Becoming a Catholic

The Catholic Church is the Church Christ founded. Becoming a Catholic is being joined to that Church. It is not enrolment in a club of opinions, and it is not the choice of a style of worship that a person happens to prefer. Christ did not leave a set of ideas and invite each generation to build a church to match them. He gathered a people. He called the Apostles. He set Simon at their head and named him Peter, and he said, in the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, in the Douay-Rheims: "And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." He sent those Apostles to teach and to baptise, and he promised to remain with them all days, even to the consummation of the world.

That Church has continued. It is visible. It professes one faith, it celebrates the sacraments, and it is governed by the bishops who stand in the Apostles' place, in communion with the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, the successor of Peter. The Second Vatican Council taught that this one Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church. The word is the Council's, and it should be heard as the Council meant it. The Church Christ founded is not scattered into pieces, of which the Catholic Church would be one respectable piece among others. It continues here, with the fullness of the means of salvation. Goods of the Gospel are truly found outside that full communion, because Christ is not absent from the baptism and the Scriptures and the prayer of other Christians. Those goods come from him, and they lead towards the fullness. They are not a second Church.

This is why the path matters, and why it is not a quarrel. A person who asks to become a Catholic is not asked to win an argument. The person is asked to believe what the Church believes, to be joined to Christ by the sacraments, and to live in the communion of this people. The faith is received. It is not composed. The Creed is the Church's confession, handed on, not a draft the newcomer improves. The moral life is the life of the Gospel as the Church has guarded it. The Mass is the worship Christ gave, not a meeting arranged to suit a taste. None of that is said in order to bruise a person who has loved Christ under another name. It is said so that the person knows what is being asked, and what is being given.

There are two ways into that full communion, and they are not the same way. A person who has never been baptised is joined to Christ and to the Church by Baptism, and then by Confirmation and the Eucharist, which complete initiation. A person who has already been validly baptised is already Christ's. Baptism has already given that person a real, if still incomplete, communion with the Church. What that person asks for is reception into full communion: the Catholic faith professed whole, the sacraments in their integrity, and the bond with Peter and the bishops. The Church does not ask such a person to despise the baptism already received. The Church completes what baptism began.

Baptism is the door. The Catechism calls it the basis of the whole Christian life, the gateway into the life of the Spirit, and the door which gives access to the other sacraments. Our Lord said to Nicodemus, in the Douay-Rheims: "Amen, amen I say to thee, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." And he commanded the Apostles, at the end of Saint Matthew's Gospel: "Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." The Church baptises because the Lord commanded it, and because the Lord tied the new birth to water and the Holy Spirit. A person who is asking the way in is not invited to remain for ever on the threshold.

What Baptism does is not a symbol added to a decision the person has already finished alone. By Baptism a person is freed from sin, reborn as a child of God, configured to Christ, and incorporated into the Church. Original sin is forgiven. Personal sins, in one who has committed them, are forgiven. The punishment due to those sins is forgiven. An indelible spiritual mark is given, a character, which is the seal of belonging to Christ. That mark remains. Sin committed later can deprive a person of the life of grace, but it does not erase the seal, and it does not return the person to the state of being unbaptised. This is why Baptism is given once. It cannot be repeated. The Church refuses a second baptism not from tidiness, but because a second baptism would deny what Christ did in the first.

The ordinary ministers of Baptism are the bishop, the priest, and, in the Latin Church, the deacon. In danger of death any person may baptise, even a person who is not baptised, provided there is water, the intention to do what the Church does, and the words the Lord gave. If the danger passes and the person lives, the priest is told, and the rites that had to be omitted are supplied later. The emergency does not make a private baptism the ordinary path. The ordinary path is the Church, gathered, at the font.

The form the Latin Church uses is simple, and a reader should know it, because the whole question of "baptised or not" turns on it. Water is poured, or the person is immersed, while the minister says: I baptise you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. The Eastern Churches use an equivalent form, in which the person is named as being baptised in that same Trinity. Both are Baptism. When the Acts of the Apostles speaks of baptism in the name of Jesus Christ, the Church has never read that phrase as a rival formula, and has never set it against the words of Matthew 28. It means baptism into Christ, done as he commanded. A ceremony that uses only a name other than the Trinity, and omits the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, is not the sacrament.

Three things make a baptism, and all three are required. There must be true water, touching the person, by immersion or by pouring, or in such a way that the water truly washes. There must be the Trinitarian words. There must be the intention to do what the Church does when it baptises, which is what Christ instituted. Where those three are present, the Church recognises a baptism. Where one of them is missing, there has been no baptism, however sincere the gathering, and however dear the memory.

A person already validly baptised is not baptised again. This includes many Protestants, and it includes them by the Church's judgement, not by courtesy. Baptism in the Church of England, when it was given with water and with the words of the Trinity, and with the intention of doing what Christ commanded, is Baptism. The same is true, in the ordinary way, of baptism among Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, and many other communities issued from the Reformation which have kept the water, the form, and the intention. The Catholic Church does not regard these Christians as unbaptised. They are Christians. They are brothers and sisters in the Lord. What they do not yet have, if they ask for it, is full communion with the Catholic Church. Reception honours the baptism. It does not stage a second one.

The same reverence is due, and more than due, to the baptisms of the Eastern Orthodox Churches and of the other ancient Churches of the East whose sacraments the Catholic Church recognises. Those baptisms are valid. Chrismation in those Churches is the sacrament of Confirmation, and it too is not repeated. A Latin parish in England must not treat such a Christian as an unbaptised catechumen. The priest will know the difference, and the person should say plainly which Church baptised him or her.

Not every use of the word baptism is the sacrament. The Church says this without a sneer, because the difference is about the act, not about the moral worth of the people. Some Christian bodies do not baptise with water at all. The Society of Friends, and the Salvation Army, are of that kind. A person formed in such a body may have a real faith and a real love of Christ, and still be unbaptised, because no water was used. When that person asks to become a Catholic, the Church baptises. Nothing unkind is being said about the years that went before. There was simply no baptism to repeat.

A form that does not name the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is not the baptism Christ commanded. Where a community's own account of God is not the Trinity, so that the words, even if they sound familiar, do not mean the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as the Church confesses them, the Church may judge that the ceremony was not the sacrament. In 2001 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith judged that baptism conferred in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is not valid, for that reason. The judgement was about the rite and the faith the rite expresses. It was not a verdict on the goodwill of any man or woman. The person does not have to settle these cases from a private list. In this country the priest knows the ordinary ones. The person's part is to tell the truth about what was done, as far as it is known.

Sometimes the facts are unclear. A certificate has been lost. A relative remembers a ceremony and cannot remember the words. A register cannot be found. A community's practice is known to have varied. The Church does not guess, and the Church does not rebaptise on a vague unease. The priest looks into the matter and the form and the intention. If, after that serious enquiry, a real doubt remains whether the person was baptised or whether the baptism was valid, the Church baptises conditionally. Conditional baptism is not a second baptism. The condition protects the first baptism if it was real, and gives the sacrament if it was not. The person is told why there is a doubt, and what the doctrine of Baptism is, before that water is used. File 10 will give the rite. This file only insists on the distinction. Certainty of a valid baptism means no new baptism. Certainty that there was none means baptism. A doubt that survives enquiry means conditional baptism, and nothing else.

It helps the priest if a certificate or a register entry can be brought. If none can be found, that fact is itself useful, and it should be said early. No one should invent a baptism in order to shorten the path, and no one should hide a baptism in order to have the drama of the font. Both would be a lie about Christ. The priest would rather have an untidy true story than a neat false one.

The usual path for an adult begins with asking. From the time of the Apostles, becoming a Christian has been a journey with stages, not a single private moment. The stages can be shorter or longer. They cannot be emptied of what belongs to them: the Word proclaimed, the Gospel accepted in a real conversion, the faith professed, Baptism itself for the one who needs it, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and admission to the Eucharist. The Second Vatican Council restored the catechumenate for adults in the Latin Church as a path of several distinct steps. A parish walks that path with the person. The bishop sets the norms for the diocese. The goal is not a completed course. The goal is the sacraments, and a life that can bear them.

The person comes to a Catholic parish and speaks to the priest, and says that he or she wants to become a Catholic. That sentence is enough to begin. It does not have to be a speech. A person who is sure may say so. A person who is only beginning to wonder may say that instead. The priest can tell the difference, and the rites respect the difference. Curiosity is not yet the catechumenate. The catechumenate is not yet the sacraments. No one is pushed through a step he or she has not freely asked to take, and no one who asks in good faith is turned away from the first conversation because the faith is still young.

What follows, for an adult who has not been baptised, is the Church's ordinary order.

First there is a time of enquiry, which the rite calls the period of evangelisation and the precatechumenate. The person hears the Gospel, asks questions, begins to pray, and comes to Mass. The parish listens as well as teaches. No rite has yet made the person a catechumen. This time has no fixed length. It lasts until the person is ready to make a first public step, and until the Church is ready to receive that step. A hurried acceptance helps no one.

Then, when the person freely wishes to be joined to the catechumenate, and has begun to have a first faith and a first conversion, the parish celebrates the Rite of Acceptance into the Order of Catechumens. From that day the person is a catechumen. The name matters. A catechumen is not an outsider sitting in on a class. The Church already counts catechumens as joined to the Church by that intention, in a real though still incomplete way. They are already of the household of Christ, and the Church has a special care for them. They are formed in the Christian life. If they die before Baptism, the Church grants them Christian burial. File 10 gives the rite of acceptance. This file only fixes the change of name. Before it, an enquirer. After it, a catechumen.

Then there is the catechumenate proper, a time of learning and of being apprenticed to the Catholic life. The length is not a national timetable printed in this file, and a parish has no authority to invent a short one for convenience. The bishop lays down the norms. The rite itself asks for a time long enough for conversion and faith to become strong, often through a full round of the Church's year, and longer if need be. A grave reason may shorten it, by the bishop's judgement. If Easter comes and the person is not ready, the Church waits. Waiting is not a failure. A date is not the prize.

During this time the catechumen is taught the faith and trained to keep it. The teaching is public. There is no secret syllabus. The person learns the Creed, the sacraments, the commandments and the life of charity, the way of prayer, and the Mass, and learns them not as topics on a list but as the faith of the people he or she is joining. Scripture is opened. The liturgical year does a great part of the teaching, which is one reason the path is usually lived inside the seasons and not in a classroom sealed off from them. Sponsors from the parish walk with the catechumen. A godparent, a practising Catholic who has been confirmed and who has received the Eucharist, is chosen for the sacraments themselves. A Christian of another community may stand as a witness beside a Catholic godparent, not instead of one. If the catechumen knows no Catholic who can do this, the priest helps. No one is expected to arrive with a ready-made Catholic family.

The rite also provides, through these months, blessings, minor exorcisms, and anointings. The minor exorcisms are the Church's prayers that the catechumen be delivered from the power of sin and strengthened for the fight. They are not a spectacle. File 10 will say how they are done. They are named here only so that a reader who meets them in the parish is not startled, and does not mistake them for something the parish has added.

When Lent draws near, and the catechumen is ready for the sacraments at Easter, the Church celebrates the Rite of Election, or the Enrolment of Names. This is ordinarily done by the bishop, near the beginning of Lent, often with the catechumens of the whole diocese. The Church elects those whom it judges ready, on the testimony of the parish and the sponsors, and the catechumens, for their part, declare the will to receive the sacraments. From this rite the unbaptised are called the elect. The name changes again, on purpose. A catechumen is being formed. One of the elect is preparing, through the forty days, to be baptised.

Lent for the elect is the period of purification and enlightenment. On the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Sundays of Lent the Church celebrates the scrutinies, solemn prayers that the elect may be freed from sin and protected from evil, and that what is weak in them may be made strong. The presentations belong to this season as well: the Church entrusts to the elect the Creed, and entrusts to them the Lord's Prayer. These are rites, not homework. The words are handed over because the elect are about to profess the one and pray the other as their own. On Holy Saturday, in the preparation rites of that day, the Church may complete this immediate preparation. File 10 enacts all of this. The present file only places each rite in its season, so that Lent is not mistaken for a gap between classes, and so that the Easter Vigil does not arrive as a surprise ceremony.

The sacraments of initiation are celebrated at the Easter Vigil, in the night that begins Easter, when that is the fitting time. The Vigil does not begin while it is still daylight. It is the Church's great night for Baptism, because it is the night of the Resurrection, and the font belongs to that night more than to any other. The elect are baptised, then confirmed, then admitted to the Eucharist for the first time. The three sacraments belong to one initiation. Baptism is the door. Confirmation completes baptismal grace by the seal of the Holy Spirit. The Eucharist is the summit, the sacrament towards which the others point, and the one the neophyte will receive from then on, Sunday by Sunday. The newly baptised are called neophytes. Through the fifty days of Easter the Church keeps a period of mystagogy, a further opening of the mysteries just received. The Vigil is not the end of being taught. It is the beginning of Catholic life. The teaching after it is quieter, and it does not stop when the Easter season ends. The rest of life is the Mass, Confession, prayer, and the works of mercy, in the parish.

The Vigil is the fitting time. It is not the only possible time. The bishop may permit the sacraments of initiation on another day when there is a serious pastoral reason. In danger of death they are not delayed for a season at all. A person must not be told that Easter is a rule so rigid that a grave need is ignored, and a person must not be told that any convenient Sunday is the same as the Vigil in the Church's eyes. The night of Easter is the night. Other nights are provided when they are truly needed.

Alongside this path, in the same parish and often in the same room, walks the adult who is already validly baptised and who seeks full communion. That person is not a catechumen. The Church's name is candidate. The candidate is not accepted into the order of catechumens, because baptism has already done something else. There is a Rite of Welcoming candidates, and parishes often celebrate it in the same liturgy as the acceptance of the unbaptised, while keeping the two groups distinct in the words that are used. During Lent the candidate is not one of the elect for Baptism. The Rite of Election belongs to the unbaptised. For candidates the Church has a different act, a call to continuing conversion, and it is optional. The scrutinies belong to the elect. They are not transferred to the baptised as if baptism had not happened. Where a parish prepares everyone together, the teaching may be shared. The rites are not scrambled. A candidate who is treated as unbaptised has been misled. A catechumen who is treated as if already baptised has been misled in the other direction. The priest's work is to keep the truth of each person's baptism clear, even when the kettle and the chairs are the same.

The first thing a person in England does is go to a Catholic parish, speak to the priest, and say that he or she wants to become a Catholic. That is the step. There is no national office to join, and this file will not invent a parish telephone number, nor a named church to report to, nor a form that substitutes for the priest. The parish near one's home is the ordinary door. If that parish has no group this year, the priest will say so, and will say what can still be done, perhaps with a neighbouring parish. The person does not shop for a programme. The person asks the Church, in the place where the Church actually gathers.

Sunday Mass may be attended by someone who is not yet a Catholic. The doors are not shut. A person who has never been to Mass may come this Sunday, sit towards the back, and remain for the whole celebration. It is not necessary to know the responses. Standing, sitting, and kneeling are done as one is able, with the congregation. One may arrive a little early and watch. One may say to the priest at the door, or to whoever is welcoming people, the plain sentence already given: I want to become a Catholic. If the moment at the door is too public, the parish will have a way to ask for a conversation. The asking is the point. Reading is not a substitute for it, and waiting to feel fully ready is a way of never beginning.

Holy Communion is not received until the person has been received into the Church. This is the rule for the person on this path, and it should be kept without embarrassment and without exception invented on the spot. At the time of Communion the person stays in the pew, or follows whatever quiet custom that parish uses for those who are not receiving. In many parishes in England a person who is not receiving may come forward with arms crossed, as a sign, and receive a blessing. That is a custom of hospitality. It is not a sacrament, and it is not a smaller Communion. If the parish does not do it, the pew is the right place. The Host is not taken. The chalice is not taken. No one should present himself or herself for Holy Communion out of a wish not to seem different, or out of a feeling that sincerity is enough. The Eucharist is the sacrament of full communion. Receiving it before that communion has been given is not a step on the path. It is a step off it. When the day of Baptism comes, or the day of reception, the priest will see to it that the person receives. That first reception is worth the waiting.

The catechumenate has its own way of honouring the same truth. In the full form of the rite, catechumens may be dismissed after the homily, before the Liturgy of the Eucharist, to go and reflect on the Word they have heard. The dismissal is not a punishment, and it is not the parish asking them to leave because they are unwelcome. It is the Church's public recognition that the Eucharist is not yet theirs, and that the Word is already a great gift. Where a parish keeps the dismissal, the catechumen should go with it gladly. Where a parish does not dismiss, the catechumen remains and does not receive Communion. Candidates who are already baptised are not, in the rite's own logic, dismissed as if they were unbaptised. Practice in parishes varies. The priest explains what that parish does. The principle does not vary. Communion waits.

A few practical things belong to the first conversation, and they are kinder if they are known beforehand. The priest will ask whether the person has been baptised, and where, and whether any paper exists. The priest will ask about marriage, of which more is said below, because a hidden marriage comes back later and hurts the person who hid it. The priest will ask why the person has come, and will not be offended by a simple answer. There is no fee for becoming a Catholic. The sacraments are not sold. A parish may invite an offering on some occasions, as people support the life of the church, and a person who cannot offer anything is not refused. No one should stay away for fear of a bill.

The priest is the judge of the next step. A catechist in the parish may do much of the week-by-week teaching, and a sponsor may do much of the accompanying. Neither is a substitute for the priest. Neither hears Confession. Neither decides that a person is ready for the font. If something in the teaching is unclear, or if a doubt becomes sharp, it is brought to the priest rather than nursed alone. The Church would rather answer a difficulty in the first month than discover it in Holy Week.

There is, in England and Wales, a provision some people need to know exists, without being sent to it blindly. The Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham is a Catholic home, established by Pope Benedict XVI, for those coming from an Anglican background who are received into the Catholic Church and who keep certain elements of that patrimony in a Catholic way. It is not a separate Church, and it is not the ordinary door for every person in England. It is a particular home the Catholic Church has made. A person for whom it might matter mentions the Anglican background to the priest. The priest will say whether the Ordinariate is the right next conversation. The first sentence is still said in a Catholic parish: I want to become a Catholic.

Children are not unbaptised adults, and the Church does not pretend that they are.

An infant is baptised at the request of the parents, or of the one who lawfully takes their place, in the parish, after a short preparation. The preparation is of the parents, not a catechumenate for a baby. The child is baptised because the parents undertake to bring the child up in the Catholic faith, and because there is a founded hope that this will happen. The hope is not a demand that the parents already be perfect. It is a real intention, spoken to the priest, that the child will be taught to pray, brought to Mass, and raised in the Church. If that hope is altogether lacking, Baptism is delayed, and the reason is explained. The delay is not a rejection of the child. It is the Church refusing to treat the sacrament as a ceremony with no faith behind it. A parent's own irregular marriage, or the lack of a marriage, should be told to the priest, and it does not by itself close the font. The question is the upbringing of the child.

The infant receives Baptism, and is thereby Catholic. Confirmation and the Eucharist come later, in the years of discretion, not at the font in the ordinary Latin practice for babies, though the Eastern Catholic Churches chrismate and communicate infants, and that is a true Catholic order of its own. In a Latin parish in England a child baptised in infancy is prepared, when the age of reason approaches, for first Confession and first Holy Communion, and later, or in some dioceses sooner, for Confirmation. The age of Confirmation is set by the diocese. It is not the same in every part of England. In many places Confirmation falls in the early years of secondary school, after first Holy Communion. In some places the older order has been restored, and Confirmation comes before first Communion. Neither timetable makes Confirmation an optional extra for the keen. It is part of initiation. Pope Saint Pius X taught that a child who has reached the age of reason is not to be kept from Confession or from Holy Communion, and the Church's ordinary practice is that first Confession comes before first Communion. A Catholic school may help with the preparation. The school is not the condition. Children who are not at a Catholic school are prepared by the parish. The sacraments are the parish's.

A child who was validly baptised in another Christian community, and whose family now asks for the Catholic Church, is not baptised again. The child is prepared, at the right age, for reception into full communion, for Confession, for Confirmation if it is still needed, and for the Eucharist. The priest sees the baptism for what it was.

A child of catechetical age who has never been baptised is a third case, and it is distinct from both the infant and the adult. Catechetical age means the years from the age of reason, about seven, through childhood, when the child can be taught and can answer for himself or herself in a way a baby cannot. Such a child is not baptised on the strength of the parents' faith alone, as an infant is, and is not put through the adult path as if the child were a grown man or woman. The rite provides an adapted catechumenate for children of this age. They are formed, with their families, in a way that fits their years. They take part in rites adapted for them. They receive Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist together, which is the order of initiation, not the delayed order used for infants. Because Baptism itself forgives all sin, the child is not sent to sacramental Confession before the water. Confession belongs afterwards, for sins committed after Baptism, and the child is taught that sacrament as part of being brought into Catholic life. Where a baptised child of this age is completing initiation or being received, Confession comes before first Holy Communion. Parents who blur these cases together should let the priest sort them. The sorting is not bureaucracy. It is the difference between a baptism, a reception, and a completion.

A person baptised Catholic who was never catechised is already a Catholic. Baptism did that. This person does not become a Catholic a second time, is not received into the Church, and is not enrolled as a catechumen. The parish may, for the sake of teaching, give him or her a place in the same gatherings as catechumens and candidates. The juridical reality is different, and the priest must not blur it in order to keep the room simple. The person is a Catholic who was left without the teaching and the sacraments that should have followed the font. The remedy is catechesis, and then the sacraments that are still missing. It is not a new Christian initiation from nothing, and it is not a profession of reception as if the person had been outside.

What is missing varies, and the priest establishes the facts. Some were baptised and then never brought to church again. They need the faith taught, then Confession once they are ready, then Confirmation and first Holy Communion. When Confirmation and the Eucharist can be given in one celebration, that is the fitting completion, with Confession before them, because the person is already baptised and needs reconciliation before receiving. Some received first Holy Communion as children and were never confirmed. They do not repeat first Communion as a drama. They are prepared for Confirmation, and they go to Confession. Some were fully initiated and then lived for years away from the Church. That is a different case again, and it should not be dressed up as the catechumenate. The way back for a fully initiated Catholic is Confession and a return to Sunday Mass, with whatever teaching will help the return to be real. The priest will still want the conversation. The conversation is not an admission that Baptism failed.

If there is a serious doubt whether the Catholic baptism ever took place, the doubt is investigated, as any other doubt about baptism is investigated. Only a doubt that remains after enquiry leads to conditional baptism. A vague family story is not by itself a reason to baptise, and a clear memory of a Catholic baptism, even without the certificate, is not by itself a reason to doubt. The parish of baptism can usually confirm a register. The person tells the priest the church and the date, as far as they are known, and then waits for the facts.

These two sacraments are often misplaced by well-meaning haste, so their places are set out here by cases. The places are not variations of taste.

For the unbaptised adult, Baptism is the forgiveness of all sin, original and personal, and of all punishment due to sin. There is no sacramental Confession before the font. Nothing in the catechumenate is a hidden first Confession. The scrutinies, the penitential character of Lent, and the renunciation of sin at Baptism are the Church's preparation of the elect. They are not the sacrament of Penance. After Baptism, Confession is for sins committed after Baptism. A neophyte who falls after the Vigil uses that sacrament in the ordinary Catholic way. Telling an unbaptised person that he or she must go to Confession before the Easter Vigil, as a condition of being baptised, is a mistake about the door. The door is Baptism.

For the adult who is already validly baptised and is to be received into full communion, Confession comes before reception. Baptism, received years before, has already done its forgiving work. Sins committed since then are forgiven in the sacrament of Penance. The candidate is prepared for a first Confession in the Catholic Church, makes that Confession before the day of reception, and so comes to Confirmation and to Holy Communion in a state of grace. This Confession is not an optional extra for the scrupulous. It belongs to the path. The priest who has walked with the candidate will see that it is offered in good time, not squeezed into a corridor in the last hour, and not omitted out of shyness. File 10 does not need to be a manual of how to confess. The candidate needs to know that the sacrament will be there, and that it is mercy, not an entrance examination.

Confirmation follows Baptism in the order of the sacraments, and in the adult path it is not postponed. An adult who is baptised at the Vigil is confirmed in the same celebration, before receiving the Eucharist, unless a grave reason intervenes. The bishop is the ordinary minister of Confirmation. The priest who baptises an adult, or who receives an adult into full communion, confirms by the faculty the law gives for that moment, unless the bishop is present and confirms. A reader need not arrange any of this. The reader should expect it. An adult initiation that stopped at Baptism and left Confirmation for an indefinite someday would be incomplete by the Church's own standard.

For the candidate already baptised, Confirmation is given at reception, unless the person has already been validly confirmed. Here the cases divide, and the priest divides them. A Christian from an Eastern Church who has been chrismated has been confirmed, and is not confirmed again. A person whose earlier ceremony of confirmation was not the sacrament is confirmed when he or she is received. Baptism in the Church of England is not repeated. Confirmation is a separate judgement. The Catholic Church confirms, at reception, the person who has not already received the sacrament of Confirmation. That discipline is applied by the priest. It is not a slight upon a past service of prayer, and it is not an invitation to argue the history of orders in the parish hall. The rule a reader needs is the simple one. No one is confirmed twice. No one who still lacks the sacrament is sent away without it.

For the Catholic who was baptised as an infant and never catechised, Confirmation is supplied after preparation, not conferred as if it were a rite of reception. If that person has reached the age of reason and is preparing for first Holy Communion, Confession comes first. Confirmation and the Eucharist then complete what Baptism began, in whatever arrangement of the calendar the bishop has provided. For children of the parish the same order of Confession before first Communion holds, as already said, and the age of Confirmation remains the diocese's to set.

The Eucharist stands last in initiation because it is the summit, not because it is an afterthought. Every path in this file ends there: the neophyte at the Vigil, the candidate on the day of reception, the child at first Holy Communion, the adult Catholic at last admitted to the table he or she should have known years before. From that day the obligation and the joy are the same. Sunday Mass. Holy Communion, received in a state of grace. Confession when it is needed, and regularly enough that it does not become a stranger. The path is for the sake of this life, not for the sake of a single night.

A parish programme is how a parish walks with a person. It is not the faith. The faith is Christ and the Church: the Creed professed, the sacraments given, the life of charity, the Scriptures, the prayer of the Church, the communion of the bishops with the Pope. The RCIA, under that name or under the name OCIA, is the Church's restored way of accompanying adults towards the sacraments. It is a good way. It is not a fourth thing one joins instead of the Church, and it is not a qualification one earns. A person does not become a Catholic by attending a run of evenings, nor by finishing a book, nor by satisfying a catechist that the homework was done. A person becomes a Catholic by the sacraments, received in faith, in the holy Catholic Church.

This has a practical edge, and it is meant kindly. If the local group is small, or shared with another parish, or paused for a season, the faith has not paused. The priest can still teach, still judge readiness, and still celebrate the rites, according to the bishop's norms. If the group is large and warm and well run, it is still a servant of the font and of the altar, not a society with a membership of its own. The person should enter the gatherings with gratitude, and should not hand his or her conscience over to the gatherings. Questions belong in the room. So does the freedom to say that one is not ready. The Church would rather a free delay than a forced Vigil.

The same edge guards the other side. A person must not use the truth that the programme is not the faith as a reason to avoid the parish and design a private Catholicism. There is no private path. The sacraments are not self-administered, except for Baptism in danger of death, already noted. The faith is learned from the Church, in the Church. Books help, and this series of files is meant to help, and none of them is a priest. When the gatherings are imperfect, as human gatherings are, the person stays close to the priest and to the Mass, and does not go looking for a purer Church than the one Christ founded. There is not one.

Before the sacraments, the priest needs the truth about the person's state of life. This is not an intrusion added by a suspicious parish. Marriage is a sacrament when it is between the baptised, and it is a bond of great weight in every case. It bears on whether a person is free to marry, and sometimes on readiness for reception and for Holy Communion. The time to speak of it is the beginning.

A person who has never married says so. A person who is married says how: in a Catholic church, in another church, in a register office, or in some other way, and whether both parties were free to marry at the time. A person who has been divorced, or whose spouse was, says so at the start, not in the week of the Vigil. The Church believes that a valid marriage cannot be dissolved by divorce. If a previous marriage was a true bond, and the other spouse is living, the person is not free to marry someone else. That fact can stand in the way of the sacraments until it is faced. The Church can also examine whether what looked like a marriage was truly a bond at all. Some marriages of Catholics were not celebrated in the form the Church requires, and the consequences are not what a newcomer should try to deduce alone. Some marriages of two unbaptised people, or of other Christians, are true marriages and bind. This file does not describe the process by which the Church judges these things. The priest does, when the facts require it. Some cases are simple. Some take a long time. A difficult case can mean that Easter is not this Easter. It is never a reason to avoid the first conversation, and it is never a reason to conceal the marriage in the hope that the font will somehow regularise it. Tell the priest. Mercy begins with the truth, not with a tidied story.

The next file is the rites. It will take up the RCIA, and the OCIA under that other English title, and it will do what this file has refused to do: the rites themselves, in their order, for the unbaptised, for those already baptised, and for the celebrations of Lent and of the Vigil. A reader who wants the words, the signs, and the shape of those liturgies should go there next, and should not expect this file to become that book on a second reading.

The step today is not the next file. The step today is a parish and a priest. Go to a Catholic parish. Hear Mass, and do not receive Holy Communion. Speak to the priest. Say that you want to become a Catholic. Say whether you have been baptised. Say what is true about marriage. Then let the Church walk. The programme, if there is one, will be the parish's way of walking with you. The faith you are walking towards is older than the programme, and simpler than a course of study. It is Christ, in the Church he founded, giving himself in the sacraments. The door is Baptism, once. The fullness is the Catholic Church. The person who asks is welcome to begin.