RCIA and church-bashing

I was able to attend my first RCIA course evening last week and I was delighted that my wife was able to come along and support me. As the priest I have been meeting with predicted, I found the content a little bit basic - a study of the Resurrection and a short session on 'One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church' - but it was interesting to see the variety of people also attending. The truth is, having worked through some of the Catechism, having read the Compendium to the Catechism and also digested other papal documents I don't really need any convincing.

It was quite wonderful to listen to the Deacon who was doing the presentations though. He was 90 years old, converted from Anglicanism in 1960 and was ordained deacon 25 years ago. His life experience, wisdom and gentle approach was perfect for the session.

However, at the end there was a time of open discussion and one lady - who completed the RCIa last year and was accompanying her daughter this time through - engaged in a certain amount of vocal criticism for what she saw as the spiritual 'deadness' in the Church of England. In fairness, the Deacon quickly closed this down with a comment about not bashing other churches and how important ecumenism was, but for wife the damage was done. She is currently completely committed to the Church of England and found this rather upsetting. Not so much because of the C of E, but because it displayed a sectarianism that she wasn't expecting.

By the time we were able to sit down with our Priest the following Thursday things had calmed down somewhat and we had a fruitful time talking through various issues with him.

This weekend we are attending the local cathedral for Candlemas (or the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord as I think it is now called). It is the first time in around a decade that the feast day has fallen on a Sunday and we plan to take some candles along to be blessed.

Back on the Journey

It’s been over a year since I last posted. Everything was put on hold just before Christmas in 2012 for some very good reasons.

St Peter's Basilica as painted by Panini

I was diagnosed a while ago with Adult ADD, and one tendency I have is to leap into any activity with plenty of energy, only to see the initial enthusiasm wane quickly. This momentous decision was such that my wife was, quite rightly, concerned that I was doing that again here, and she was particularly worried that I was using the entry through the Ordinariate as a short-cut, bypassing the process of discernment that the conventional RCIA offers. She also, with plenty of justification, felt I wasn’t giving proper consideration to some of her concerns.

I made the decision to slow everything down. In fact, I stopped pushing the issue at all, trusting in the Holy Spirit to work in my heart and in hers. About 2 months ago she came to me and said that if I still felt called to reception in the Catholic Church I should start to explore it again, but that it would be better to go the conventional route. I went back, read through the Compendium to the Catechism again and Evangelii Guardium which had just been released by Pope Francis.

We all visited Mass at one of the local Churches – one that was particularly family-friendly – and I slowly started to talk about some of the things I was thinking about. I made contact with a local priest (not part of the Ordinariate) and we spent time on the phone talking about the practicalities of joining the current RCIA course now. We recently also met-up for a coffee and agreed a provisional way forward.

One thing that I particularly pleased about is that my wife is going to join me in the RCIA classes, partly to walk through the journey with me and partly to help with her own journey.

Visit from a priest

Yesterday I took a concrete step towards entering full communion. I invited Fr David, the local Ordinariate priest over to come and talk with my wife and I about my decision. He had given me a copy of Evangelium to read through and I also had the Compendium to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. My wife had also looked through the Evangelium and we had talked briefly.

To be honest, as I read through it, I realised that the formation that I had put myself through over the last few years had brought to the place of accepting what was in there - there really wasn't anything that I had a major struggle over. That said, this was painting the Catholic faith and the teaching of the Church in very broad strokes and there are some issues that I know I need to wrestle with.

Fr David, a retired Anglican priest and recent convert himself, brought with him the balance of commitment, clarity - especially explaining the obligations of my possible decision, a healthy perspective on doubt and conscience (you can take the man out of Anglicanism, but you cannot take Anglicanism out of the man!) and a welcoming and practical spirit. We were able to sit down and talk for an hour and a half over ay concerns, worries and questions - a time that I think my wife found helpful in what my decision meant for her and the family.

The next step is to do some preparation classes with Fr David (a sort of shortened RCIA for Ordinariate converts) with a view to entry in the next few months.

Next post I'll continue with my journey to this point ...