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.
Answer: Nowhere.
/sarc.
25-30 from my parish. Not sure of the actual numbers of candidates and catechumens.
And in related news you have "the Church and councils can err," EXCEPT in the matter of the canon. And so little by little we come down to God's being utterly unreliable.
Further, as was argued into the ground about a year ago, "Sola Scriptura" means "Scriptura PLUS the Holy Ghost in the elect reader." So that the question you raise is answered thus: Those who read the Scriptures with the inspiration of the Holy Ghost will find 'sola scriptura' there; the benighted will not.
What 'sola scriptura' gives is an evanescent appearance of some kind of scientific objectivity. What we offer is membership in the now tortured but soon triumphant body of Christ.
My wife and I are LCMS Lutheran and about to start catechumen classes in the Orthodox Church. I just could no longer defend the incongruity between the Lutheran Confessions, current political-theological reality, and actual LCMS practice.
Easy annulments are probably a big part of that.
I've been ELCA & LCMS. I liked the LCMS better, but I was kicked out because I didn't attend the mary/martha circle meetings. Several of us got the boot, the Church Secretary's daughter. Me, whose Dad was the President of the Congregation..ooh, it was quite the dust up in our little town.
The South has a little bit of an unfair advantage because there weren't many Papists down here in the old days.
In my high school two of my best friends were Catholic - one Roman and one Lebanese Maronite. A third was Eastern Orthodox. A good friend in the Boys' School (yes it was sex-segregated!) was Greek Orthodox. And that was just about all the non-Protestants in the whole dang school. (Clearly, in retrospect, I was hangin' out with the right crowd. . . the old-styled Southern pulpit thumpers were suspicious of Episcopalians. They were right, but for the wrong reasons . . . . )
It does NOT contain sola scriptura, ergo, sola scriptura is not necessary for salvation and holiness.
God bless you and your wife and may he smooth the path before you.
I do know some converts from maybe 15 years ago or so who came in like that. I’m spoiled in my current parish, and a lot of the Episcopalians who come in, certainly in this year’s class, are not looking for “lite” anything. They’re a wonderful and pious class.
I'm on a high from our last RCIA class, which ended an hour ago. Such a lovely and interesting group of people. And most of them ready to take the plunge, ah, so to speak. I was telling one, a very impressive and witty young lady from Colorado how much it meant to us to see these people growing in their love for Jesus.
We had a History of Western Church Music course like that, where everybody was on the same wavelength and really interested in the material. We used to sing the music in parts on the spot! It was truly an awesome class.
We sort of lateraled into the parish, so we missed RCIA and I sometimes wonder what it would have been like (I would have been a complete annoyance in RCIA so it was just as well really).
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