On this All Saints Day, I have a proposal. Let’s not rename the catechumens with saint names. Many of them come to us with saint names already, but not all of them do. As I said in The Way of Faith, I once had a child catechumen named “Pebbles.” Let’s just say the topic of …
Do you need to have a saint’s name for baptism or confirmation?
I’m editing the October 2009 issue of Religion Teacher’s Journal, and I’ve just run across the second author who casually refers to choosing a new name for confirmation as though that’s the ordinary practice of the church. I chose a confirmation name as a child as I’m sure most of you did. But our experience …
The preparation rites on Holy Saturday include an optional ritual for choosing a baptismal name (turn to paragraph 200 in your RCIA text to follow along). In the United States, we do not ask the elect to do this. (Keep a finger in the book to mark your place and flip back to paragraph 33.4.) …
