Tuition for RCIA — now I’ve heard it all! Do we want converts, or do we not?
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There may be one subtle, subconscious difference that no one would notice nowadays, ever since that troublesome dogma of
extra ecclesiam nulla salus has been watered down into something virtually unrecognizable. (I will leave the questions of “who’s been doing the watering?” and “was the watering a good thing?” out of the equation. I’m just stating the fact.)
Traditionally, the Church sought to draw as many souls into her as possible, as they were seen as being in danger of eternal damnation if they did not come into visible unity with the One True Church. We bent over backwards to make it as easy for everyone as we possibly could, without compromising our own teachings, to come into the Church. Convert lessons were not long, drawn-out affairs, as there was at least a slight doubt that one dying without baptism (or even formal reception into the Church for baptized non-Catholics) would be saved. (I presume that if a sudden injury or illness, foreseen to cause death shortly, were to take place, the priest would go ahead and baptize the catechumen. But no one can provide for sudden and instantaneous death, nor for dying in one’s sleep.) You took the lessons, were presumed to accept everything you were taught, you were baptized, and that was that, Catholic for life. Given that mindset, charging someone money was the last thing that would be brought up. The priest might receive a modest stole fee, but he would never expect or ask for it.
Now it is more of an elaborated, lengthy reception process, supposedly echoing the practice of the ancient Church. I don’t care for RCIA because of the “groupy-groupy” nature of it and the duration (sometimes it takes two years, a scenario you never would have seen 50 years ago) — I don’t challenge the right of the Church to institute this, but it is not a change I would have made. The apostles baptized large crowds of people right there and then, I don’t think there was a two-year catechumenate. In addition, some people are going through highly personal, sometimes troubled, faith journeys, and would prefer to be received into the Church discreetly and quietly, in private, with only a note in the parish bulletin that they had been received — and sometimes not even that.
And I don’t think that contemporary RCIA has a “salvation versus damnation” aspect. Does it? I don’t know. I’ve never done RCIA. While Baptists, Pentecostal, etc., Christians rejoice that they have finally been “saved” and are no longer in danger of being damned to hell for all eternity, you will never hear it even so much as breathed that a soul has been won and saved — we don’t talk like that anymore. When saving one’s soul, versus losing it, isn’t seen as an issue, there’s not such urgency to baptize or receive someone. Again, EENS diluted and denatured to the point that, really, maybe
nobody is “outside the Church” unless they’re really,
really bad news. Who would this describe?
