Tens of Thousands Ready for

Entry Into Church

By Jerry Filteau

WASHINGTON (CNS) – In dioceses across the country at the beginning of Lent, tens of thousands of Americans began the final stages of their journey toward baptism or entering into full communion with the Catholic Church at Easter.

Jamie Swan of Maryville, Mo., is taking it a couple of steps further. Not only will she receive baptism, confirmation and first Communion at the Easter Vigil in St. Gregory Parish, but she and her fiance, Michael Casteel, are preparing to receive the sacrament of matrimony there a few months later. And Swan, the new second-grade teacher at the parish school, is making her preparations for first Communion along with her pupils, who will receive the sacrament later this spring.

Swan is one of the catechumens and candidates in the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo., who participated in the Rite of Election and Call to Continuing Conversion at the Co-Cathedral of St. Joseph in St. Joseph.

Two other liturgies for candidates and catechumens were celebrated the day before at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Kansas City. In all, the diocese has 580 people preparing to be baptized or to enter into full communion with the Church this spring.

For catechumens, people not yet baptized, the final part of the journey began with a Rite of Election on or near the first Sunday of Lent. For candidates, who are already baptized Christians, the start of Lent meant participating in a Call to Continuing Conversion. Many candidates were raised in a different faith. Some were baptized?Catholic but never received first Communion as children or were not confirmed.

Catechumens will receive baptism, confirmation and first Eucharist at the Easter Vigil. Candidates will enter full communion with the church by receiving confirmation and first Eucharist.

The Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults spells out the formation of catechumens and the steps of their preparation for the three sacraments of initiation. For candidates, because they are already baptized, the program of formation and preparation is distinct, although there are often parallels with the RCIA and members of both groups often meet together in their parish formation programs.

Diocesan Totals

In Brooklyn and Queens, there were 902 catechumens and candidates, who were greeted by Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio at the Rite of Election ceremonies held in two sessions Feb. 25 at Christ the King R.H.S., Middle Village.

In Arlington, Va., 623 catechumens and candidates participated in the Rite of Election and Call to Continuing Conversion. Pittsburgh had 748. Dodge City, Kan., had 190. Louisville, Ky., had 567. Manchester, N.H., had 415.
There were more than 1,500 in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, more than 300 in Peoria, Ill., more than 500 in Boston and nearly 900 in Portland, Ore.

In many places candidates outnumbered catechumens. The Diocese of Albany, for example, had 142 candidates and 87 catechumens. Harrisburg, Pa., had 398 and 207. Sioux City, Iowa, had 120 and 46. Springfield-Cape Girardeau, Mo., had 199 and 114. Lincoln, Neb., had 89 and 31. The Archdiocese of New York had 645 and 375. San Francisco had 214 and 162. Camden, N.J., had 274 and 163. Toledo, Ohio, had 398 and 217.

Ed Wilkinson Photo

WELCOME: Bishop DiMarzio greeted 902 people during Rite of Election ceremonies at Christ the King R.H.S.

Detroit had 793 candidates and 550 catechumens at archdiocesan services but reported that “several hundred more” participated in ceremonies in their home parishes. Atlanta reported 769 candidates and 457 catechumens participating in archdiocesan ceremonies, but the archdiocesan worship office said that 300 to 500 more participated in such services in their own parishes.
In Salt Lake City the 321 catechumens outnumbered the 257 candidates.

Some dioceses hold separate liturgies for candidates and catechumens, often a day or week apart, to help emphasize that the process of a baptized person entering into full communion with the Church is not the same thing as the RCIA. The RCIA was established in the Church in 1972 specifically as a modern revival of the catechumenate in the early Church, a period of time combining formation and ritual through which non-Christians were prepared for their sacramental initiation into the church.

In the Diocese of Joliet, Ill., a Feb. 25 Rite of Election service was held for the diocese’s 200 catechumens. In a separate service three months earlier, 291candidates answered the Call to Continuing Conversion.

The Diocese of Trenton, N.J., welcomed 150 catechumens Feb. 25, but since last year the Call to Continuing Conversion for candidates has been celebrated at the parish level rather than in a diocesan ceremony.

The Archdiocese of Edmonton, Alberta, which welcomed 215 catechumens Feb. 24, has also adopted that approach. This year was the first in which the service was for catechumens alone and did not include the Call to Continuing Conversion with candidates.

A heavy snow in the District of Columbia forced the Washington Archdiocese to postpone its Feb. 25 ceremony. In two services March 4 the archdiocese welcomed 1,129 catechumens and candidates. Snowstorms in the Midwest caused several other cancellations or postponements.
Since 1993, when the Official Catholic Directory began recording separate statistics on adult baptisms and entries into full communion in the church in the United States and U.S. territories, the combined total of adults welcomed into the church has generally been running in the range of 154,000 to 162,000 a year. There were three above-average years: about 171,000 each year in 1999 and 2000, and more than 178,000 in 2001.

In most years receptions into full communion have outnumbered adult baptisms by a few thousand nationwide, but the baptisms outnumbered the receptions by 1,400 in 2003 and by more than 7,000 in 2005, according to the directory. Figures for 2006 will not be available until the 2007 directory is published later this year.

Marriage Ignites Flame

Marriage or children may often be the spark that leads someone to enter the RCIA process. That was the case for Theodore D. Klein of Old Bridge, N.J., who joined 71 other catechumens and 144 candidates in ceremonies Feb. 25 in the Diocese of Metuchen, N.J.

Klein said his parents were Methodist and he sometimes went to church as a child, but he was never baptized. After marrying a Catholic, he began to re-evaluate the role of faith in his life and his plans for raising children. “I always felt kind of empty in that part of my life,” he said.

But it was the birth of their son that prompted him to act. “My wife getting pregnant and my son’s birth inspired me,” he said. “It made me realize that this is what I needed to do in order to really feel complete.”

For Shawn Kelso, a 36-year-old paint store manager and award-winning brewer in Baker, Ore., the spark was a pastor’s invitation. He grew up with no church affiliation, he said, and it was almost 20 years ago, on a trip to California at Easter time, that he first stopped in a Catholic church and witnessed an Easter Vigil service.

It was not until he moved back to Baker, married and had a baby that he started to seriously consider becoming a Catholic, he said. When he met his wife, Melissa, she was a religious education teacher at St. Francis de Sales Cathedral. Kelso occasionally attended Sunday Mass with her while they were dating and continued to do so after they married in 2001. The following year they had a baby boy and had him baptized.

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