Religious Education Supplement

Parishes test draft of archdiocesan RCIA guidelines

Benedictine Father Julian Peters, at the time the administrator pro-tem of SS. Peter and Paul Cathedral Parish in Indianapolis, baptizes Scott Warpool during Cathedral Parish’s Easter Vigil on March 22, 2008. The Easter Vigil is the culmination of the journey of faith taken by people seeking to enter into the full communion of the Church through the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA). Proposed archdiocesan RCIA guidelines are currently being tested in several parishes across central and southern Indiana. (File photo by Sean Gallagher)

By Sean Gallagher

Over the years, catechetical leaders in the archdiocese’s Office of Catholic Education have implemented guidelines for various sacramental preparation and religious education programs.

They have done this after much consultation with parish administrators of religious education and other Catholic educators across the archdiocese.

Now Ken Ogorek and Peg McEvoy, with the help of the archdiocesan Initiation Committee, have helped produce an initial draft of archdiocesan guidelines for the catechetical elements of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA).

Ogorek is the archdiocesan director of catechesis. McEvoy is the associate director for evangelization and family catechesis.

The archdiocesan Initiation Committee is a group of archdiocesan catechetical leaders and others involved in bringing people into the Church that oversees RCIA in central and southern Indiana.

McEvoy said it is important to have RCIA guidelines “in order to know that every adult that is going through this process has had a comprehensive approach and coverage of the faith, without error and without gaps.”

Currently, 10 parishes across the archdiocese are using the proposed guidelines in their RCIA processes this year to see how well they work in a variety of contexts.

While each parish is going through the RCIA process and after they have completed it next spring, the proposed guidelines will be evaluated and possibly changed before they are implemented on an archdiocesan-wide basis.

The guidelines rely heavily on the United States Catholic Catechism for Adults (USCCA), produced by the U.S. bishops and approved for use by the Holy See in 2005, along with sacred Scripture and sacred tradition.

McEvoy said that the guidelines will help those parishes that are already using the USCCA in their RCIA processes to focus on what is most important in that catechism.

For those parishes that use other RCIA resources, the guidelines will help them ensure that those coming into the full communion of the Church are receiving a comprehensive presentation of the faith.

The RCIA process at St. Charles Borromeo Parish in Bloomington, where Janis Dopp is the administrator of religious education, uses a variety of resources, including the USCCA. Dopp is a member of the Initiation Committee, and is testing the guidelines in her parish.

“I think the bishops of the United States have been moving toward having guidelines for the RCIA over the last 10 years probably,” Dopp said. “I imagine that [Archbishop Daniel M. Buechlein] wants to make sure that everybody who is entering into an RCIA process, no matter what parish they find themselves in, is getting the absolute best introduction to the faith that we call our own and that directors would not feel at a loss for how to go about doing this.”

McEvoy emphasized, though, that the guidelines do more than simply make sure that parish RCIA processes in the archdiocese will give a complete presentation of the content of the Church’s faith.

They will also be an aid to those catechists who are forming adults in the faith to help them concretely apply it to their everyday lives and prayerfully meditate on it. This multi-pronged approach to formation has sometimes been described as appealing to a person’s head and heart.

Linda Semler, religious education coordinator at St. John the Evangelist Parish in Indianapolis, which is also testing the guidelines, said this balance is important and that the USCCA is helpful in achieving it.

“The meditative sections at the end of those chapters in the USCCA are really right on point,” Semler said. “We have to be careful that we’re not just doing head. We’re also doing heart at the same time.”

At the same time, Semler was quick to point out that a good, comprehensive presentation of the content of the faith will appeal to an RCIA participant’s heart.

“In my mind, there has always been a false dichotomy between the head and the heart,” she said. “If you do head right, it touches the heart—period. If you’re teaching what the Catholic Church teaches and you’re not [talking about] how that applies to their lives, then there’s something wrong about the way that you are presenting the teachings.”

All those involved in developing and testing the archdiocesan guidelines were quick to point out that they give much leeway for the unique circumstances that each parish might face in forming the faith of their own RCIA participants.

McEvoy said that the draft guidelines convey a “sense of wanting to respond to [particular] needs of the group and the individual, and also to be true and complete in the presentation of the faith.”

“There’s a pull and tug in each direction,” McEvoy said. “Hopefully, this will help with that.

“We want to be able to free up the folks that are leading RCIA to do the pastoral [ministry], to make the Scriptures come alive, to make doctrine come alive. Hopefully, this will help them to do that so that they’re not going to have to sit there constantly and say, ‘Oh, we missed this so we have to go back and cover it.’ ”

In any case, it is impossible to cover the entirety of the faith in the number of months that most parish RCIA processes extend over.

Deacon Wayne Davis, RCIA coordinator at St. Michael Parish in Greenfield, where the guidelines are also being tested, said that the guidelines should help newcomers to the Catholic faith grow in their desire to learn it even more.

“At the end of the process, they will [hopefully] have a formation that is solid enough that it lets them know that there’s much more there,” Deacon Davis said. “They’ll have a thirst and a hunger to seek more and, rather than thinking that this is the end of the process, it will be the beginning.”

(To learn more about the proposed archdiocesan RCIA guidelines, contact Peg McEvoy, archdiocesan associate director for evangelization and family catechesis, at pmcevoy@archindy.org or by calling her at 800-382-9836, ext. 1430, or 317-236-1430.) †