Feature Article

Learning about faith leads adults to – or back to – the Church

STEVEN GIRARDI

Issue 02 | March & April 2009

n her first venture inside a Roman Catholic Church, Carole Harahan recalls, she was struck by the beauty and richness of the church and the Mass. “I just looked at the magnitude of (the Catholic) Church and thought it was so wonderful,” she said. “But I was raised differently and didn’t understand it all.”

Though many years ago, she never forgot the feeling. And when Harahan, raised as a Baptist, began attending Mass with her Catholic husband a few years ago, something happened. “I started feeling everything,” she said. “The songs we sing, they were the verses we read in our churches. We were singing God’s word. We weren’t sitting there praying to statues, as we were taught Catholics do.”

Last year, after completing the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, Harahan became a Catholic during the Easter Vigil Mass at St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Parish in Spring Hill, Hernando County. Harahan, 56, said she has fallen in love with the Catholic Church that her husband, Glenn, introduced to her. “I feel like the Catholic Church has been a real blessing in my life.”

Doris Cimino experienced the same feeling, but hers was a rediscovery of the faith she had as a child. After 40 years away from the Catholic Church, she almost inexplicably found herself at Sunday Mass at St. Paul Parish in Tampa in 1999. She decided on the spot to join the church’s program for returning Catholics. “This is where God wanted me,” said Cimino, who had become a Baptist. “I can’t imagine being another faith, even though I have a lot of love for those people. I keep reminding people of the blessing we have to be Catholic, the gift.”

Cimino, 63, and Harahan are among hundreds of people each year who find their way to the Catholic Church through adult faith-formation programs in the Diocese of St. Petersburg. Similar programs throughout the country continually bring people to the Church.

RCIA alone initiates about 1,000 new Catholics a year in the five counties that make up the Diocese of St. Petersburg, said Doug Reatini, director of the diocese’s worship office. This year, 948 people are scheduled to be initiated during Easter Vigil Masses, he said. “In 11 years I’ve been here, it’s been pretty consistent,” he said.

The number of Catholics returning to the Church is harder to track. Often people leave or return on their own, without anyone knowing. “We don’t have great flocks and droves of people coming back,” said Deacon Greg Kovalesky of St. Paul, which has been reaching out to nonpracticing Catholics since the early 1990s, attracting 10 to 20 people a year.

Efforts to reach inactive Catholics seem to be increasing as many parishes begin ministries and national programs continue to arise. In January, two Paulist priests in Washington, D.C., started “Awakening Faith, Reconnecting With Your Catholic Faith” to help parishes set up ministries. It is among at least a half dozen such programs available.

The Awakening Faith program has six sessions on topics such as, “Who is Jesus,” “The Holy Spirit” and “Spirituality,” said Father Kenneth Boyack, who founded the program with Father Frank DeSiano at the Paulist National Catholic Evangelization Association.

The program grew out of Father DeSiano’s successful efforts in Chicago in the 1970s and ’80s, and later at The Ohio State University, Father Boyack said. “This is simply a way of carrying on the evangelistic mission of Christ, the Good Shepherd, who left the 99 to search for the one sheep,” he said.

There are about 17 million to 20 million inactive Catholics in the United States, said Diane Kledzik, associate director for Evangelization and Adult Faith Formation for the St. Petersburg Diocese. The reasons they leave are varied: They became indifferent, they’re too busy, they’re angry because of the abuse crisis or even because of the Vatican II reforms, Father Boyack said. Others simply drifted. “Some never got into it as young people; they were initiated but never took it to be their own,” said Deacon Kovalesky. Often, he said, there are marital issues – couples who were married outside the Church or marriages that need to be annulled, for instance. Most often, those issues can be resolved if the people contact a church, he said.

Those involved in returning-Catholic programs agree it is important to welcome people, without judgment or pressure. George Armenia with the “Catholics Are Always Welcome Home” program at St. Timothy Parish in Lutz said some Catholics need to be reintroduced to the Church. “Some of them have been gone 35 or 40 years,” he said.

Armenia, with the program since 1995, said Church ceremonies often draw people back. They come with their children or grandchildren for baptisms or first holy Communion or confirmation. Maybe it’s a wedding or a funeral that rekindles their interest. “It’s reconnecting with your identity, where you came from,” Armenia said. Even parents who have wandered often find it important to send their children to religious education.

Cimino said she was raised Catholic and attended Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic School in Tampa until she was 12. She began attending a Baptist church with friends and slowly became Baptist. She rediscovered the Catholic Church after her mother died. “I began wanting to pray for my mother. And I said, ‘That’s very Catholic.’ So I went on a journey,” she said. Eight years later, she was at St. Paul, seated in the front pew and she knew it was time. “I cried the entire Mass. I got up and asked for a blessing, and then I called the church and said I wanted to come back,” she said.

Her husband, Sal, joined the Church through RCIA four years later. Cimino since has become immersed in parish life at St. Paul as lector coordinator and assisting with RCIA, and wherever else she is asked to help.

Janet Foxenberger, RCIA director at Incarnation Parish in Tampa, said it’s not unusual for returning and new Catholics, particularly, to become active in church life. “They provide our parish with renewed energy because they come wanting to participate more fully, looking for things they can do to continue the experience of faith they were introduced to,” she said. “I find more and more people are coming searching for meaning in their lives. The stories are always amazing.”

RCIA is a months-long process of learning, usually beginning in late summer and culminating with the initiation rites at the Easter Vigil. Catechumens, those not baptized, are baptized at the vigil, in addition to receiving holy Communion and confirmation with the other candidates.

Rolando Escamilla, 60, said his baptism at Incarnation during the Easter Vigil in 2005 changed his life and gave him a desire to give back to the Church and to help others with their faith. He now sponsors other RCIA candidates and is an extraordinary minister of holy Communion. He joined the Knights of Columbus and attends Bible study groups.

Escamilla said his wife, Letty, is a cradle Catholic, and after coming to Tampa nine years ago from California, he felt “something was calling me.” He inquired about RCIA and became absorbed in the faith. “After a while you develop a sense of wanting to know more about God, about our religion,” he said. “It’s something in you that makes you thirst. It’s unexplainable to me.”

Girardi is a Clearwater-based freelance writer.