Posted on 04/11/2006 5:57:15 AM PDT by marshmallow
Among Them Fortune 500 CEO, Women Inspired by TV Coverage of John Paul II, Families, Collegians
WASHINGTON (April 7, 2006) -- Thousands of Americans will join the Catholic Church on Holy Saturday, April 15, through the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA).
Many of them participated in the Rite of Election with their bishops at the beginning of Lent and will be baptized, confirmed and receive Holy Eucharist for the first time on Holy Saturday. More, who already have been baptized, will embrace full membership in the Catholic Church.
Numbers vary. The Archdiocese of Denver, for example, reports that 700 people will be baptized and 1,400 will come into Full Communion there. The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, Texas, reports 1,090 will be baptized and 905 will come into Full Communion. The Archdiocese for Military Services reports it will baptize 425 persons and welcome 515 persons into Full Communion.
Other men and women celebrated the Rite of Election in their parishes rather than attending the diocese-wide ceremony held at the cathedral.
The complete number of adults being baptized or coming into Full Communion in 2006 was not available by April 6. According to early figures from the 2006 Official Catholic Directory, in 2005 80,521 adults were baptized in the Catholic Church and 73,296 came into Full Communion. In addition, there were 940,194 infant baptisms.
Backgrounds of the people seeking to be baptized or to enter into Full Communion by receiving First Communion and/or confirmation vary.
Martin White, CEO of MDU Resources, a Fortune 500 company with earnings over one billion dollars last year, will enter the church through the Diocese of Bismarck, North Dakota. He attends St. Joseph Church in Mandan. White and his wife Sheila prepared for entering the church with the Benedictine Sisters at the University of Mary, Bismarck, where he will soon become dean of the college’s newly established school of business. White has served on the St. Joseph parish council.
Three generations of women will come into Full Communion in the Catholic Church at the Easer Vigil liturgy in Our lady of Grace Church in Minot, North Dakota. There Mary Lund, her daughter-in-law Lory Lund, and her granddaughter Tami Voeller will be confirmed. Barb Voeller will be Confirmation sponsor for her sister-in-law Lory Lund.
In rural Richfield, Utah, St. Elizabeth Parish, which has three missions and draws parishioners from a 6,700 square mile area, has eight elect preparing to enter the church. One is an 87-year-old man whose daughter and family joined the church a few years ago; another is a young woman who was deeply touched by what she saw on television at the time of Pope John Paul II’s death, and another is a 19-year-old man who graduated from high school last year.
The response to Pope John Paul’s death also touched Diannah Hedgebeth, who will be make a profession of faith, confirmed and receive First Eucharist at St. Michael’s Church in Newark, New Jersey. She had been on a religious quest for a couple years, she said, and recognized her call to the Catholic Church as she watched events surrounding the dying of Pope John Paul.
“The moment his death was announced God spoke to me and told me that’s where I belonged,” she said.
Another searcher, Stacey Karpp, who attended the RCIA program at San Felipe de Neri Parish near Albuquerque, also spoke of feeling at home in the Catholic Church. She was adopted and raised Jewish but did not feel comfortable in the Jewish religion and later learned that her birth mother was Catholic. While praying for guidance during a quest to find the religion where she belonged, she said the answer exploded in her mind: “Be who you are.” She will be baptized Holy Saturday.
In the Archdiocese of Washington, at the University of Maryland, six students will be baptized and 17 will come into Full Communion. In nearby Olney, Maryland, Bob Handler, 59, a retired public school teacher, will join the church at St. Peter’s Parish. He credits Our Lady of Good Counsel High School, where he now teaches history, for drawing him to Catholicism.
“Students are nice to each other and nice to us; teachers are supportive of one another,” he said in an interview with the Catholic Standard, the archdiocesan weekly.
“The Rite of Election is always a moving experience as new life comes into the Church,” said Bishop Sam Jacobs of Houma-Thibodeaux, Louisiana, Chairman of the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Evangelization. “It is a sign of the work of the Holy Spirit and of the witness of faith that Catholic men and women give every day. Virtually all who come into the Church note that they were drawn to the Catholic Church by a friend, relative or acquaintance who quietly lives out the Christian life.”
The Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults is an ancient rite that was reinstituted in the church following the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). It is the usual means for adults to come into the Church. Infant baptisms take place in parishes throughout the year. It is estimated there will be about one million for 2006.
Adults will enter the church in every diocese of the country and in virtually every one of the nation’s nearly 19,000 parishes.
Men and women who come into the church cite many reasons. Some are inspired by other family members, including spouses, who already are Catholic. Others find the Catholic Church during a spiritual search as they explore faith groups until they feel at home. Others seek to become active in the church in which they were baptized but had not practiced the faith.
“People’s stories touch the heart,” said Deacon William Ditewig, acting executive director of the Evangelization Secretariat. “The Rite of Initiation during the Holy Saturday service inspires everyone in the church. Congregants, who observe newcomers being baptized, confirmed and receiving the Eucharist for the first time, recall the precious gift of faith and the union with Jesus to which people are called. This indeed is good news in challenging times.”
“Catholics lucky enough to accompany newcomers on their spiritual journey, for example, by serving as sponsors at baptism or confirmation are especially privileged,” he said.
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Editors: Numbers of dioceses responding to a march-April survey are available at www.usccb.org/comm/RCIA.
**By the way, isn't it remarkable that a church which seems to do so little obvious evangelization gets so many converts? **
There is a lot more evangelization than you realize.
First we must evangelize ourselves (Educate ourselves)
Secondly, we reach out to our family and friends. (Bet you have done that!)
Thirdly, we can reach out the the world -- in the line at the grocery store, for example, or at your workplace.
We are all planting seeds in accordance with the instructions of Jesus Christ:
"Go and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."
soon, hopefully, the jails in China won't be large enough to hold them. God bless Cardinal Zen and the new catechumens. May they help make China a Christian nation.
A little note on Bishop Sam Jacobs:
He was the Catholic big-wig at an ecumenical Holy Spirit convention I attended in St. Louis, that must've drawn about 20,000 people. (Very straight-up, by the way: the Catholics withdrew to their own separate mass each morning, where the doctrine of the Divine Presence in the Eucharist was strongly pressed each session.)
Come Sunday morning's mass, with abou 10,000 Catholics in attendance, they started to do the collection. The Bishop said, "Never mind that... these poor people have been collected from so many times this week, that their ankles must be hurting!" (... from being held upside down and being shaken down, if you don't get it.)
Needless to say the Catholics weren't invited back the next year...
Welcome Home!
I believe we're receiving 6 into the Church on Holy Saturday in our Parish.
I will be received into the Church on Saturday as well. I am in a class of 60, but we are a very large parish.
I hear a lot of people whom I correspond with here say that. It saddens me that so many RCIA programs are lacking. I am not sure why that is... If more people taught from Scripture and the Catechism, rather than liberal books or their own opinions of how the Church should be run, perhaps things would be better for many RCIA programs. It certainly shouldn't be a place to enlist an agenda. Did a priest run the RCIA program at your church, or a lay person?
Regards
I would say that the "satiated" don't realize they are spiritually starving and that the food is set right in front of them...
Regards
Rabid! You're becoming Catholic? Good! Good! Good! Good!
I'm so excited!!
That's an interesting observation. Most people come to the faith because of someone close to them is Catholic and has presented a good witness to the faith. We don't go door-to-door, nor do we come up to strangers and ask them if "they have been saved". Not that being active is a bad thing. But most people coming to RCIA are there because they want to share the faith of their spouse or they have a friend who has been a visible Christ. What I find impressive is that many of the adults invariably face some sort of persecution from family members for becoming Catholic. These people are taking their faith quite seriously!
Regards
Ah, wonderful memories of coming home.
Last summer watching the coverage of the funeral for Pope John Paul II and then the election of Pope Benedict, I decided to start attending mass, and then enrolled in RCIA.
My decision was made when I saw the light of Christ in Pope Benedict's face. I am honored to think such a man is the leader of the Church, and I am so excited about Saturday!
Many thanks to all of you. I think I am part of a group of 8 in our parish that are coming in on Saturday.
And like Miss Marple, the more I read about Pope Benedict, the more I knew I was going the right way.
We have a Parish of about 2000 families, and our RCIA group has averaged 6-9 people every year. Not huge, but it's great to see. This area of MA is heavily Catholic anyway because of the Italians, Irish and French Canadians.
Yes, I think that most people convert to Christianity specifically because of someone's witness - even those in the New Testament. Whether it is a local priest, a person who is undergoing suffering in union with Christ, a co-worker, or the Pope himself, that appears to be the main reason that moves people to consider Catholicism.
Welcome to the fullness of Christ's Church! WOW, 60 people! That is quite a few! We have 7, and we have enjoyed the small faith community aspect. How did things go with so many people? Did they all come to your classes, or were some of them on different tracts awaiting the Easter Vigil?
Regards
Congratulations and welcome!
I see that same light and hear it in his voice. Welcome to the fold and Happy Easter!
Sort of in between. It was a lady "pastoral associate". Obviously knowledgable about scripture, but I don't know what the problem was. Fortunately, my wife (cradle Catholic) had loaded up the house with various books on apologetics, and, after reading them and the Catechism, I was set. Some of the other folks in the class appeared to be floundering. One young lady said to me "I thought they were going to teach us to be Catholic, but we haven't had any of that". I've since ordered a couple of books purported to be "guides" to the RCIA process, and they seem to be just as nebulous and "touchy-feely" as my class--so the problem seems to be endemic to the system.
I was astounded when I entered inquiry, and there was no syllabus of suggested reading.
We're Catholics; we have no use for organized religion. ;-)
THAT was obviously true- LOL.
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