By Michelle Martin
Staff writer

Diane Pugh only wanted to be able to answer her granddaughter’s questions about religion when she first signed up for the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults.

Pugh, who was raised a Methodist, and her husband, a Catholic, take care of the child and put her in school at Our Lady of the Ridge.

Nearly two years later, Pugh will make her first Communion at the Easter Vigil, just over a month before her granddaughter.

“I started getting some answers for my granddaughter, and then I needed some answers for myself,” Pugh said.

She is one of an estimated more than 3,000 people in the Archdiocese of Chicago who were to receive sacraments of initiation—baptism, first Eucharist and confirmation—during Easter Vigil Masses on Holy Saturday this year.

Because Pugh was baptized as a Methodist as a child, she was not to be baptized again. But she did plan to have her marriage blessed in the church, and she was very much looking forward to receiving the Eucharist and confirmation.

So was Penny Mulcahy, a fellow member in the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults program at Our Lady of the Ridge Parish in Chicago Ridge. Because Mulcahy has no record of her earlier baptism in a non-denominational Christian church, she was to receive all three sacraments.

“The excitement is unbelievable,” she said. “The excitement you just can’t explain. It’s just amazing to me. ”

Mulcahy’s journey to the Catholic Church started when she would attend Masses with her friends. About 13 years ago, after several years of not attending church at all, she started attending Mass at Our Lady of the Ridge on a regular basis.

Last year, she decided it was time to learn more about becoming Catholic.

“I think it was when my (Catholic) uncle died. He was my favorite uncle, if you can have a favorite uncle. It was kind of like, when I died, what was going to happen to me?”

MaryJo Landuyk, the director of religious education and the RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults) coordinator at Our Lady of the Ridge, makes a point of interviewing everyone who inquires about becoming Catholic as soon as they express interest, even though classes don’t formally start until mid-September.

The interview helps people feel their inquiries are taken seriously, Landuyk said, and it gives her an opportunity to tailor the classes to the experiences of the people who will attend.

“If we’ve got somebody coming in who has no background in Christianity, then I’ve got to start at square one,” she said. “It’s different if someone is from a Protestant background and went to Sunday school.”

The interview also gives her an opportunity to explore marriage issues, like Pugh’s need for annulment. Most annulments take 1 1/2 to two years, she said.

Once the classes start, Landuyk and a team of about a dozen volunteers prepare presentations on various topics, lead discussions and pray with the candidates (those who have already been baptized in Christian churches), the catechumens (those who still need baptism) and their sponsors.

Landuyk compares the process to tending seeds and bringing them to flower, or gestating a baby in the womb.

“The best analogy is that we are taking the seed of their faith—for whatever reason, their seed of faith has been stagnant, and they’re looking for a place to plant that seed.

“We have them for those seven to nine months, like they’re in the womb. They need to be formed, and we need to give them enough knowledge that they can go out there on their own and make a heartfelt and educated decision. If they say yes, then we have active, informed Catholics.”

With two-hour sessions plus Mass every Sunday, the catechumens, candidates and sponsors and volunteers make a big-time commitment. But that commitment helps mold the group into a community.

“We’ve had deaths, births, marriages, job losses, diagnoses of horrible diseases,” Landuyk said. “They get to the point where they’re not afraid to call one another, to say, ‘You know that thing I was talking about? Would you pray for me?’ It’s a mini-church.”

That sense of community sustained Pugh, who spent two years in the RCIA program waiting for her annulment to come through.

“If it wasn’t such a friendly group, I probably wouldn’t have finished it,” she said.

It was the community of the church that attracted her in the first place, Pugh said, along with its rich history. “It was a much stronger community than I had ever experienced.”

Mulcahy also was attracted by the community and by the richness of ritual, so different from the churches she attended as a child.

But she also had concerns about the church, including what seemed to be an exclusionary approach to Communion.

“Before, I didn’t understand, and it upset me kind of, that you had to be Catholic to do that,” she said. “How can they tell you that you can’t do that, you can’t have the Eucharist unless you’re Catholic? I always felt that if you were right with God, then it was OK.”

Both women also had believed that Catholics worship, rather than revere, Mary—a common misconception among non-Catholics, they said.

As Mulcahy approached the date of coming into full communion with the church herself, she said she now understands why the Eucharist is reserved for Catholics, and she can’t wait to experience it for herself.

Interviewed the week before Easter, she said, “I probably won’t be able to sleep Friday night.”

Landuyk has seen how powerful the Eucharist can be for adults who receive it for the first time. In her first year of coordinating the RCIA program, one of the candidates returned to his seat after receiving Communion. He looked up at Landuyk, and burst into tears. He cried for the rest of the Mass, she said.

“It made me think about ‘Do I approach the Eucharist with that much anticipation, and do I walk away with that feeling of grace?’” Landuyk said. “We as Catholics have an opportunity every day. For that man, at that moment, there was a connection between heaven and earth.”