Posted on 04/01/2009 5:54:12 AM PDT by NYer
.- Tens of thousands of new Catholics are expected to join the Catholic Church in the U.S. in 2009, with many doing so at the Easter Vigil liturgies on April 11. Converts to Catholicism are known as catechumens if they have never been baptized and as candidates if they have received baptism in another Christian community and now seek full communion with the Catholic Church.
The Archdiocese of Atlanta, where Catholics have traditionally been a minority, estimates that 513 catechumens and 2,195 candidates will enter the Catholic Church in 2009, about 1,800 doing so at Easter. The figures do not include infant baptisms.
Father Theodore Book, director of the Office of Divine Worship for the Atlanta Archdiocese, said the archdiocese has been “blessed with an authentic dynamism” during recent years. He cited the archdiocese’s annual Eucharistic Congress, saying it draws nearly 30,000 participants.
“One of the many blessings that we have received from the Lord is the large number of individuals entering the Church,” he said.
The Archdiocese of Seattle will reportedly welcome 736 catechumens and 506 candidates, while the Diocese of San Diego will baptize 305 and receive into communion 920 other baptized Christians.
The mostly rural Diocese of Birmingham, Alabama reportedly will have 445 new converts. The diocese’s Cathedral of St. Paul could not hold them and their families for the Rite of Election, which had to be held in three separate ceremonies.
At St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, California resident Heidi Sierras will represent North America at the Easter Vigil, where she will be baptized by Pope Benedict XVI.
The 2008 Official Catholic Directory listed 49,415 adult baptisms and 87,363 people received into full communion in 2007.
There is a way that seems right unto a man, but the end thereof is death.
Sola Scriptura.
The well-known and very popular Catholic couple, Scott and Kimberly Hahn, have been constantly travelling and speaking all over North America for the last few years about their conversion to the Catholic Church. Now these two outstanding Catholic apologists tell in their own words about the incredible spiritual journey that led them to embrace Catholicism.Scott Hahn was a Presbyterian minister, the top student in his seminary class, a brilliant Scripture scholar, and militantly anti-Catholic ... until he reluctantly began to discover that his "enemy" had all the right answers. Kimberly, also a top-notch theology student in the seminary, is the daughter of a well-known Protestant minister, and went through a tremendous "dark night of the soul" after Scott converted to Catholicism.
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Baptism bump!
I do hope the RC is being careful. Obviously, the U.S. has an awful lot of flaming anti-biblical believers. The last thing the church needs is more people working hard to subvert its biblical stances on moral issues.
One of the priests in my parish is a convert & former Protestant minister and he gives one of the best homilies I have ever heard!
30 or 40 from my parish alone.
Still, I think that errors undertaken out of a grace-filled, grace-stirred, grace-originating yearning and intention to follow Jesus and claim him as one's savior are easily forgiven while an insistence on "right doctrine" can be a cloak for a kind of "works righteousness".
As Aquinas argues in Art. 2, Q. 109, I-IIae of the Summa, man can neither will nor do any good thing without grace, so it seems to me we should be patient with those who mistakenly rely on "Sola Scriptura", which has led to so many disasters, for instance the Jehovah's Witnesses. God isn't done with any of us, and I think few will on that account -- or on account of any error made in hopes of pleasing God -- be damned.
As a papist, excuse me, I meen feelthy papist, I’m glad for the “converts” from other communions. But I completely agree with you about the wonder and joy at adult converts to Christ. The catechumens, those who will be baptized, just blow my mind! I love it.
"Sola Scriptura" is indeed a way that seems right unto some men, and the end thereof is indeed death.
Where in “Sola Scriptura” does it say that the Bible is the sole source material? Just curious...
Just curious.
Oy! Am I disappointed!
Sola scriptura is the doctrine that the Bible is the only infallible or inerrant authority for Christian faith, and that it contains all knowledge necessary for salvation and holiness.
Soooo, where in the Bible does it say this? Any of the apostles? People’s head got chopped off for this? Oh wait, that’s the Middle East in another religion.
So much for man’s interpritation. Nevermind.
We were Lutherans. It still saddens me to see the ELCA plummeting ever downward. Glad I left when I did.
There, in a nutshell, is why even though I have had various problems over the years with the Catholic Church, protestantism in any form was simply not an option.
Are conversions to RCC by notable intellectuals (as Newt Gingerich and Laura Ingraham) an acknowledgment that the claimed Protestant “inspiration of the Holy Spirit” is a cover for subjectivity that, in the end, is simply intellectually untenable?
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