ve gone outside the parish to do ministry. We do nursing home ministry and we are mentoring a teenager. I still do RCIA but we are simply not welcome at whatever the parish staff is doing.

 

[casslean]

In our parish the RCIA team does a good job of teaching and initiating. Potlucks are a good idea to have a social setting. Plus it’s something the candidate/catechumen can contribute to. We try to match people’s personal lives with a mentor.

The difficulty in our parish is after the Easter Vigil. The parish office struggles to get new people involved. Only people of a certain outlook are asked to start helping. Others are simply ignored. Specifically, people who are explicitly “on fire” are not welcomed. They just don’t fit the paradigm of the parish staff/office.

My wife and I have experienced this and we have been Catholic our whole life. When I reverted I believe I scared some people.
We’ve gone outside the parish to do ministry. We do nursing home ministry and we are mentoring a teenager. I still do RCIA but we are simply not welcome at whatever the parish staff is doing.

This is very close to my experience. Our RCIA team was AMAZING. We were led by one of the priests in the parish and assisted by two lay leaders. The program was about bringing us into the experience of the church, not just reciting the teaching of the church.

In fairness, the clerical leadership in our parish embraces new members and does everything they can to involve them in new ministries. I was embraced by the clergy in my willingness and eagerness to take on ministry roles, and assisted by the lay leaders from RCIA.

The problem, for me, comes in dealing with other ministry leaders. They are so possessive and territorial that it makes it uncomfortable to be a new person. You can literally feel the resentment when you offer new ideas, or when the pastor brings you in to float a new initiative, or gives you a task that they see as “their” responsibility.

I think it is valuable to see RCIA as a broader process than just education, which means looking at the message we send to candidates and catechumens when we say that attending meetings is more important than attending Mass, or not to express your opinions about the programs, etc. If we view RCIA as a microcosm of how people will see the church, then we want to be sure that the message they receive is a positive one.

 

[JimG]

It’s been mentioned before, but I just want to clarify. The problem is not that a Catholic sponsor who leaves Mass for the RCIA ‘breaking open of the word’ has to attend another Mass in order to receive communion. No. The problem is not that he didn’t receive communion. The problem is that he missed Mass. A Catholic is obligated to attend Sunday Mass weekly—both the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist—whether they receive communion or not. A Catholic who leaves before the Liturgy of the Eucharist has not made his Sunday obligation—even if he receives communion afterward. He missed Mass. That’s serious matter.

 

[ConfusedLucy]

I guess they assume all the sponsors are local and non-working.