by Susan Stevenot Sullivan

Almost half of the adults in OCI programs are about to marry or have recently married a Catholic. Nearly 25 percent of the remaining adults in the program have been married to a Catholic for more than a year.

Those percentages are the experience of Melanie Gravinese, director of the Order of Christian Initiation program at All Saints Church in Dunwoody and part of the liturgy team for the four celebrations which presented 859 candidates and catechumens to Archbishop John F. Donoghue in February.

Ms. Gravinese balks at the perception that spouses are “dragged” into the Catholic Church by their partners.

“Even though you may be in a situation where someone’s Catholic, even if you thought you were ‘doing it’ for your spouse, by the time you finish the Rite of Election you know you were called personally,” she said.

“They come because of their experience, because they have witnessed the way the faith is lived,” she said of those seeking information about Catholicism.

“They have witnessed someone in the struggles of daily life who has something they don’t have and they want to have it too.”

The action of the Holy Spirit begins to snowball at that point, according to Ms. Gravinese, for as the community welcomes the catechumens and candidates it witnesses their enthusiasm and is renewed in its own relationship to God and to each other.

Claudette Cuddy, director of religious education and adult education coordinator at St. Lawrence Church in Lawrenceville, remembers hearing a priest in Indiana describe the Christian initiation process as the most powerful tool for renewing the church we have today.

After 11 years of working with such programs, Mrs. Cuddy said she understands what he was saying.

“It has that potential,” she said. “But I think there is still a tremendous challenge for the parish community to see themselves as the initiating community.”

Marking conversion to the faith a holistic process for the entire community is the essence of the renewal of Vatican Council II, according to Father Martin Kopchik, MSFS, pastor of St. Lawrence.

“It’s an experience that deals with many aspects of what Christian life is about,” Father Kopchik said.

He describes conversion as occurring on four levels, intellectual, liturgical, spiritual and apostolic. The intellectual level includes learning the teachings of the church. Vatican II made it clear that conversion is not restricted to the intellect, Father Kopchik said.

“There is a liturgical conversion, where we experience the teachings of faith, where Jesus comes alive in our worship and the whole community is transformed,” he said. “There is also a spiritual conversion.”

Father Kopchik defines spiritual conversion as the establishment of a personal relationship with Jesus and the ability to discuss that relationship with other people. The dialogue of spiritual conversion also transforms the community and calls each of us to the next phase, apostolic conversion.

“The apostolic thrust of being a Catholic is the call Jesus gave us to go and ask others to come and join us,” Father Kopchik said.

Like a few other parishes, St. Lawrence has been so transformed by the OCI process that the OCI has become a model for other programs in the parish.

All religious education programs in the parish are now based on the lectionary method used in OCI. The Sunday Scriptures are used as the framework for instruction.

The small faith-sharing units of OCI are echoed on the parish level as well, he said, with 14 groups of eight to 12 people. The small groups use the concept of Scripture and faith sharing on a personal level.

“We are taking the whole model of OCI and bringing it to our whole community to try to transform our whole community the same way,” Father Kopchik said.