Br. Rich SFO:
, the Rite of Acceptance is supposed to be at the beginning, it is the Rite through which one becomes a Catechumen. I assume that you then have a year long “Inquiry”? Do you meet in different rooms by age group? If not how do you offer adults, adult level material, teens, teen level material and younger kids their level?
Yes, at least for children inquiry is year long. During Saturday am CCD we have 4 regular 2nd yr communion classes, 2 RCIA classes for children grades 3-8 (English and Spanish) for children, and RCIA in Spanish for adults. Jr. Hi is some overlap --True RCIA for youth grades 7-12 is during Wed. HS CCD, there are 14 in that class, 2 for baptism this year. Here confirmation is ag 16, so that is HS CCD basically, with post-confirmation classes open to all adults.
Sunday is RCIA/sacramental prep for adults in English. Confirmation well catechized adults is one (school year) or less for those able to accelerate the time spent on study. Only 2 adults for baptism, both just starting catechumenate. 8 Catholic adults for communion and/or confirmation, 2 non-catholics for full communion this year. We try to be flexible for adults, meeting their needs.
There is a lot of coming and going, starting and stopping, so we do not celebrate the Rite of Acceptance as a given until they really give evidence of wishing to progress and enter the catechumenate. There are so many dropouts especially with children after the first year that it does not make sense. From 1/3 to 1/2 of children and youth in CCD need sacraments, as they are from nominally Catholic families but sacraments are delayed for many reasons: recent immigrants, migrant worker families, military families, corporate transfers, and so many families in divorce/remarriage, civil marriage or living together situations with no commitment to Catholic values beyond cultural ties. We are really catechizing whole families with basically no Catholic background, so one year is not too long for inquiry period and initial evangelization.
RCIA/sacramental prep, especially on Sunday and the Spanish program is run as a family program, since if one child is not baptized, there is almost always other family members in need of sacraments. Deacon has joined RCIA team this year, so marriage convalidations and marriage issues, annulment etc. are handled much more expeditiously, and marriage theology taught much better now. BOW is 1/2 hour at the beginning of every CCD and RCIA class, break for snack, then rest of 2 hour period is instruction, by age groups.
Regular CCD texts used for children, Basic text for all adult classes are catechism and NAB plus RCIA sources from Ligouri called
Journey of Faith/Camino de Fe, comes in English and Spanish for all age groups, with supplemental materials, and we are trying to standardize. Our guideline for covering “what must be taught” is
Making Disciples from OSV, and RCIA ritual book from LTP.
I would like to have year-round RCIA (and CCD and adult ed) but people just do not come in the summer.
bottom line is – children who go through RCIA in 2 years or less almost never come back for mystagogy, or CCD, nor continue attending Mass, at least in this parish. Those children and youth who have at least a year inquiry have a much better “retention” rate.
