The Catechetical Review - Communicating Christ for a New Evangelization

RCIA: Questions, Answers, Issues and Advice

Authored by William Keimig in Issue #29.3 of The Sower
This page on Christian initiation is offered in each issue of The Sower as an on-going way to address specific questions that do not necessarily get addressed in more general articles and training resources. The questions all come straight from the field, and have two sources: 1) from readers like you; 2) from issues raised during seminars conducted by the Association for Catechumenal Ministry (ACM) over the past nine years in various dioceses. In this issue we cover the following questions: Q: Under what circumstances may a lay RCIA leader/catechist give a blessing or minor exorcism to a catechumen or candidate? Q: An RCIA director is frustrated in her attempts to get a particular inquirer to come out of his shell. He is marrying a parishioner in ten months, and wants to become a Catholic to have peace in the marriage. What are some suggestions that might help her to get him to relate to the process and begin to foster conversion? Q: What if a previous marriage of one of our RCIA candidates is determined to be valid, and a decree of nullity is not possible? Q: An RCIA team is somewhat at a loss for how to handle, pastorally and catechetically, a participant who has a mentally disability. What would you suggest?

The rest of this online article is available for current subscribers.

Start your subscription today!


This article is from The Sower and may be copied for catechetical purposes only. It may not be reprinted in another published work without the permission of Maryvale Institute. Contact [email protected]

Articles from the Most Recent Issue

Thank God for Pain
By Robert Kloska
How much worse off we would all be without physical pain! As counterintuitive as it sounds, pain is your friend. Pain is a mechanism to warn you that something is wrong. Imagine a scenario where there was no physical pain. When you get sick with a virus, you don’t feel bad, so you don’t take care of yourself. The virus spreads rapidly because... Read more
Inspired Through Art — The Assumption, 1428, by Masolino
By Linus Meldrum
To view a full resolution of this artwork on a smartboard, click here . The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a beautiful dogma of the Church that conveys to the faithful the importance of the Blessed Mother. In 1950, the apostolic constitution Munificentissimus Deus (The Most Bountiful God) was promulgated by Pope Pius XII. It declared... Read more
Building Ministry Bridges: The Advantages of Collaboration in Youth Ministry
By Eric Heckman
When my sixteen-year-old son was young I asked him, as people do with young children, what he wanted to do when he grew up. His response was that he wanted to build bridges in the sky. I was not exactly sure what he meant by that, but I certainly look forward to how it turns out. Building bridges is a meaningful and significant undertaking.... Read more

Pages

Watch Tutorial Videos

We've put together several quick and easy tutorial videos to show you how to use this website.

Watch Now