Introduction

For our parish the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA) has been a huge blessing, both for the individuals who joined our community, and for the community as a whole. The focus of our RCIA program, as I believe is true for many, is on individual faith formation. The person making the commitment to Christ in His church needs to understand and reflect deeply on what that means for her or him. The process impacts back onto other members of the community who are called and encouraged to continue in their own self-examination and growth in faith.

The power of this process does not mean that it is a complete answer to the development of faith in our community nor, I imagine, in other places either. Many of those entering the Church through RCIA feel a need to extend their knowledge and understanding of the church’s history and traditions beyond what they may have learned during the RCIA process. It’s not enough just to come to know Christ as an individual, it’s also good to know about the community within which the individual develops that knowledge, and to recognize how this community is connected back through time to the Apostles themselves.

We may also note that those who entered the Church through the RCIA process are not the only ones that may feel this need. Many people raised as Catholics recognize they don’t know as much of their Church’s tradition as they would like. So for our parish we developed a program we called GIFT, for “Growing in Faith Together”, in an attempt to tap into this history and experience. A challenge in doing this was the scope of the topics we wanted to cover and the huge range of resources available. We attempted to be both comprehensive and focused. We hoped to achieve this curious combination by taking for our study a combination of historical topics together with some of a more personal nature. We also structured our sessions as a mix of faith sharing, instruction, and reflection on Scripture.

Our study addressed the following topics, although not in this order:

  • Church history (covering three critical periods in the life of the Church)
    • The Patristic period
    • The Reformation
    • The Reformation
  • The Second Vatican Council
  • Studying Scripture
  • Bible history
  • Textual analysis
  • Lives and works of some major saints
    • St Paul
    • St Augustine
    • St Ignatius Loyola
    • Mother Teresa of Calcutta
  • Church life and traditions
    • The Mass
    • Monasticism and Religious Orders
    • Mary

For each of these topics we could have spent a semester in study and referenced innumerable books and articles. However we did not find any source of material that was well suited to our more limited aims and time. This book reflects our efforts to condense the vast amount of literature available into a scope sufficient for our purpose. It is offered to others in the hope that it may provide a useful resource for those engaged in similar study and reflection.

It is also the author’s hope that this material will be of value for individual study, and even for those who do not follow in the tradition of the Roman Catholic Church but wish to know more of its perspective on its history and self-awareness. In saying this the author does not claim any authority to speak on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church. He writes simply as one wishing to express his understanding of his faith in the hope that may help others, however close or distant their own understandings may be. In this he hopes to contribute in whatever small way possible to the unity that Christ sought, and indeed expected, of his followers (That they all may one… John 17:21) 

In this spirit, it should be noted that the text is not encumbered by strict delineations in the use and meaning of the term “church”. Sometimes it may be used in the sense of the universal fellowship of those who follow Christ (where the universality is defined in His eyes, not ours), and sometimes to refer specifically to the institutions and communities of the Roman Catholic Church. These usages should be clear from context, or noted explicitly where necessary. If the reader finds the usage in some instances ambiguous, perhaps that is intentional.

The topical outline above is structured as a series of categories. This is not a natural or readily accessible order for study. The sequence we adopted was for the most part “reverse chronological”, that is, we started with the most recent and worked our way back toward the origins of our faith. The rationale for this was to start with the more familiar and proceed to those things more distant in time and thus perhaps less easy to relate to. This is the sequence in which the book is presented, but others may find alternative orderings to be more convenient or comprehensible.

The method is broken in the first Chapter, which considers Saint Paul, who by the above rationale should come last. This might illustrate a certain lack of absolutism in our approach, but is also due to the fact that we took St Paul as our guide, not only by starting our journey in his company, but by using his words throughout in our Scriptural reflection. We used the following format for our sessions:

  • Candle lighting and a current faith story shared by a group member, following the model our parish uses for RCIA sessions;
  • Input on the topic of the day, with discussion;
  • Scriptural reading from the letters of St. Paul, with reflection led by a group member who had chosen a passage she or he found of particular value.

Doubtless other groups will find their own ways to grow in faith together, and if this material can in any way support them, it will have served it purpose.

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