More on that "convert" business

From Ralph Johnston, headmaster of the Anglican Use Our Lady of the Atonement's school, over at The Anglo-Catholic, where I was happy to blog for a while. Atonement parish was the first Anglican Use parish in the United States, under Pope John Paul II's Pastoral Provision. Its pastor Father Christopher Phillips, is a keynote speaker at the Anglicanorum coetibus conference Mar. 24-26 in Mississauga.

I understand why many Christians who come into full communion bristle at the use of the term "convert." That word, used in that way, does not properly apply to them, as it denigrates the sincerity, the dignity and the grace of their prior faith practices as followers of Christ.

There are a couple of things that can be done to move away from a practice that is understandably offensive. First, we can all strive to use language more precisely. Don't say "convert" when it does not apply.

The second thing that could be done — and it would be a real service to those who are sincerely confused on this point — would be for our bishops and pastors to rethink the way people are received. Since the apostolic era, the Church has had a sense of a catechumate, persons of different cult who are discerning the Faith and contemplating requesting baptism. Since the Great Schism, the Church has understood that this is a very different situation from that of baptized faithful in impaired communion who are contemplating coming into full communion.

Then, at just the moment in history when many Church leaders decided that formal catechism instruction for its members had ceased to be "relevant," along came the instructional model of RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults), which in practice, and despite the transparently clear meaning of its name, is indiscriminately applied to a wide range of people whose faith and pastoral needs vary greatly.

Drop in to an RCIA class at your local parish and you are likely to find a lively mix of Episcopalians, Lutherans, Baptists, Mormons, Jews and others, all of them inquiring sincerely, and all of them entitled to respectful treatment of their present beliefs. And the fact is, the Episcopalians and the Lutherans are baptized Christians, the Baptists may or may not be baptized but are thoroughly and sincerely professed Christians, while the rest are genuine catechumens.

We correctly apply the term "convert" to the catechumens (if they go all the way). But we treat the inquiring Christians identically. In many parishes we exclude them all, Christian and pagan alike, from the greatest mystery of the Faith (even if they have been memorializing it in separation all of their lives), publicly dismissing them after the Gospel to go off to lay-led rap sessions at which they seek to "break open the Word."

Can we blame the people in the pews (John and Mary Catholic, as one bishop disparages us) if we think of all the newcomers as "converts," if we fail to recognize that some of the "converts" are our Christian brothers and sisters who in some cases may be better catechized than we are?