I apologize but I disagree with you -- by making it difficult, we get real gems joining the Church. The folks who come to the Church as adults not only enrich their communities but the grace that comes with them permeates the entire Church
I only wish my confirmation and that of my fellow cradle Catholics was as strict. I don't know half as much as my fellow Catholics who were not cradle Catholics and each time I read them, I learn more and I praise God more.
I think also to another reason given for the strictness in getting into the Roman Catholic Church is from a historic perspective, and it is from the period of Church history that is the faith and practice of the early church.
Let’s be clear and precise. From our POV, if you are validly baptized you have already joined the Catholic Church. This is just a matter of gathering your strength to take (and endure) another step further into Christ.
I have been a helper in RCIA for several years now. Some who enter the class come in burning brightly. What they need is for the embers to be re-arranged, for the draft to be adjusted. The fire it there, but to get the best burn, some changes need to be made.
Others come in, and I see no spark there at all. I deduce one only because they keep coming back. For them it’s a matter of blowing on the flames hard enough to make things glow but not so hard that the flame is extinguished.
Some come in and leap from height to height, never looking back; their feet like hind’s feet they dance secure in the high places. Others plod in, and continue to plod. And some seem to fall away almost instantly.
Two things seem to apply. First: we are talking about a body with members. The call to enter further in essentially involves the members, even those who have the effrontery to disagree with me or the blindness to fail to perceive my splendid and tender spirituality or my intellectual brilliance. (I know that’s hard to believe ...)
To love the Lord is to love his body. It’s hard to imagine loving a body without spending some time with it, bumping up against it.
Second, to will, to choose is not done once, but all along. I choose today, right now, to give this verbosity and all my live to IHS. RCIA and all the monkey-business gives you a dojo, a practice floor, a place to train in willing to join, in choosing to be a member.
One reason the prince has to hack through the thorns to get to sleeping beauty is so that HE may learn how much he loves her. We hope to be of some service as the ‘habit’ of the virtue in faith grows.
The difference is that in this case, when the prince kisses the princess, we also, the thorns, have learned more about how much we love her.