As we approach the reception of a new translation of the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults, it is striking that this text is the least frequently used for Christian initiation. In terms of numbers, the Order of the Baptism of Children, combined with the Order of Confirmation, comes out on top. This numerical division illustrates well that there are two basic models for Christian initiation in the Roman Rite of the Latin Church: adult initiation and infant baptism—neat and clean! But imagine the pastoral conundrum when (for example) a six-year-old and seven-year-old brother are ready for initiation: the seven-year old is baptized, confirmed, and receives first Holy Communion at the Easter Vigil, while his brother—just a year younger—is baptized as an “infant” and has to wait a year before Penance and first Holy Communion…and ten years before receiving the Sacrament of Confirmation!

In his now classic work, The Shape of Baptism, Father Aidan Kavanagh sketches the basic scope of these two models of initiation: “The Roman Rite thus finds itself affirming in practice two initiatory theories and polities that have successively held sway in its history: the first is antique and paschal, meant to consecrate and initiate a Christian wholly; the second is medieval and socio-personal in emphasis, stressing ‘growth’ on all fronts (ad robur). The first presupposes the presence of catechumens in local churches together with the evangelical and catechetical structures necessary to prepare them for baptism. The second presupposes a sustained Catholic birthrate and functioning forms of religious education such as the parochial school. The two project rather different models of the Church as well, the second being a ‘Christendom model’ currently wracked with enervating problems that arise not from the hostility of the modern state so much as from its massive indifference. The first projected model, on the contrary, does not presuppose the state at all: it was, in fact, developed historically not only without recourse to state benevolence but often in opposition to its pretensions.”¹

There are two basic models for Christian initiation in the Roman Rite of the Latin Church: adult initiation and infant baptism.

Yet, in both of these initiation models, the Church insists that preparation needs to be driven by conversion to Christ so that the person is prepared with the proper desire and disposition to receive fruitfully all the graces that God gives in the Sacraments of Christian Initiation. The Introduction to Christian Initiation says it this way: “Baptism is therefore, above all, the sacrament of that faith by which, enlightened by the grace of the Holy Spirit, we respond to the Gospel of Christ. That is why the Church believes that it is its most basic and necessary duty to inspire all, catechumens, parents of children still to be baptized, and godparents, to that true and living faith by which they hold fast to Christ and enter into or confirm their commitment to the New Covenant. In order to enliven such faith, the Church prescribes the pastoral instruction of catechumens, the preparation of the children’s parents, the celebration of God’s word, and the profession of faith at the celebration of baptism.” (Christian Initiation, General Introduction, 3).

Regardless of which path one “enters into or confirm[s] the New Covenant,” the catechumenate—a patristic model restored after the Second Vatican Council—lays down the pathway by which either model is to proceed. As the General Directory for Catechesis (GDC) puts it, the “model for all catechesis is the baptismal catechumenate when, by specific formation, an adult converted to belief is brought to explicit profession of baptismal faith during the Paschal Vigil” (GDC, 59). This primacy of the model of the adult catechumenate is founded on the fact that in the early Church “the catechumenate and preparation for the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist were the same thing.”²

The Pathway Model

The General Directory for Catechesis sets forth the adult catechumenate as the model for all catechesis. The dynamism of the restored catechumenate arises from its emphasis on conversion as the primary driver in the pathway to Christian initiation. The catechumenate is comprised of four periods of formation and three major liturgical rites that lead into those periods: the Period of the Precatechumenate leads into the Period of the Catechumenate by means of the Rite of Acceptance into the Catechumenate, while the Period of the Catechumenate leads into the Period of Purification and Enlightenment by means of the Rite of Election. Finally, the period of Purification and Enlightenment leads into the Period of Mystagogy by means of the reception of the Sacraments of Christian Initiation. The catechetical preparation for each period is articulated well by the General Directory for Catechesis:

“—the pre-catechumenate, characterized as the locus of first evangelization leading to conversion and where the kerygma of the primary proclamation is explained;

—the catechumenate, properly speaking, the context of integral catechesis beginning with ‘the handing on of the Gospels’;

—a time of purification and illumination which affords a more intense preparation for the sacraments of initiation and in which the ‘the handing on of the Creed’ and ‘the handing on of the Lord’s Prayer’ take place;

—a time of mystagogy, characterized by the experience of the sacraments and entry into the community” (GDC, 88).

In each of these periods, “the definitive aim of [the] catechesis is to put people not only in touch but in communion, in intimacy, with Jesus Christ: only He can lead us to the love of the Father in the Spirit and make us share in the life of the Holy Trinity” (John Paul II, Catechesi Tradendae, 5; cf. GDC, 80–81).

Christ, King of the Pathway

Fundamental to this pathway of the catechumenal model is the gradual movement by means of conversion to Christ whereby faith opens out to hope, and hope to love. Indeed, as adult catechumens “become familiar with the Christian way of life…[they] learn to turn more readily to God in prayer, to bear witness to the faith, in all things to keep their hopes set on Christ, to follow supernatural inspiration in their deeds, and to practice love of neighbor” (RCIA, 75.2). In this dynamic, the act of faith in the Gospel, in Christ himself, leads to hope in the truth of the life he promises, and then to acts of living the love that Christ holds out to us, which leads in turn to deeper faith in him and his Gospel. This dynamic movement of conversion is gradual through the whole pathway of the catechumenate as it leads from hearing the kerygma (first proclamation of salvation in Christ) to living the life of faith, hope, and charity in the catechumenate, to receiving the purging power of the scrutinies during the Period of Purification and Enlightenment in preparation for the Sacraments of Initiation. In this gradual process, they do not pass through the Rite for Entrance into the Catechumenate without being “freely converted to the Lord and commit[ting] themselves sincerely to him” (RCIA, 36, emphasis mine).

The General Directory for Catechesis sets forth the adult catechumenate as the model for all catechesis. The dynamism of the restored catechumenate arises from its emphasis on conversion as the primary driver in the pathway to Christian initiation.

Catechesis and conversion go apace so that encounters with the Lord fuel desire to know him more deeply, which in turn is fueled by doctrine about who Jesus is and what it means to follow him, which then disposes one to receive more of the Lord in encounters with him. Theologian Lawrence Feingold speaks of this dynamic of conversion in relation to the person’s disposition toward a more fruitful reception of the sacraments: “The dispositions of faith and repentance are necessary not only as minimum conditions for the fruitfulness of the sacraments. The intensity of repentance, faith, hope, and especially charity in the recipient determines the degree of grace given by the sacraments. This is an important consequence of the principle that everything is received according to the mode of the receiver. Thus we should think that no two adults receiving the same sacrament receive the same graces, for each will have a different disposition of desire, contrition, faith, hope, and charity.”³

The gradual process of the catechumenate is meant to deepen one’s capacity to receive all that the Lord gives and to give oneself more and more fully to him. This structured movement toward conversion and thus the disposition to receive the Lord’s gifts of grace in the Sacraments of Initiation is at the heart of the General Directory for Catechesis’ insistence that the catechumenate be the model for all catechesis.

Christ vs. the Calendar

The movement toward sacramental reception through the process of conversion to Christ stands in stark contrast to our more common practice of sacramental reception, which relies not so much on conversion, but on the calendar for its movement. Since the day my son was born on April 15, 2015—Tax Day (Poor kid!)—I could tell you that he would be baptized in the first few weeks of his life; his first Confession and first holy Communion would be in the Spring of 2023; he would receive the Sacrament of Confirmation in the Spring of 2027. Rather than conversion, desire, and disposition, it was the calendar that set the timeline: he will receive “sacrament x” at “time y.”

The model of infant baptism grew up with the Church, both East and West: as the populations of these areas became increasingly Christian, adult baptism became fairly rare and infant baptism became almost universal. As Father Aidan Kavanagh noted above, this way of initiation came to its ascendancy in the medieval period and relied on something of a “Christendom model” where the patristic delaying of baptism until adulthood gave way to the laudable desire of parents who baptized infants with an eye toward the salvation of their souls, lest they died before they passed through the saving waters. Ideally, infants are brought to the font by “Christian parents whose faith is vigorous and whose way of life gives clear promise that their child will develop in the faith of the Church.”⁴

The practice of adult initiation usually runs according to the calendar as well. A person seeking reception will come in September and most parishes will find a way to run them through the stages of the catechumenate so that they receive the Sacraments of Initiation at the Easter Vigil. This is despite the 1986 National Statutes for the Catechumenate (NSC) and the recently approved statutes coming into force that insist that time in the catechumenate should be at least one year (NSC, 6; NSCI, 4). Moreover, while there are some pastoral exceptions to adult baptism outside the Easter Vigil, the current legislation for the catechumenate necessitates that adult readiness coincide with the Easter Vigil. The calendar, rather than conversion to Christ, becomes the primary driving force of the initiation process.

The model of infant baptism grew up with the Church, both East and West: as the populations of these areas became increasingly Christian, adult baptism became fairly rare and infant baptism became almost universal.

In all this, an essential question is how to prepare for the reception of the sacraments fruitfully. Having identified the catechumenal model as the best pathway to use in trying to accomplish this (see GDC, 59), it is no wonder that the Church has seen fit to prescribe a post-baptismal catechumenate in places where infant baptism is the numerically dominant practice: “Where infant Baptism has become the form in which this sacrament is usually celebrated, it has become a single act encapsulating the preparatory stages of Christian initiation in a very abridged way. By its very nature infant Baptism requires a post-baptismal catechumenate. Not only is there a need for instruction after Baptism, but also for the necessary flowering of baptismal grace in personal growth. [Catechesis] has its proper place here” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1231, emphasis added).⁵

Not only is this the case for those baptized as infants, but the catechumenal model is also prescribed in the preparation for the Sacrament of Matrimony. Indeed, in response to the 2022 document on Catechumenal Pathways for Married Life from the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life, many dioceses have been drafting and implementing catechumenal frameworks in their marriage preparation programs. Among such frameworks, the Marriage Catechumenate norms for the Diocese of Lansing, MI (2018), stand out both in their markedly early adoption of the catechumenal framework for marriage preparation, but also in its timeframe for marriage preparation: it changed its requirement from nine months to between six and 12 months! Among most approaches to sacramental readiness, the philosophy is generally to increase timelines rather than make them more flexible. The Diocese of Lansing’s Director of Marriage and Family Life, Richard Budd, explains that “the time-frame required for preparation should reflect the individual couple and the preparation they need” to receive the sacrament fruitfully. Again, what is most essential is not the length of the time frame, but conversion to Christ that opens the way to fruitful reception of the sacraments.

For the most part, once someone comes to the parish to sign up for the reception of a sacrament, the timeline is already set. Most of the time this timeline is arranged so as to grow desire and disposition. Nevertheless, the endpoint of the timeline is already set. This stands in contradiction to the catechumenal model which insists that the “duration of the catechumenate will depend on the grace of God [and]… the cooperation of the individual catechumens…. Nothing, therefore, can be settled a priori…. The time spent in the catechumenate should be long enough—several years if necessary—for the conversion and faith of the catechumens to become strong” (RCIA, 76, emphasis added).

Calendar vs. Conversion

Adult initiation and the initiation of infants run on two different models, but in our current practice both suffer from the same reliance on the calendar as the primary driving force in their respective pathways of Christian initiation. Most of the time this arrangement works: each group proceeds down the road according to its own lights. But traffic flow grinds to a halt when an unbaptized child of catechetical age (i.e., about the age of seven) tries to merge into the children’s lane. Where does he fit?

According to the norms of the Church’s law, the “prescripts of the canons on adult baptism are to be applied to all those who, no longer infants, have attained the use of reason” (CIC 852, §1). So, the child of catechetical age fits squarely into the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, Chapter 1 of Part II: “Christian Initiation of Children Who Have Reached Catechetical Age.” Having the use of reason, these “children are capable of receiving and nurturing a personal faith and of recognizing an obligation in conscience” (RCIA, 252)—a reality recognized at least since Lateran IV (1215) when the famous Canon XXI (Omnis utriusque sexus) prescribed the confession of sins and the reception of holy Communion for “all the faithful of both sexes…after they have reached the age of discretion.”⁶ While the child is not an adult, it is on the basis of possessing the use of reason that the child is capable of “personal faith” and the self-possession necessary to act on the basis of conscience.

By its very nature infant Baptism requires a post-baptismal catechumenate.

However, what often happens is that the child of catechetical age is only baptized, with the reception of holy Communion and Confirmation being delayed until the time when his peers will receive Confirmation. Perhaps this delay is because we have idealized a certain adult type of preparation for Confirmation since we mistakenly view Confirmation as a kind of “rite of passage” into adulthood (see Roman Catechism 2.3.20).⁷ Whatever the reason for the delay, this postponement violates the Church’s law on sacramental practice: “Unless there is a grave reason to the contrary, an adult who is baptized is to be confirmed immediately after baptism and is to participate in the eucharistic celebration also by receiving communion” (CIC, 866). Secondly, not only is this a violation of liturgical and canon law, but it also disrespects the very nature of what is happening in baptism—they do not “receive the Sacrament merely passively; they willingly enter a covenant with Christ by renouncing errors so as to adhere to the true God” (RCIA, 211). Because the child of catechetical age has the self-possession “capable of receiving and nurturing personal faith” (RCIA, 252) in an encounter with the Living God, he is capable of giving himself entirely to the Lord and receiving all that the Lord has to give (according to the child’s capacity to receive).

Two Models, One Way

While these two models of Christian initiation, adult and infant, may appear very different pathways, the fundamental aspect uniting them both is the free act of faith that the catechumenal model is aiming to elicit. The force that the calendar applies to both the adult catechumenate and the post-baptismal catechumenate works contrary to the good that each is aimed at bringing about: the free and complete gift of the person to God through the Sacraments of Christian Initiation. Working through the baptismal catechumenate as the model, both modes of initiation walk the same pathway of conversion to Christ wherein he brings us into communion with God the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit. Only if we are able to keep the calendar under the Kingship of Christ and make conversion to Christ the driving force of all sacramental preparation can we curtail departure from the catechumenal way.

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1. Aidan Kavanagh, The Shape of Baptism: The Rite of Christian Initiation (New York: Pueblo, 1978), 196–7.
2. John Paul II, Catechesi Tradendae (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1979), no. 23.
3. Lawrence Feingold, Touched by Christ: The Sacramental Economy (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2021), 386.
4. Aidan Kavanagh, The Shape of Baptism: The Rite of Christian Initiation (New York: Pueblo, 1978), 196–7.
5. See also Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, Directory for Catechesis (Washington, DC: USCCB Publishing, 2020), no. 242.
6. H. J. Schroeder, Disciplinary Decrees of the General Councils: Text, Translation, and Commentary (St. Louis, MO; London: B. Herder Book Co., 1937), 259.
7. The Catechism of the Council of Trent, trans. Theodore Alois Buckley (London: George Routledge and Co., 1852), 206.