Question about Catholicism

[ilovemyhens]

ds1 is 12 and has decided that he wants to become a Catholic. I was baptised Catholic, but not confirmed and we have recently started to attend the Catholic Church.

What does ds1 need to do in order to join the Catholic Church? Would he need to do the RCIA course, or would that be too much for a child? He attends a Catholic secondary school. He was baptised CofE.

First I wanted to say how great it must be to have a 12 year old who is considering this sort of thing. I'm not completely sure as he is way past the age of reason (I think that's 8 years old) when it is considered that children can start to make decisions properly about right and wrong and ethical stuff so it would probably be respectful of your son's inteligence to offer him the RCIA course plus would give him all the information. Although the parish priest should be able to let you know for certain the next steps.

How proud you must feel :)

I am proud of him, yes Thank you for your reply, I'll try to speak to the parish priest, but I am a bit nervous I would like to do the RCIA course starting this year.

In our school a boy who was 8 and baptised CofE wanted to receive communion and the priest said it was fine to do so, so he joined in with the First Holy Communion class and received the Sacrament with them.

You could drop your parish priest a note and ask him to ring you.
Good luck to you and your son on your journey of faith.

The 'A' in RCIA stands for adult, it is not suitable for children. There is such a thing as RCIC for children, but it is rarely used as you don't tend to get huge numbers of children being received into the Church. We had one in our church where the whole family were received together, I catechised the children separately while the mum attended RCIA.

Ask the parish priest and he will arrange it. The mostly likely thing he will do is either give your son individual classes himself (which you would be welcome to attend), or arrange for a catechist who usually teaches first communion or confirmations to teach him. If your son's school has a chaplain, they may ask them to do it (that's how I got involved with the family mentioned above).

As a side note, you won't have to go through RCIA since you are a baptised Catholic. If you weren't brought up Catholic and want to find out about it then you are welcome to attend RCIA classes, but it isn't strictly necessary and you won't get any ceremony at the end. The Catholic Church considers that you are Catholic already, whatever you think about it All you need to do is go to Confession.

Thank you for these answers. I'll speak to the Priest and find out what we need to do