RCIA and OCIA

The order is a gradual process, lived inside the community of the faithful, and it is paschal. It leads to the night of the Resurrection, or to another time the bishop provides for a grave reason. It is made of periods and of steps. The periods are for hearing, for conversion, and for growth. The steps are liturgical rites. They mark a real change in the person's standing before the Church, and they are fewer than the weeks of preparation.

For the unbaptised there are four periods and three steps.

The first period is evangelisation and the precatechumenate, the time of enquiry. The first step is the Rite of Acceptance into the Order of Catechumens, also called entrance into the catechumenate. The second period is the catechumenate itself, and it is meant to be long. The second step is the Rite of Election, or the Enrolment of Names, at the beginning of Lent. The third period is purification and enlightenment, which coincides with Lent. The third step is the celebration of the sacraments of initiation at the Easter Vigil: Baptism, Confirmation, and first Holy Communion. The fourth period is the time after Baptism, called mystagogy, through the Easter season.

Those already validly baptised are not put through these steps as if the steps belonged to them in the same way. Their place is set out after the path of the unbaptised, so that the font is explained before the Church's care not to use the font again. Children of catechetical age have a path of their own, also set out afterwards. It is neither the adult order copied small nor the baptism of an infant.

The weekly gathering a parish holds is not this order. It can serve the order. It cannot replace a rite. That difference is kept throughout this file, and it is said plainly again near the end.

Before any rite, there is enquiry. The order calls this the period of evangelisation and the precatechumenate. It has no fixed length and no fixed shape. A person hears the mystery of Christ, asks, begins to pray, and comes among the Catholic people. The parish listens as well as teaches. Faith is stirring. It is not yet the catechumenate.

In this time the person is an enquirer, not a catechumen. No signing with the cross has received him or her into the order of catechumens. No name has been written for Baptism. The person may come to Mass, and does not receive Holy Communion. The point of the time is a first faith and a first turning towards God, free and conscious, stable enough that the person can ask to go further and the Church can hear that asking as true. Some people need many months. Some are ready sooner. The Church does not measure this period by a syllabus. Hurrying a person into the first rite, before he or she means it, empties the rite. Leaving a person there for ever, after he or she has begun to believe and to ask, is a different failure. Enquiry is a period. It is not a home.

When the person freely wishes to be received into the catechumenate, and has begun to have that first faith and that first conversion, and when the Church is ready to receive the asking, the parish celebrates the Rite of Acceptance into the Order of Catechumens. The same step is called entrance into the catechumenate. Acceptance and entrance are not two rites. They are two English names for the first step.

What happens is public, and it is simple in its meaning. The enquirers come before the community, often at the door of the church or in a place where the community can meet them before they are brought in. They state that they wish to follow Christ in the Catholic Church. The sponsors, and the assembly, bear witness that they are ready to be admitted. The Church accepts that intention. The celebrant signs them with the cross of Christ, on the forehead, and the rite provides for the signing of the other senses, so that ears, eyes, lips, and the whole person are claimed for the Gospel. They enter the church. The Word of God is proclaimed. From that day they are catechumens.

The change of name is the point of the rite. An enquirer is asking. A catechumen has been received into a real, though still incomplete, belonging. Catechumens are already joined to the Church by that desire, and the Church has a special care for them. They are not outsiders who have been allowed to sit in on a class. Their names are recorded in the register of catechumens, with the date and the place and the names of those who presented them. That register is not the Book of the Elect. The book of Easter comes later, and only for those who will be baptised.

If a catechumen dies before Baptism, the Church grants Christian burial. That follows from the relationship the rite has just established. The person is not yet baptised. The person is no longer a stranger.

The catechumenate is the long middle of the order, and it is long on purpose. The rite says that it may last several years. Its length follows the growth of faith, the cooperation of the person, the life of the community, and the circumstances of the place. The bishop sets the norms for the diocese. A grave reason may shorten the time, and only by that judgement. If Lent arrives and the person is not ready, the Church waits. A second Easter is not an insult. An unready font would be.

Four things fill the time, and they belong together. There is catechesis: a teaching of the faith that is gradual and full, given in the light of the liturgical year, so that the Creed, the sacraments, the commandments, and the prayer of the Church are learned as one Catholic life and not as a private syllabus. There is a training in the Christian life: the mind and the conduct turn towards God, sin is faced, prayer becomes a habit, and the person learns to live among the Catholic people. There are liturgical rites, which do what a class cannot do: they bless, they strengthen, and they pray for deliverance. And there is a beginning of apostolic life, so that the catechumen learns to work with the Church for the spread of the Gospel and the good of the neighbour, and not only to receive.

The rites of this long period are quieter than the three great steps, and they are still rites. The Church celebrates the Word with the catechumens. Minor exorcisms are prayed over them. These are prayers that what is opposed to Christ may lose its hold, and that the catechumen may be free for the Gospel. They are not a public contest with a demon, and they are not a spectacle. Blessings are given, to encourage and to strengthen. The oil of catechumens may be used, as the book in the diocese provides. That anointing is for the struggle of the Christian life. It is distinct from the Sacred Chrism of Confirmation, which is another oil and another sacrament. A catechumen who meets these rites in the parish should recognise them as the Church's, not as an addition the group has invented.

On Sundays, in the full form of the order, the catechumens are present for the Liturgy of the Word. After the homily the Church prays for them and may dismiss them before the Liturgy of the Eucharist, so that they can go and ponder the Scriptures they have heard. The dismissal is an honour to the Word and a truthful withholding of the Eucharist. It is not an expulsion. Where a parish does not dismiss, the catechumen remains in the church and still does not receive Holy Communion. Baptism has not yet been given. The table of the Eucharist is for those who have passed through the water, or who were baptised already and have been received.

Through all of this the catechumen is known by name in the parish. Sponsors walk with him or her. The priest judges how the faith is growing. None of that judging is a private mark out of ten. It is the Church's care that the sacraments, when they come, will be received in a faith that can bear them.

When the catechumenate has done its work, and Lent is at hand, the Church celebrates the Rite of Election, also called the Enrolment of Names. This is ordinarily on the First Sunday of Lent, or on a day close to it. The proper minister is the bishop, who may delegate a priest if he cannot preside. The catechumens of a diocese often come to the cathedral for this rite. The place can vary. The meaning does not. Election is not a parish tea, and it is not the weekly class under a different name.

The godparents, the catechists, and the community testify that these men and women have walked in faith and that they are ready to receive the sacraments at Easter. The catechumens, for their part, declare that they wish to be baptised. The bishop, in the name of the Church, elects them. He admits to the Easter sacraments those whom the Church judges ready, on the testimony just given. Their names are written in the Book of the Elect. From that writing they are called the elect. The older name, catechumen, described a person being formed. The new name describes a person whom the Church is leading to the font at the coming Vigil.

The Book of the Elect is for the unbaptised. It is not a general register of everyone in the parish group. A person already baptised is not elected for Baptism, and is not entered in that book as though the water were still to come. A diocese may gather the already baptised in the same liturgy and pray for them in words that fit their state. A shared afternoon does not make the two groups one group. If a catechumen is not yet ready, the Church does not elect him or her. He or she remains a catechumen. That is discernment, not disgrace.

From the Rite of Election to the Vigil, the elect are in the period of purification and enlightenment. It coincides with Lent. It is not a gap between the cathedral and Easter, and it is not a last burst of homework. It is a time of intense recollection and repentance, close to the font. The Church prays, and the elect pray, that whatever is still opposed to Christ may be healed, and that whatever is already of God may be strengthened.

The scrutinies are celebrated on the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Sundays of Lent. They belong to the elect, not to the already baptised, and not to the congregation at large, though the whole congregation prays them. Three is the Church's number for them. The bishop may dispense from one or more, and only for a serious reason. A priest does not drop a scrutiny because a Sunday is inconvenient. They are not examinations. Nobody passes or fails a scrutiny. The word means a searching. The Church looks, with the elect, at the hold of sin, and prays it loose. What is weak, defective, or sinful is to be uncovered and healed. What is upright, strong, and good is to be brought into the light and strengthened.

The Gospels the Church appoints for these three Sundays are those of Year A, even in a year when the Sunday lectionary would otherwise be reading Saint Mark or Saint Luke. On the Third Sunday the Gospel is the woman of Samaria at the well. On the Fourth it is the man born blind. On the Fifth it is the raising of Lazarus. Living water, light for the eyes, and the calling of the dead into life: these are the Church's images for what Baptism is about to do. The elect are not quizzed on the passages. The passages are proclaimed over them.

In each scrutiny the assembly prays for the elect in silence and in intercession. The celebrant then prays an exorcism over them, a prayer of the Church that they may be freed from the power of sin and of the evil one and filled with the Spirit of Christ. This is the same kind of prayer as the minor exorcisms of the catechumenate, now solemn, public, and joined to these three Sundays. It is not the solemn rite used for a case of possession, and a parish does not stage it as one. The elect go on towards the font with that prayer upon them.

The presentations belong to this same period, by ancient use, because they follow the scrutinies. The Church hands over to the elect the two texts they are about to hold as their own. The presentation of the Creed is made during the week after the first scrutiny. The presentation of the Lord's Prayer is made during the week after the third scrutiny. For a pastoral reason either presentation may be celebrated earlier, during the catechumenate, as a rite of passage on the way. The usual place is Lent. The meaning is the same wherever it is done.

The Creed is handed over so that the elect may learn the Church's faith in the Church's words, and later give it back by reciting it. It is not a statement they are invited to rewrite. The Lord's Prayer is handed over because it is the prayer of the children of God, and Baptism is about to make them those children. They receive it from the Church before they pray it at the altar as baptised people. These rites are the opposite of a worksheet. The Church entrusts. The elect receive, learn, and will return the Creed with their own mouths.

On Holy Saturday the elect keep the day in quiet. They refrain from their ordinary work, as far as their state of life allows, and spend the hours in prayer and recollection. The paschal fast of Good Friday is extended, in the Church's mind, through this day until the Vigil itself. The day is not a rehearsal in the style of a performance. It is the last preparation of people who will pass through the water at night.

The preparation rites of Holy Saturday may be celebrated with them. The book provides several, and a parish uses those that the ritual and the bishop have kept. The elect may give back the Creed, reciting the faith that was handed to them. The Ephphetha rite may be celebrated, the rite of opening. The minister touches the ears and the mouth, as the Lord did when he opened a man's hearing and loosened his tongue. The Gospel word means "Be thou opened." The person is being opened to hear the Word and to profess it. Where the bishops have provided for it, a Christian name may be chosen, if a baptismal name is truly needed, or if the person and the priest judge that a saint's name should be added. In many parishes the person is baptised under the name he or she already has. Nothing in this file requires a new name. The oil of catechumens may be used on this day, if it has not been used before, and if the book in use places the anointing here rather than earlier or at the font. The priest will not improvise a private set. He will celebrate what the order provides.

The sacraments of initiation are celebrated at the Easter Vigil. This is the Church's great night, the night of the Resurrection, and the font belongs to it more than to any other night. The Vigil begins after nightfall. It is not an early Saturday service still in the daylight. The night opens with the blessing of the new fire and of the paschal candle, and with the procession of that light into the church. A long liturgy of the Word follows, in which the Church reads the history of salvation and then proclaims the Resurrection. After the Word, the Church turns to the water.

The elect are called forward. The Litany of the Saints is sung, placing these men and women in the prayer of the whole company of heaven and of the faithful on earth. The priest blesses the baptismal water. The paschal candle, the sign of the risen Christ, may be lowered into the water. The elect renounce sin and Satan. They profess the Church's faith, in answer to the questions of Baptism: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and the holy Catholic Church. Then they are baptised. Water is poured, or they are immersed, and the minister says the words of the sacrament, the words the previous file has already given: I baptise you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Each person is baptised individually. A group is not baptised by one sentence spoken over a crowd.

What follows explains what the water has done, and it should not be mistaken for a further sacrament. A white garment is given, the sign of the baptismal dignity, of a people who have put on Christ. A candle is lit from the paschal candle and given to the newly baptised, or set in the godparent's care for them, so that they are to walk as people of the light. If Confirmation were not to follow at once, the newly baptised would also be anointed with chrism as an explanatory rite of Baptism. When Confirmation follows immediately, as it should for an adult, that anointing is omitted, so that Sacred Chrism is kept for the sacrament itself and the oil is not used twice, in one hour, for two different meanings.

Confirmation is then given. The bishop is the ordinary minister. When the bishop is not the one baptising, the priest who has baptised an adult confirms him or her in the same celebration, by the faculty the law gives for that moment, unless a grave reason defers it. The minister lays hands over the newly baptised and prays for the Holy Spirit, and he anoints each one on the forehead with Sacred Chrism, the oil the bishop has consecrated. Confirmation completes baptismal grace by the seal of the Holy Spirit. An adult initiation that stopped at the water, and left this seal for an indefinite someday, would be incomplete by the Church's own standard.

The Mass continues. The newly baptised, now called neophytes, take their place in the Prayer of the Faithful. They may bring the gifts to the altar. At Communion they receive the Eucharist for the first time, the Body and Blood of Christ. This is first Holy Communion. It is the summit of the three sacraments, not a closing ceremony after the real event. Baptism is the door. Confirmation seals. The Eucharist is the end towards which the door and the seal both lead, and it is the sacrament they will receive from then on.

There is no sacramental Confession before this font. Baptism itself forgives original sin and personal sin, and the punishment due to them. The renunciation, the scrutinies, and the penance of Lent are the preparation. They are not a hidden first Confession. Confession belongs after Baptism, for sins committed after Baptism.

The three sacraments are one initiation. The Church celebrates them in that order, in one Vigil, so that nobody thinks of Catholic life as Baptism alone, or as a course completed by a certificate. The night is long because the reality is large.

The Vigil is the third step, not the end of the order. The fourth period is postbaptismal catechesis, or mystagogy, and it runs through the Easter season, at least until Pentecost. Mystagogy means being led more deeply into the mysteries just received. The neophytes gather with the parish, above all at the Sunday Mass of Eastertide. They ponder the Scriptures, the sacraments they have received, and the life they are now to live in the Church. The community is to receive them as its own new members, not as a group whose interesting weeks are over. The bishop may gather the newly baptised of the diocese. When Pentecost comes, the period the rite names has reached its term. Catholic life has not. Sunday Mass, Confession when it is needed, prayer, and the works of mercy are the continuation, and they have no closing date.

A person already validly baptised is not on the path just described. The Church's name for that person is candidate, not catechumen, and not one of the elect. Baptism is not repeated. Saint Paul writes of one Lord, one faith, one baptism. To put such a person into the water again would deny the baptism Christ has already given. The previous file set out how the Church recognises a baptism, and what is done if a serious doubt remains. This file does not reopen that judgement. Where, after enquiry, a real doubt about the fact or the validity of the earlier baptism still stands, the Church uses a conditional form, and uses it as the priest directs. That form is not a public second baptism. Where the baptism is known to have been valid, there is no water at all.

The candidate is prepared, often in the same parish gatherings as the catechumens, because the Catholic faith still has to be learned and loved, and because a parish has one community. The preparation is not the same preparation. The candidate has already been configured to Christ by Baptism. Many candidates have worshipped Christ for years in another Christian community, and the Church does not ask them to despise those years. The rites must not be arranged so that a baptised Christian looks like an unbaptised enquirer. Confusion of the two is not pastoral kindness. It is a mistake about the sacrament already received.

There is a welcoming of candidates. A parish may celebrate it in the same liturgy as the Rite of Acceptance, provided the words and the signs keep the two groups distinct. The candidate is not signed and enrolled as though he or she were entering the order of catechumens. During Lent the candidate is not written in the Book of the Elect. The scrutinies are not transferred across, as if Baptism had left the same work still to do. Where the already baptised need a penitential rite, the order provides for them in their own state. It is not a scrutiny under another label.

Before reception the candidate makes a sacramental Confession. Baptism did its forgiving work when it was given. Sins committed since then are taken to the sacrament of Penance, so that the candidate comes to Confirmation and to Holy Communion in a state of grace. This Confession is mercy. It is not an entrance examination, and it is not the same act as the renunciation the elect make at the font.

Reception into the full communion of the Catholic Church is the rite. It is celebrated within Mass. The candidate professes the Catholic faith, the faith of the Church whole and entire, in the form the ritual book gives, and the priest receives him or her into that full communion. Confirmation follows in the same celebration if the sacrament has not already been validly received, and first Holy Communion follows Confirmation. The bishop provides the day and the minister. He does not provide an omission. Confirmation already given is not given twice. Confirmation still lacking is not left for an indefinite someday, and Holy Communion is not given before it.

As the previous file said, chrismation in an Eastern Church whose sacraments the Catholic Church recognises is Confirmation, and it is not repeated. Whether some later rite in another community was the sacrament is the priest's judgement, not a subject for the weekly class, and not a quarrel to be held in public on the day. The candidate tells the truth about the baptism and about any later rite, and then trusts that judgement.

The fitting time for the Baptism of the elect is the Easter Vigil. The candidate is not bound to that night in the same way. Reception may be at the Vigil, especially when the parish is also baptising, or on another Sunday, or on another fitting day, when the person is ready. The book used in England and Wales provides for initiation and for reception in one Vigil, and it provides for reception apart from the Vigil. In a combined celebration the Church still does not baptise the baptised. They are not taken to the font. They profess the faith, they are received, they are confirmed if they are to be confirmed, and they receive Holy Communion. The distinction is visible on the night. Charity requires it, and so does the truth of Baptism.

No greater burden than necessary is laid on a baptised Christian for the sake of communion. The rite is not a triumph over the community the person has loved. It is a coming into the full communion of the Catholic Church. The celebration should be able to bear that sentence.

One further distinction belongs here, because the same room often contains a third sort of person. A Catholic baptised in infancy, who was never catechised, or who never received Confirmation or first Holy Communion, is not a candidate for reception and is not a catechumen. That person is already a Catholic. What remains is catechesis, and the sacraments still lacking, with Confession before Holy Communion. The rites must not be used to receive a Catholic into the Church he or she has never left.

Children of catechetical age are not infants, and they are not adults. Catechetical age begins when a child has the use of reason, about the seventh year, and it runs through the years in which the child can be taught and can answer for himself or herself in a way proper to those years. The priest judges when a young person should walk the adult order instead. The same book gives these children their own form. It is not the adult rites copied in smaller chairs. It is not the Rite of Baptism for Children, which is the baptism of infants at the asking of the parents, with Confirmation deferred in the ordinary Latin practice.

An unbaptised child of this age is a catechumen. The child is admitted by a rite of acceptance adapted to children. The catechumenate is real, and it is shaped to the child's years, with the parents and the family involved, and with companions who can stand beside a child. There are penitential rites, the scrutinies in a form the child can bear. At the end the child receives Baptism, Confirmation, and first Holy Communion together. That is the order of initiation, not the delayed order used for babies. Because Baptism itself forgives all sin, the child is not sent to sacramental Confession before the water. Confession is taught for the life that follows Baptism.

A child of this age who has already been validly baptised is not baptised again, any more than an adult is. If the baptism was outside the Catholic Church, the child is prepared for reception into full communion. If the child is already Catholic, the child is prepared for the sacraments still lacking. Confession stands in its right place before Holy Communion. Parents who are unsure which child is which should not sort it from this page. They should tell the priest the facts. These rites exist so that the child is treated as a child whom Christ is calling, able to answer in a child's way, and not as a small copy of the adult group or as an infant who cannot yet speak.

The Easter Vigil is the proper time for the sacraments of initiation. It is not the only time the Church can act. The bishop can provide another time. He sets the norms of the catechumenate in his diocese. He may permit the rites outside the usual seasons when there is a serious pastoral reason. If the number of the elect is very great, some may be baptised on the days within the Easter octave rather than all in the one night, still with the Easter readings and the Easter sacraments. In danger of death the Church does not wait for Lent or for the Vigil at all. A short form is used, so that a dying person is not refused Baptism, nor Confirmation and Viaticum, that last Holy Communion for the passage of death, as far as they can be given. Exceptional circumstances have their own simpler forms in the same book. They are still this order, used as the bishop provides. They are not a homemade shortcut, and they are not a convenience for a calendar.

Reception of a person already baptised is freer of the Vigil than the Baptism of the elect, as already said. Readiness, and the bishop's provision, bear on the day. A candidate is not told that only Easter night counts. A candidate is not told that any spare half-hour is the same thing as the Church's rite.

The parish's weekly class is not itself the rite. This has to be said without slighting the class. Catechists teach. Sponsors accompany. The gatherings carry much of the catechesis, the apprenticeship, and the friendship of the long catechumenate. They do not accept a person into the order of catechumens. The Rite of Acceptance does that. They do not elect. The bishop does that, in the Rite of Election, and the Book of the Elect is the sign. They do not celebrate the scrutinies. The Third, Fourth, and Fifth Sundays of Lent do that. They do not hand over the Creed and the Lord's Prayer in the Church's sense, unless those presentations are actually celebrated. They do not baptise, confirm, or give Holy Communion. The Vigil does that, or the other celebration the bishop has provided. A person can attend all year and remain an enquirer, if the first rite has not been celebrated. A person can be fully initiated where the class was only a handful of evenings, if the rites and the sacraments have been given in faith. The measure is the order, not the number of sessions.

In plain words, the person asks, and keeps asking, freely. Nobody is carried through a step he or she has not chosen, and nobody who asks in good faith is left without an answer from the priest.

The person comes, listens to the Gospel, prays, and starts to live what he or she is hearing. The person tells the priest the truth about baptism, and about his or her state of life, and then leaves the choice of the next rite to the priest. At the Rite of Acceptance the person says, in front of the community, that he or she wants to follow Christ in the Church, receives the sign of the cross, and enters. Through the long catechumenate the person learns the faith, comes to Mass, accepts the dismissal if the parish keeps it, receives the blessings and the other rites, and allows life to be converted, not only opinions. The person chooses a godparent in good time.

At the Rite of Election the person asks for Baptism, and his or her name is written in the Book of the Elect. Through Lent the person keeps the season, receives the scrutinies without treating them as a test to be passed, learns the Creed and the Lord's Prayer as the Church hands them over, and gives the Creed back when the rite asks for it. On Holy Saturday the person prays, fasts with the Church as far as health and duty allow, and stays quiet. At the Vigil the person renounces sin, professes the faith, and is baptised, confirmed, and given Holy Communion. Afterwards the person does not disappear. The Easter season is for staying with the parish and going deeper into what has just been given. Then the Sundays continue.

A candidate already baptised does a different set of things, and they are just as real. The candidate learns the Catholic faith and begins to live it, makes a Confession in the Catholic Church before reception, professes that faith in the rite of reception, is confirmed if Confirmation is still to be given, and receives Holy Communion. The candidate does not approach the font.

The sponsor and the godparent are companions the order itself provides. They are not decorations for a ceremony.

During enquiry and the catechumenate, a sponsor walks with the person. The sponsor is a Catholic who can stand in the parish, found by the person or, if need be, with the priest's help. The sponsor stands with the enquirer at the Rite of Acceptance, helps him or her to know the people and to pray, listens, and over time bears witness to whether the asking is true. The sponsor does not replace the priest, does not decide that the person is ready for the font, and does not hear Confession.

For the Rite of Election and for Baptism, the catechumen chooses a godparent, one or two. The sponsor may become the godparent, and often does. A godparent is a Catholic who has been confirmed and who has received the Eucharist, who is old enough for the office, and who lives a life of faith that fits it. The father or the mother of the person to be baptised does not take this office. A Christian of another community may stand as a witness beside a Catholic godparent, not instead of one. If the catechumen cannot find such a person, the priest sees that one is found. Nobody is left unbaptised for lack of Catholic relatives.

At the Rite of Election the godparent testifies that the catechumen has walked in faith and intends to receive the sacraments. Through the scrutinies the godparent stands with the elect and supports them. At the Vigil the godparent is there at the font, at Confirmation, and at first Holy Communion, and remains a companion into the Easter season and after it. The office is not finished when the candle is put down. The godparent shows what a Catholic life looks like, stays near when the person hesitates, and helps the new Catholic to keep to the Baptism just received.

A candidate who was baptised years ago already had godparents then, or whatever companion that baptism gave. The companion for reception is a sponsor. The sponsor stands with the candidate at the rite of reception, helps the preparation, and supports the Catholic life that follows. That sponsor is not a second set of baptismal godparents. There is no second baptism.

A reader who has followed these rites has not yet received them. They are not received from a page, and they are not received by filling in a form. The person who wants them goes to a Catholic parish and speaks to the priest. The previous file has already said how that conversation begins. The priest will say which of these rites fits, and when, and what the bishop has provided in that diocese. Until he says it, the names in this file are a map, not a date.