DISCLAIMER: I do not need answer fast, and I’m not actually interested in becoming a Catholic. The purpose of this thread is just to sate my intellectual curiosity.
Assuming that I, a non-Christian, who wasn’t given any sort of religious upbringing, who’s fairly knowledgeable about the Bible but has never been in a church, Catholic or other, in his lifetime, suddenly had a genuine religious experience and decided to become a Catholic, how would I go about it? I assume it’s more complicated than just showing up on Sunday morning and trying to learn the words and gestures as you go. Who would you make contact with to start the process? How long does it take? Are there classes, practice sessions, etc.? I assume you’d have to be baptized or confirmed or something like that - how long would it take you to get to the point where they do that to you, and at what point are you considered a member of the church?
I know we have some pretty knowledgeable Catholic Dopers out there, so I’d appreciate if anyone could dispel my ignorance on this matter.
I know someone who had been a Protestant and decide to convert to Catholicism as an adult. They took RCIA classes at a Catholic church for several months and received Confirmation at the Easter vigil. I think the classes were part book learning with exams on doctrine and practices etc. and part spiritual development where you were more or less expected to be able to convince a priest that you were a genuine believer and sufficiently mature to understand what you were getting yourself into. If you haven’t been baptized, you would have to be baptized, but Catholics do recognize the baptism of most Protestants and teach that baptism can only be given once, so they don’t do it over again.
If that was the case, they’d be doing the RCIA wrong. It’s supposed to be faith-sharing with a group of members of the parish. Spiritual formation and discernment of readiness is supposed to be a group process, not a ‘quiz by father.’
I did this (went through the RCIA process). It is approximately a year of meetings for discussion, study, and prayer. The catechumens are ritually excused after the readings and homily and before the eucharist at Mass on Sundays, and go to a parish meeting room for this purpose. And there is another meeting during the week.
There are no exams. If you behave strangely no doubt it would send up some red flags. Except in very small parishes, there is a person or group other than the pastor who is in charge of the process, a priest is not typically much involved. Each catechumen must also have a sponsoring member of the parish who joins them in the study group.
During Lent there is a succession of special rituals for the catechumens during the regular Sunday Masses. You get baptized (or, merely confirmed, ie anointed with chrism, & receive first communion, if previously baptized in another Christian denomination) at the Easter Vigil, the Saturday night Mass before Easter Sunday, which is the most important Mass of the year.
The RCIA is a revival (after Vatican II) of the ancient process of incorporating new members into the church. Originally Lent was the period set aside for this purpose; the catechumens fasted and engaged in other penitential acts to purify themselves for baptism at Easter, the only time baptisms occurred. In the early church all new members were adults. Infant baptism, and the involvement of the whole community in Lenten practices, were both instituted later.
MOST people who convert do so via class, but you can also have private instruction from a priest. If you have a LOT of questions, need a LOT of details, and want to study the history of the Church in-depth, you could be a distraction in a class situation.
Ultimately, though, the person interested MUST “convince” the priest that his or her intentions are sincere, and there is a true belief.
The parish priest is usually not involved closely with the candidates because so much of their instruction happens while Mass is going on. The process is supposed to rely on group discernment. And while a person may get extra instruction from a priest, it most definitely is not supposed to be in place of the group faith sharing or instruction. The pre-Vatican II model of private instruction from a priest as the sole source of instruction is specifically abrogated – at least in the US. The RCIA is the sole licit way that new Catholics can be ‘made,’ barring very grave reasons, like danger of death speeding up the process.
And absolutely, there is flexibility. Recently a friend of mine was baptized in a small ceremony outside of the RCIA process because she is old and shy. Didn’t want to be baptized at a big Mass, and didn’t know if she would make it another year. She convinced our pastor to go a different route for her.
The norms for RCIA were made mandatory in the US in 1988 and full compliance in implementation hasn’t been… full.
It’s not about ‘having different sizes’ that ‘fit’ people. It’s about having a process that doesn’t short-circuit the importance of the specific rituals and the whole community’s involvement in both the preparation of the candidate and in celebrating those rituals.
Doing an adult baptism on a wedding anniversary rather than at the Easter Vigil is missing the boat considering the symbolism of what baptism is and what is being celebrated at the Easter Vigil. The celebration of baptism at a family celebration of a wedding anniversary takes its cue from the tradition of infant baptism. It should be the other way around, namely, infant baptism is supposed to be patterned after adult baptism.
What you experienced was what the Vatican II reforms was very purposefully and with full intent attempting to change with the promulgation of the RCIA.
Since she didn’t know if she was going to make it for another year, then that is the ‘danger of death’ exception I mentioned above. That’s not flexibility because of preference, it’s flexibility because of necessity.
Getting baptised/received at Easter is fitting, and it also has practical advantages - since this is a group process, it works better if everyone is more or less on the same stage of their journey towards reception. But it’s not essential, and baptism can be arranged at any time for reasons which seem good enough to the people involved - the candidates, their sponsors and the pastor.
Except the RCIA stays it should be Easter time, unless there is a good (or even grave… need to check) reason to do it else when. In practice, the reason not to do it at the Vigil would be more than “hey wouldn’t it be neat to do it at this time?” and more like “I went into labor on Holy Thursday, can we move it to Pentecost?”
In my RCIA group we’ve done it at Pentecost for people who joined the process too late to be properly prepared ready by Easter. We’ve done it on the Sunday after Easter for people who’s work commitments meant that they couldn’t take part in the Easter ceremonies. We’ve done it before Easter so that someone could be baptised before being married.
(It’s possible that in Australia we’re more relaxed about this than in the US.)
There is apparently some flexibility in the process. My husband went through RCIA about 20 years ago and
None of the instruction was while Mass was going on. The group met once or twice a week in the evening.
Although there was no private instruction from a priest, most weeks one of the parish priests was present at the meeting although I don’t know whether that was normal (all the priests and the DRE had thought he was already Catholic as our kids attended the parish school and he was very involved in school and parish activities and that may have prompted the priests to attend)
The catechumen was not dismissed after the Liturgy of the Word. This may have been because the group did not attend Mass together, my husband was the only Catechumen and our parish had six or seven Masses per weekend and no one would know which one he was attending.
Folks need to remember that how it was done at your parish at a specific time doesn’t mean they did it according to the way it was supposed to be done. That’s not an issue of flexibility, it’s an issue of compliance.
Many priests and parishes were used to the old way of ‘convert training’ and when the new norms were decreed, they either ignored them or they implemented them partially. The reason they were partially implemented could be because of practicalities, e.g., a parish couldn’t get enough volunteers to field a team to provide catechesis on a Sunday, or to make it a full-year and multi-year process. Or, they were ignorant of the norms. Or, the pastor just didn’t care.
I know for a fact that the compliance with the norms for my diocese is low. Some parishes don’t even have an RCIA process, or, what they have is only partially implemented. Again, that’s not because of flexibility, it’s a matter of lack of compliance.
In the US, the norms for the RCIA were made mandatory for all parishes and any other model of adult initiation was abrogated. Any flexibility (i.e., dispensation from the norms) should only be made on a case-by-case basis by the pastor and only for a very good reason.
Care to link to any official document that says the Catechumens must be dismissed after the Litugy of the Word, the instruction *must *be given while the Liturgy of the Eucharist is going on or that priests cannot attend the meetings? Because I looked, and couldn’t find anything like that. Couldn’t even find any unofficial documents that said those things.
BTW flexibility on a case by case basis for good reason is flexibility nonetheless.
Wait, there are exams? So is it possible not to fail out of conversion school? “I’m sorry, but your scores aren’t good enough to become a Catholic. But you might qualify as a Unitarian.”
Excuse me, but in the context of this discussion, it seems like “priest” and “pastor” are used interchangeably. Are priests referred to as pastors, and vice-versa?