RCIA News

Watch the Bulletins for RCIA Activities. The RCIA group meets on Sundays from 9:45-11:15 AM. Contact Marilena Wertz, at 477-8534, or mlwertz@wertz.com, if you or someone you know is interested in becoming a Catholic.

RCIA: An Invitation To Journey

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Alaska Catechumens share the challenges of their faith journeys

This Easter the Archdiocese of Anchorage welcomed 83 converts into the Catholic Church. Some of these men and women hail from backgrounds that were hostile to the teachings of Catholicism.

THE CHALLENGE

As they tell it, Nicholas Myhre, Jason Yonk and Vanessa never pursued Catholicism. Rather, they were stunned at how their quests for spiritual truth led them to the very church about which they’d been warned.

Myhre’s mother, an agnostic Lakota Sioux, rejected organized religion and taught him that the Catholic Church forcibly indoctrinated the Natives in early America.

Yonk was raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which teaches that the true message of Christ was lost by the Catholic Church but restored in a vision to Joseph Smith in the early 1800s and recorded in the Book of Mormon.

Vanessa, who asked that her last name not be used, due to tensions caused by her conversion, grew up in a family of devout Jehovah’s Witnesses, where she was taught that the harlot described in the Book of Revelations represents the Catholic Church.

Nicholas Myhre

QUESTIONING THE FAITH

Myhre became acquainted with Catholicism when his father, a recent convert himself, was undergoing cancer treatments and asked Myhre to bring him to church. The first Mass felt awkward, he said.

“I didn’t have hostile feelings toward the church; I just didn’t like being there,” Myhre recalled.

The second visit, though, he was overcome by an epiphany as he watched his father participating in the Mass.

“I just felt that I was in the right place at that moment for a reason, and I needed to know more about what my dad was doing,” he said.

His job working construction around Alaska allowed him some time to read books on apologetics and early church history.

“I was always looking for God: thinking and searching and reading and praying,” he said.

Myhre pushed himself to scrutinize and fully grasp any teachings that challenged him, including purgatory and the veneration of Mary. Other beliefs, though, seemed obvious.

“The presence of Christ in the Eucharist is really what drew me to the faith,” he said. “To make that leap, for me what really cemented it was tradition … That really helped me understand the Catholic Church and where it gets its authority.”

Myhre entered the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA), the means by which one enters the Catholic Church. He began attending Mass with his children and his wife, an inactive Baptist, and enrolled his 5-year-old daughter in Our Lady of the Valley Catholic School. At Easter, he joined his wife and youngest daughter in entering into full communion with the Catholic Church.

QUEST FOR SALVATION

Fellow catechumen Jason Yonk launched his search for spiritual truth after reading an alarming book, “23 Minutes in Hell,” which is the author’s account of his near-death experience that went south.

“It honestly scared me,” Yonk said. “I’ve always believed in hell.”

Jason York

At his mom’s suggestion, he started his quest for salvation by studying the Book of Mormon but wasn’t satisfied with its answers.

“I still felt very confused and lost,” he said.

During long Coast Guard deployments, he studied the Bible and traced Christianity back to its roots in the Catholic Church.

He startled himself when he announced to his wife, a cradle Catholic from a devout family, that he wanted to become Catholic.

“She was as dumbfounded as I was,” he said. “Before this I had a problem with saying I was one religion or another, but it was sudden. It just felt right.”

He and his wife, who was never confirmed, took RCIA together at St. Mary Church in Kodiak. With no other RCIA candidates for most of the year, he enjoyed grilling his teacher, Father Eric Wiseman, with questions during classes.

Yonk is now considering the diaconate after retirement.

COMING HOME

A catechumen at St. Patrick Church in Anchorage, Vanessa experienced scathing criticism of the Catholic Church as part of her religious instruction growing up a Jehovah’s Witness. Yet she always felt intrigued by Catholicism, even dreaming as a young girl of becoming a nun.

Vanessa

“I’ve been a Catholic at heart for years,” she said. Observing adult Jehovah’s Witnesses going door-to-door, “I remember Catholics being the people who would say ‘No, thank you; we’re Catholic.’ They were all set.”

Vanessa eventually left the Jehovah’s Witnesses in her 20s and devoted a decade to soul-searching. She read many books, attended friends’ churches and prayed. She also lost and rebuilt a delicate relationship with her parents, who by Jehovah’s Witness creed were supposed to cut themselves off from her for leaving their church.

“I went through a period of knowing that what I was taught (about the Catholic Church) was wrong, yet not being able to free myself from the way I felt,” she said. For instance, “reading the Bible and knowing, just knowing clearly that God is three persons in one — I don’t know how you could dispute that — but still hoping that I would find something to prove otherwise because that’s what I’d always been told to believe.”

Her conversion journey and zeal for Catholicism renewed the faith of her Catholic husband. Her daughter, age 3, was baptized last year, and Vanessa eagerly followed suit this Easter.

“It feels like coming home,” she said. “It feels like correcting a mistake.”

‘FAITH IS A GIFT’

Myhre is similarly excited.

“Cradle Catholics tell me that what I’ve learned and what I’m experiencing is a gift,” he said. “They took everything for granted because they never had to question it or figure it out for themselves.”

He added, “Like we learned in RCIA, ‘Faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit.”

On The Spiritual Attack of our Converts and What to Do About It by Msgr. Charles Pope

Back just before Holy Week I read an interesting and provocative essay by Jennifer Fulwiler at the National Catholic Register. It is about the need to more clearly instruct Catechumens and those being received into the Church about spiritual attack. Plain and simple, the devil wants to destroy the faith of those who have newly entered the Church. And we need to be sober about this. Being sober does not mean we are in a panic. It merely means we are alert and have a mind that is clear as to the possibility, even the likelihood that the Devil will seek to snatch them from our hands. I want to quote from Ms Fulwiler’s article article and then give some personal experiences and concerns:

It’s a subject nobody wants to talk about. Even among fellow Catholics, you risk being seen as superstitious or ignorant if you acknowledge that there is a dark force whose sole purpose is to keep people away from the light of Christ. And, to be sure, some hesitation about the subject is warranted: We’ve all heard stories of people who became overly fixated on the subject of evil, renouncing personal responsibility with “The devil made me do it!” arguments or seeing demons around every corner. So it’s good not to place too much emphasis on the forces of evil. But this is a subject where we want to be very, very careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and I think that modern Catholic culture has done just that.

In my own journey, an understanding of the reality of demonic activity has been critical to my spiritual life. I’ve been fortunate to have a spiritual director who has helped me learn to recognize when these kind of forces may be at work, and to act accordingly. …it was helpful for me to learn to recognize and reject those thought patterns that are not of Christ.

This advice has been particularly critical in times of doubt. Twenty-five years of atheistic thinking patterns don’t go away overnight, and since my conversion I’ve had plenty of periods where I experienced doubt or spiritual dryness. In these moments, it’s been extremely important to understand how to parse through my thoughts carefully, separating reasonable points from lines of thinking that seem to stem from spiritual attack, bad moods or other distracting forces (I once summarized what I learned about that here). Thanks to this understanding, each period of exploring my doubts has only led me to a deeper knowledge of God and greater faith in the Church.

And so, as a new group of converts (and “reverts”) prepares to come into full communion with the Church this Easter, I hope that our RCIA directors talk to them about this issue. I hope they make Dr. Peter Kreeft’s recent article about the reality of spiritual warfare required reading, and emphasize the benefits of finding a trusted priest or trained spiritual director to help navigate the ups and downs of the ongoing conversion process. Because while the path to sainthood is a beautiful road where we find peace and fulfillment as we grow closer to the Lord, we must never forget that it is also a battle.

The Full Article is Here: On Spiritual Attack

I must say, this article caused me to pause and repent. For I, who know better, have not made it a practice to speak to my Neophytes and Newly Received about this. That has to change. And I also need to extend longer care to those who have newly entered the Church.

It is sobering for me to consider how many of the people I have baptized quietly slipped away from the Church in the years that followed. A couple of years ago I was looking at my notes from past Easter Vigils and gradually my mouth came open. For as I looked back over those notes going back fifteen years, I saw the names of many I had prepared for baptism and reception. But more than half were gone now. And of only a very few could I say, “Ah, they have moved and I know that they are in a parish there.”

I was, frankly, stunned. Some of them had been intense, joyful and excited to be baptized and received. I remember the joy of those congregations gathered at the vigil as, one by one the catechumens went down into the water. “Alleluia!” went forth the song, as each of them emerged from the font. And joy too was expressed for those received into full communion. And now half of them gone, quite certainly lapsed.

I cannot find any hard data on line, but, I have talked to RCIA “experts” who do work at a national level and they quietly affirm that, within five years, 50% of those who came through RCIA are no longer practicing the faith in any real way. I cannot show you the hard numbers, but I have personally found this to be true.

I have tried to be better about following up with those who have come through my classes who later go “off the radar.” I call them in, or speak with them on the phone: “You know what I taught you about Mass attendance, I’m worried about you….Jesus wants to feed you!” “Adam where are you….Eve, why do hide your face?” I get their sponsors on the job too. But it’s strange, a kind of lethargy seems to come upon some of them. They make promises to return, but often don’t. Or they come once, but then disappear again. Maybe I’ll see them in the store later on and josh with them, or be very serious, depending on the situation. But something has come over them. Most didn’t have some terrible experience, they just drifted away, they just lost the joy, or things just got routine.

But Jennifer Fulwiler, above, is on to something very important: they are likely under some level of spiritual attack. Demon, thy name is lethargy, thy name is boredom, thy name is sorrow and sloth, distraction and forgetfulness. Jesus warned:

Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. (Mk 4:15-19)

Yes, spiritual attack is real. So is the world and the flesh.

I think, in the early days of RCIA we figured that those who entered in this way had a great advantage over “cradle Catholics,” for they had come to the faith as adults, and made a mature decision to follow Christ. Yes, they would remain firm. But we are waking up from that notion. We need to be more vigorous and sober in our assessment of what new and returning Catholics face. Satan is sure make some moves on them and, as Ms Fulwiler says, Twenty-five years of….thinking patterns don’t go away overnight.

In my own parish, thanks to the generous offer of a skilled parishioner, we’re looking to strongly enhance our mystagogia (post baptismal catechesis) and extend it for as long as two years. We’re also going to give more vigorous formation to sponsors and insist that they see their role as more than ceremonial and one that does not end with the Easter Vigil.

And I am going to begin to be more frank with my newly received and baptized as to the nature of spiritual attack, and the likely moves the devil will try. Further, they  must be taught a deeper understanding of the drives of the flesh and influence of the world. Peter Kreeft’s article, hot-linked  above in the quote from Ms Fulwiler, is a good place to start. CS Lewis also has some good material in theScrewtape Letters about how Satan seeks to knock out new converts like “low-hanging fruit.” I am grateful if you,  dear reader, can add to the list of suitable material to help in this matter. Clearly the goal here is not to frighten them, but to instill sobriety and an ability to discern spirits and resist demons, all by God’s manifold grace.

Yet another thing we must do better is to draw new members deeper in to the life of the Church. While Mass attendance and regular confession are primary goals, it is also most critical that new members feel welcome and be encouraged to get involved in the wider life the parish. This will usually root them more deeply in the faith and ensure a greater fraternity that will help them in their walk: Woe to the solitary man, for if he should fall, he has no one to lift him up (Eccles 4:10).

And we need to teach them to pray. The danger of RCIA is that it can be top heavy on intellectual formation but almost bereft of spiritual formation rooted in prayer and the spiritual and liturgical practices of the Church. Here too, I need to do a better job of finding the right balance.

As always, I am interested in your thoughts and experiences in this matter. Perhaps your own parish is addressing this? Perhaps too, you are a recent addition to our numbers in the Church and would be willing to share the good things, and the short-comings of your formation and mystagogia.

We have to do better. My recent trip down memory lane was real wake-up call. In the early Church, we went from the rather sudden and quick baptisms of Scripture (e.g. Acts 2:39; 8:36) to a three year catechumenate. This was likely due to a bad experience the Church had with those baptized too soon. I am not sure I want to make people wait three years, but I AM more sure I want their mystagogia to extend two years beyond their baptism and reception. We need to walk with our new brothers and sisters a little further down the road than just a few weeks or months out of the font. Lord, have mercy on me for taking so long to know better.

Lessons from the newest Catholics

By Patrice Fagnant-MacArthur from Catholic Mom.Com

I had the privilege of being a sponsor for an RCIA candidate at the Easter Vigil this year. My parish welcomed several individuals into the faith. Three received the sacrament of Baptism; others received First Communion and/or Confirmation. These adults provide such a powerful witness. They were excited and nervous prior to the ceremony and totally committed to what they were about to do.

I am a cradle Catholic. While I have learned intellectually about other faiths, I have never known anything else. I have certainly had times when I have struggled with sin in my life and my relationship with God has not been what it should be, but I have never been away from the faith. I never stopped going to Mass; I never stopped praying. My faith has been my strength in my darkest moments. I can’t imagine life without it; I wouldn’t want to. I consider this a blessing.

Yet, there is something to be said for the incredible decision these individuals have made. They chose the faith. They have studied for a year, considered the ramifications, and decided that the Catholic Church is something that they want to be a part of. The choice was not made for them, as it was for those of us brought up in the Catholic Church. The choice is theirs. They own it.

I do not know the stories that brought them to this day. I do not know how or when they first received the call to explore the Catholic faith; the struggles that they faced along the way; the opposition that they may have come up against. I do know that such a major life choice does not come easily. I also know that the path they have chosen is not an easy one. They have chosen “the road less traveled” and it will indeed “make all the difference” for them.

The world at large says that faith doesn’t matter; following the commandments doesn’t matter; going to Church doesn’t matter. Life is about doing what feels good at a given moment. Eternal life is rarely given more than a passing glance. These converts have decided that the world is wrong. They have chosen to make a public statement that they want to be different, to live differently.

Those of us who have always been Catholic can learn from these newest members of the Catholic faith. We can embrace their enthusiasm. These are people in love with the Catholic faith. They were so excited to receive the sacraments. While Baptism and Confirmation are one-time events, how often are we excited to receive Communion or go to the Sacrament of Reconciliation? Do we appreciate the miracles that we are so blessed to receive?

We can also make the choice to live fully Catholic lives. Even those of us raised in the faith need to make the adult decision to continue following it. It isn’t a one-time decision. These converts may feel that this is the end of one part of their journey – the culmination of study and discernment. Indeed, it is. It is a moment to be celebrated. But it is also a beginning. They have made the choice. They now must live their lives as Catholics. They have been called to a new way of living. Each one of us is called as well. Every day we must make the choice to be committed to our faith and to make decisions in keeping with that faith.

Please join me in welcoming and praying for all the new members of our Catholic faith. We are blessed to have them as part of our Church family!

The time is near for our enthusiastic 'new Catholics'

Jennifer Fulwiler over at the National Catholic Register tell us about a conversation that she had with one of the elect at her parish who will be coming into the Church at this year's Easter Vigil. Oh, if we were all so zealous.

I recently had a conversation with a lady in RCIA who will enter the Church at Easter Vigil. Overcome with emotion about the upcoming big day, she gushed about how much the Church has already enriched her life. She joyfully explained how close she feels to all her wonderful fellow Catholics, and said that she and her fiance can’t wait to begin practicing Natural Family Planning—all the books she’s read make it sound so great! Then she talked about the changes she’s making in her life: For Lent she gave up all meat, all television, all secular music, and only uses the internet for an hour a day. She’s been going to Mass a few times per week, and plans to attend Mass seven days a week once she can receive Communion. On top of that, she hopes to start praying the three major hours of the Liturgy of the Hours, and plans to get in a Rosary at least once week.

I’ve changed some identifying details to protect this person’s privacy, but you get the idea. I think many of us have encountered people like this. (Heck, I used to be one of them.)

My gut reaction was to temper her zeal with a little dose of reality. I opened my mouth to say something along the lines of: “Yes, our fellow Catholics are wonderful, but, ya know, not every single person in the Church Militant is a living saint. And yes, NFP is great, but don’t be surprised if you find that it comes with challenges too. And sheesh, woman, all this praying and fasting! Slooooooow down! You’re going to burn yourself out with all these unrealistic expectations. Rein yourself in and start with smaller, more sustainable goals.”

Our conversation ended up being interrupted before I could foist my wisdom on her, and looking back I think that’s a good thing.

Especially when you come to the Faith from a radically different background, a period of over-correction may be beneficial to help you begin your new lifestyle. A life in Christ is, of course, a relationship first. But there is an aspect of it that is simple habit: If you’ve spent decades ignoring God, not attending Church, making zero time for prayer, seeing the Rosary as idolatry, etc., there are some basic practical lifestyle changes that will come with your new life as a Catholic. And many people find that they can adopt new habits more easily if they do them intensely for a short period of time, then taper down to something more sustainable for the long term (I once heard a motivational speaker analogize it to a spacecraft needing an extra surge of power to break out of its current orbit).

Also, as I think back on that conversation with my new convert friend, I realize that hearing her talk was actually quite inspiring. Maybe she’s a little too naive, but maybe I’m a little too apathetic. She might be wearing rose-colored glasses that make her see only the good, but I might have become blinded so that I don’t see enough good. And so I’m glad that I never had the opportunity to interrupt her energetic soliloquy about the beauty of all things Catholic. Because I think that she, like many other enthusiastic new converts, might be exactly where God wants her.

Do you know someone interested in learning about the Catholic faith?

Even as this year’s elect and candidates continue preparing for the Easter sacraments, Mari Wertz is preparing for the next group to begin in July. If you know somebody interested in learning about the Catholic faith or if you would be interested in joining the team, please contact Mari.

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Woman's journey to the Church took 18 years...

from the Georgia Bulletin, Archdiocese of Atlanta...

It is easy to see after spending just a few minutes with Tiara Chivers that her faith is very dear to her. She clearly remembers her experiences as a child and has kept a scrapbook of significant mementos from her adult faith life also.

One of her earliest memories is attending a Protestant church with her parents and older brothers. It was an important time for her as a young girl growing up in Michigan because she always felt a connection with God and the church. However, she remembers that it wasn’t long before she was attending services all by herself.

“As I child I would go to church with my family, but very quickly my parents and my brothers kind of fell off of going to church,” she said. “But some of my earliest memories are of my mom making sure I went.”

“I was so excited. I loved church,” she added.

Chivers continued attending services alone, always taking with her a handkerchief neatly packed with coins for the collection given to her by her mother. As she entered her teenage years she began “hitchhiking” to church, asking friends and neighbors if they were going on Sunday so she could ride along.

When she was 15, Chivers participated in a foreign exchange program that sent her to study and live with a Catholic family in Madrid, Spain. She learned about Spanish language and culture and, especially, about the faith of her host family.

“I remember going to Mass, and I remember vividly walking in . . . and it just felt like home,” she said.

Even though the Mass was celebrated in a language she could not fully understand, she felt an immediate connection to the liturgy.

“I was at peace. I just knew that was it,” she said...Read on...

Tragedy leads young woman to RCIA

The article begins:

Life was rolling along right on schedule for Tamara Mack early last year. She and Harvey, her husband, had a nice new house on an acre of land near Leipsic, Delaware. She was pregnant, meeting her personal timeline to have a baby by age 30.

“I thought, ‘Perfect. I’m 29 and I’m going to have a baby,’” she said. “Life was going great, as we had planned.”

Her plan took a nightmarish turn in early April 2009. Mack was full term with her son, already named Harvey III and nicknamed Tré by his parents. During an exam she saw panic on her doctor’s face. He could not detect the baby’s heartbeat.

An ultrasound showed the baby was not moving. At 3:18 a.m. April 9, Mack delivered her stillborn son.

“I was numb,” she recalled. “I think I was in disbelief. Harvey was just heartbroken.”

Her son’s death triggered a series of events that drew Mack to the Catholic faith. 

Continue to read post...

A Convert's Prayer to Mary

A poem written to Mary by Edward Caswall, an Anglican priest who converted to Catholicism in the mid 1800s. Caswall's lament is that he had not come around sooner, but better late than never...


A Convert's Lament to Mary

Among the thoughts that in my heart
Awaken grief sincere,
Causing with sudden pang to start
The unexpected tear,
Is this, that in the days gone by,
Star of the wintry sea!
Blinded by darkest heresy,
I thought so light of thee.

O Mother of my Lord and God,
Whom none invoke in vain;
O Path of life, which all have trod,
Who now in glory reign!

Had I but learnt in earlier years
To seek thine aid above,
To offer thee my infant tears,
Thy loving glance to love,—

How many deeds of sin and shame
Which now my heart appal,
Scar'd at the sound of thy pure name,
Had not been done at all!

How many a desolated space
Of vainly wasted hours,
Had bloom'd beneath thy smile of grace,
With paradisal flowers!

Mother! receive thine erring child;
Look tenderly on me;
From thy dear bosom long beguil'd,
I now return to thee.

h/t Why I Am Catholic blog

Read more of Edward Caswell's poems here...