Lent and Easter sees extraordinary activity for our RCIA groups. The Rite of Election, Scrutinies, and the celebration of the sacraments at the Vigil, and then adapting ourselves to the distinctive form of catechesis that is Mystagogy and finally the gathering of new Catholics with their bishop. Now there’s a checklist and a half. Which of these things have we done? And which have we failed to do. What omissions were due to us, and which were due to others? What might we learn from how kept Lent and Easter with our catechumens and neophytes this year for what we might want to do next year?

In the parish where I serve our catechumenal programme used to really quieten after Pentecost. In fact it went into complete hibernation – with an expectation that it would start up again in the Autumn. This was the practice up until this year.

That things are different this year is not especially because we decided to do things differently, (and some might say ‘properly’). However change has been thrust upon us by those who have been coming along to our parish enquirers meetings this year.

Unusually (for us) those people have mostly been unbaptised people, and have been young parents with pre-school children. The number of pre-school children for whom our enquirers have responsibility presented us with an early challenge.

Our Enquirers group has traditionally met on a weekday evening. This year’s participants were happy with this so long as they could bring their babies and toddlers with them. The group leaders found this a challenge too far so after six weeks or so we switched to an afternoon meeting which was good for the parents and ok for our leadership team.

The next challenge was just how much formation the group needed at enquiry stage. It was quickly clear that they would not be ready for the sacraments at Easter this year, and that was quite a break with tradition in this parish, where we have for many years operated a curtailed and constrained Autumn to Easter programme. So we had no Easter baptisms or confirmations from this group and had a very much more extended enquiry stage, because the members were very clear they were not ready to make any commitment.

Interestingly enough we did have a number of confirmations this Easter – for a number of adults, already regular in their practice, independently approached the parish team wanting to receive the sacrament. Our enquirers not yet having become catechumens we found it better to establish a new group which met weekly during Lent to prepare for confirmation.

The experience of Lent/Easter was a powerful one for our Enquirers and has helped them all to come to the decision that they want to make the commitment to continue their exploration of faith in a more committed fashion. Which itself presented the team with an issue – what to do about welcoming into the catechumenate, and what form might that catechumenate take.

Over recent years we have not made much of the role of sponsor: the RCIA group itself has tended to take on that responsibility. But this year was to be different in this respect also. We’ve encouraged the enquirers to think about who they already know that in fact is exercising something of that role. And where those people are ready and able we have chosen them to be the sponsors.

The Rite of Entry into the Catechumenate is being celebrated on Trinity Sunday. The season of Easter has come to take on a particular initiatory flavour for our parish. This is not only because of the (usual) celebrations of adult initation at the Easter Vigil. In our diocese confirmations take place in the Easter season and this year all our parish first Holy Communions (about 100!) have taken place over the last 4 Sundays of the Easter season. But this year, when Easter has finished we gather the next Sunday to celebrate a rite which has us mark out work to be done in readiness for Easter 2010.
Our present expectation is that the group will be ready for baptism next Easter but as flexibility has been our keyword so far this year, who knows?
And as for catechumenal process, one good thing that has come from this group is that because of their various other commitments they are happy to try out Sunday dismissal catechesis. This will be something new for us all. So please keep us in your prayers!

It was well-received by faith communities: A pretty typical review follows:

In The Miracle Maker, the film’s makers have a small miracle of their own: a simple, modest retelling of the gospel story of the ministry and passion of Christ that does little more than present the bare events of the gospel narratives, without adornment or invention, without idiosyncratic “explanations” or editorial spin, without elaborations for the sake of amusement or excitement.

It’s so straightforward, it’s practically revolutionary. Adapting a story for the screen substantially as it was written is a lost art nowadays. It’s easy to see why, in a way; storytellers are just naturally attracted to projects to which they feel they have some creative contribution to make; some special angle or insight to offer.

http://artsandfaith.com/t100/2005/entry.php?film=52

You might wonder about the claim that there is little adornment or invention – remember Tamar – but she operates more as a narrative device to help the viewer engage with the story of Jesus than a distraction or dumbing down.

The Miracle Worker is a rather beautiful creation – most of the narrative shown through stop-go animation; but others through painted cell work. And it is an engaging presentation – with much of the credit for this going to the somewhat stellar cast, led by Ralph Fiennes as Jesus.

We’ve been using it in our parish over the past weeks – a ten minute section as a time, as a way of familiarising the group with the outline of the story of Jesus, and as a ‘safe’ way of giving them matter for discussion reflection. Last year we had a very quiet group who rather resisted discussion. It’s a different group this year but there’s much discussion and I think the film is to credit for that.<

I’d recommend the film as a most useful aid for first evangelisation, for the pre-catechumenal time. And I am happy to share below the  discussion sheets we used to to give you an indication of the sort of conversation starters we’ve used.

• 1-Values.pdf
• 2-Kingdom.pdf
• 3-Call.pdf

People come to the group that supports the catechumenate through a variety of ways. Particularly important are the personal contacts - through friendships in the parish; through the Parents and Toddlers groups; through the pastoral encounters around weddings and funerals. But also of importance - it seems to me, (their author and designer!) - are the leaflets and posters we put around - sources of information, prompts to action.

Last year I used a series of posters which used images of gates and paths and lighthouses. I hoped these would suggest the idea of journey, and - who knows - for the more biblically literate the idea of Christ our pioneer, our way, the gate, the light. A few people noticed them but they didn't seem to find them particular significant - the images didn't seem to register, much.

So this year I decided I'd lose the visual images and go for words. Searching? Questioning? Lost? And suggesting that in response to these experiences the Gospel has something to offer - companionship on the way; support in the search; and yes, able to introduce the searcher to a relationship with Christ who we have found to be the way, truth and life.

I though the new poster looked pretty good and eye catching. Bold graphics, bright colours. I still think that. But a number of the people who I am in contact who will be coming to the group have been on the look out for the poster which would give them information about when the group starts up. And none of them thought that what this poster was advertising could be what they are looking for!

I've not yet had the chance to explore with them why that might be. But clearly the poster and its words speaks to my agenda and not theirs. At the moment it's enough for them to know when to come and where to ‘become a Catholic'. Their main interest is not the why or wherefore

So, all this has got me thinking again about where people are coming from and what, at a conscious level at least, people are looking for. I'm comfortable with the idea of people searching from motives of existential angst. I'm also happy with the idea of people interested in ‘becoming Catholic' or wanting to deepen a relationship with Jesus or the Church. Different things engage and motivate different people. I hope in pastoral practice that I'm sensitive to that, and can give space for the person to journey as they see fit as well as trying to feed into their exploration of Catholic faith an awareness of important dimensions that they may not yet have considered in any conscious or explicit way.

But the question of the posters and what we put on them and what they say to people has me thinking again about what we offer and what people want. What is the good news we want to share? I can put names to aspects of that. But then my fear is that the Christian specificity of these things might be neglected. We could offer ‘Community'. Our Gospel offers this, but it also promises to set brother against brother. ‘Truth through intimacy with Jesus': we can offer that. But from time to time Jesus might turn and call us Satan and say we think as people think and not as God. ‘Security' too we can offer, but it is a security that sometimes leads us into hard and lonely places.

It probably all boils down to a matter of quality of catechesis. They will perhaps be coming from one reason. The challenge to the group is to ensure that if they stay, they stay for a reason which is acceptable to the Church and authentic to the Gospel we preach.

My personal fresh resolution - encouraged by the poster issue - to try to make sure that the Gospel we share in our pre-evangelisation meetings and in catechumenate is one which welcomes those who come, offers the assurance we all need that we are loved by God and chosen. And at the self same time, draws us speedily into the mission which helps us to see that if the Gospel is for us, we and not just the Gospel are for the world.

They come as a result of many points of contact, of course. Some are people who have a new and encouraging contact with the Church through our parish Parents and Toddlers group; others through the meeting with priests and catechists in the baptism programme or through marriage preparation, or through the First Holy Communion programme; still others coming because of contact following the death of a family member. People coming from all sorts of ‘Church’ encounters, who have caught the scent of something, got a taste for something and think there is something good here, something beneficial, considering ‘maybe this is something I should investigate more.’

And far be it from me to gainsay the value of these encounters, but there’s a little something in me that niggles. It’s all a bit ‘Churchy’.

I’ve nothing against Church. I happen to think it’s very important, and that the institutions and the community of the Church have an awful lot to offer – indeed much more than I’ve probably realised. But what concerns me a little is that if it is Church that attracts, rather than Jesus, we might be selling the gospel short.

Of course the Lord calls people in all sorts of ways. I just wonder, in a society that is so weak on community and belonging and moral values maybe the attractions of a community such as the Church are such that sometimes, and inadvertently, they might obscure the attractions of Christ himself.

I recall hearing that the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard criticised the clergy for being prostitutes of eternity – people who sold something precious, indeed sold something that should never be sold, but should only be offered, and received, as a gift freely given; as a gift which opens both the one who gives and the one who receives to an extraordinary and ennobling intimacy and experience of profound personal communion one with another. Might our happy and committed RCIA groups sometimes become a substitute for the Kingdom rather than a resource that sustains us as we search for that which we cannot give to each other but which must always come as gift from God.

The Lutheran pastor Deitrich Bonhoeffer seems to have had a concern similar to Kierkegaard when he warned Christians against he called ‘cheap grace’. In The Cost of Discipleship he wrote ‘Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian 'conception' of God.’

Bonhoeffer knew the danger of a Christianity that was merely a socialisation, that created comfortable Christians but failed to create disciples willing, precisely, to follow Christ and willing to pay the cost of following him. ‘Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ. It remains an abstract idea, a myth which has a place for the Fatherhood of God, but omits Christ as the living Son. … There is trust in God, but no following of Christ.’

Now our Catholic theology of Church would want to challenge the idea that Church is simply about socialisation. We confess the sacramentality of the Church, Christ present under the form of, as, us in our social relationships and in our union with him: the Church is a source of grace and not only a human phenomenon. Again, I’m grateful for what I receive and have received from Christ through the Church, and am happy for whatever I can do to help other people to recognise the richness of what the Church is and what she has to offer. But, again I wonder, what it is people come looking for and why? And what do they find that we set before them? The Gospel or something less?

I note the language of RCIA 36 in which the Church establishes what the work of the period of evangelisation and precatechumenate consists of:

Faithfully and constantly the living God is proclaimed and Jesus Christ whom he has sent for the salvation of all. Thus those who are not yet Christians, their heart opened by the Holy Spirit, may believe and be freely converted to the Lord and commit themselves sincerely to him. For he who is the way, the truth, and the life fulfils all their spiritual expectations, indeed infinitely surpasses them. (RCIA 36)

One reading of RCIA 36-47 (the section treating of the period of evangelisation and precatechumenate and the rite of entry into the catechumenate) suggests that our task in the period of evangelisation is (simply?) to evangelise: ritualisation and indeed socialisation come later: that the Church’s expectation is that people are to come to a relationship with God in Christ first. Then (and only then?) are we to help them come to an appreciation also of how the community of the Church is and can be an authentic expression of our relationship with Christ.

Does it have to be either/or? Can it not be both/and? Maybe it can be. But for myself, just at the moment, I wonder about what it actually is.

I’m sure that when I was first involved in the process as a catechist my first instinct was to try to teach the faith, only. And the faith I tried to teach, or share, was largely to do with belief about this or that.
Such beliefs are important. And we are instructed that one of the tasks of the process is that encounter with the tradition of the Church. Cf RCIA 75.

My first approach has been challenged by the experience that that there was often a world of difference between what I was trying to teach and what was being learnt. And often enough this gap existed because the ‘teacher’ hadn’t paid enough attention to those he wanted to teach/wanted to help learn!

RCIA 75 also requires that part of the work of the one charged with enabling the formation of catechumens is to help them to share in our life in common. If that is not being achieved in the catechumenal group – not just in terms of warm fuzziness, but in terms of careful attentiveness, and readiness to serve actual need then the effectiveness of other dimensions of the formation we offer is going to be compromised. Faith is also about relationship. Relationship with God and relationship in the Church.

So, over time, I’ve moved from process which is mostly about input, to process to which is more about engaged and mutual reflection. How are we finding God? How are we finding each other? This reflection is not empty of belief about this or that, or God or the Church. But it is about much more than that belief alone. It’s about how these things matter to us, and why. Not just why they could or should matter to ‘them’, but why they matter to me, and maybe will matter to ‘us’.

It’s quite challenging, is this. It leaves the catechist somewhat more vulnerable to the process because it requires more in the way of personal commitment and transparency to the group. It’s less like throwing fish to the penguins, and more like getting in the pool, joining with the others in the search for that food, the ICTHUS, the nourishment of life or heart and soul that only God can give.

In the past year I’ve returned to parish ministry – after some years doing other things. I find myself once more taking part in the work of the adult catechumenate in a particular parish community.

And I’ve inherited a format which is resiliently based on the school year, a six months all-in-one structure. And this brings a challenge. How best, within those present constraints, to equip those in the group for Christian living beyond their (relatively short) time in the RCIA group? Adult learning often goes quite slowly – even when people more, more or less, volunteer for it. Responding to people’s sometime active and passionate desire to learn and grow helps, of course; as does putting the effort into trying to discern what it is that the group experience can help people to learn helps that process along, but there are still very clear limits to what can be achieved in 6 months or so.

Given these circumstances, and my reading of them, I think my understanding of my role, during this year and over time, has shifted yet again. We try to focus on responding to what those searching for faith and those beginning to live more deliberate and consciously faithful lives are ‘ready for’. And we try to be aware of how the members of the group have a right to know what the Church believes about God and herself and the world – at least in the basics. But there’s been something more too, and that’s trying to remain ever conscious of how what we are doing and sharing in will give our catechumens and candidates skills to draw on the resources of the Church in the future.

What does this amount to – well, for example, not only teaching about the scriptures and making use of the scriptures in our gatherings, but again and again speaking of how in our prayer with scripture outside of these gatherings, and outside of Mass, we can meet with the Lord and deepen our knowledge of him. Or, another example, focusing on how we pray the Mass and the presences of Christ there, building up an expectation that, week on week, what we should expect to change at Mass is not just bread and wine, but us. And the other – answers on a postcard please, because I’ve really not made much progress on this one – is trying to see how we can continue to support the members of the group after the ‘given’ period of mystagogy.

One challenge in this, that our catholic parishes as a whole are really very a-mystagogical in the way we live, share in sacraments, and consider our faith. Maybe, just maybe, the way we resource our catechumens and candidates this year will help them to serve as a sort of leaven in the batch.