How To Approach This At Rcia

[tinytherese]

I'm a college girl who is the priest's assistant at the RCIA sessions at the small parish in the town of my college. There's someone that I'm concerned about who has been going through the class. She attended the same school as me last year and graduated from it last spring. It's a two year school is made for a student to transfer to a four year one and she's undecided about what she is going to do with her life after getting an associate's degree.

I really didn't know her until spring break of last year and even then we weren't particularly close. She's an international student who was brought up eastern orthodox or something. Before I knew her (and I've heard this from trustworthy sources by the way) that she had black eyes that some people speculated were from her boyfriend, a local of the town. She stayed with him and then got pregnant. She's hung around the town since graduation, living with her boyfriend. I spotted her at the beginning of this school year at mass (very far along in her pregnancy) and saw her boyfriend for the first time. Then, the two of them came to the RCIA sessions. Her boyfriend has been catholic all of his life but must have wanted to give her support or learn more about the faith himself.

She had a baby boy a month ago. Now her boyfriend is no longer attending RCIA but is her sponsor for coming into the church. I'm not sure if they're going to get married or not but I'm still concerned about their situation. I haven't seen any bruises or broken bones on her (unless they're hidden in non-visible places to the public eye.) Her safety is still an issue though, for if he really was the one who hit her, let's just say that its not likely that he has all of a sudden stopped for good. (He probably didn't want to hurt his child inside of her.) I don't know all of the details so I don't want to say falsely accuse him or put myself in a bad situation. There is a place in town where battered women can get help that's pretty well known, and my campus sure knows about it considering that its a women's school, so it's not like she doesn't know that that's available to her. I really don't know how to handle this other than to pray for her and to ask others to do so.

Not to mention, later on in the RCIA sessions we'll be discussing marriage and it'll be hard to handle a cohabitating couple that has had an illegitimate child together. We don't want to turn her off, judge her, but we also don't want to ignore such significant facts. I know that Fr. should really be the one to talk to her and her boyfriend about the grave seriousness of their situation and gently counsel and advise them. He appears to be the type of priest that can gently handle a situation like this. Fr. and I certainly don't want to point her out during class as living in sin, but explaining what marriage is really about in front of her might be a challenge.

Talk a learning experience in college an preparation for adulthood and being a potential DRE!

Edited November 10, 2008 by tinytherese

[eagle_eye222001]

Yeah pointing her out would be bad...

If you are looking for advice, I think my advice would be what you already mentioned. Have her and her boyfriend talk to the priest before the subject comes up in class.

Not sure what else to really say.

Can't nor should you ignore the subject coming up.

Either you or the priest needs to make it clear that the subject matter is standard Church teaching...and it is not meant to judge or make an example of her.

Prayers will help too. Other than that, don't really have anything else. Maybe someone else will.

[CatherineM]

I've been involved in RCIA for over 20 years now. I've seen a lot of co-habitating couples. The Catholic partner is often the sponsor. It is how the pastor tries to get their "situation" taken care of. Priests won't marry a couple just because the girl is pregnant. I'm hopeful that your priest is on top of their living situation.

As to the suspected physical violence, you are right in one regard, that kind of thing doesn't just go away on its own. If you have actual evidence that he caused her harm, and not just suspicion or gossip based evidence, I would make an appointment with your pastor. I say this because undisclosed physical abuse is grounds for annulment, and he needs to know before performing any wedding/marriage blessing.

Priests are required to do due diligence before marrying people, and he has a long questionnaire that you have to fill out. Past abuse is one of the big ones. My husband received an annulment because his former wife lied on that form. When there are issues like this, a priest can order a couple or one of the partners into therapy/counseling or make them wait a longer period of time. When a member of my husband's family called our pastor and made accusations that he was beating me, he canceled our wedding 2 days ahead of time, and we had to go to months of therapy before he realized that he'd been lied to, and rescheduled. I was never upset at him, he's a young priest and learned a valuable lesson, but I was pretty peeved at my sister in law to be.

They may not be thinking about marriage, but only are doing RCIA in order to have the baby baptized. That happens a lot because of pressure from the grandparents. That matters too because one of the conditions of baptism is supposed to be whether the parents are going to raise the child Catholic. If they might not stay together because of the abuse, the child may not be raised in the church. See, it's a rat's nest of issues. When you become involved in RCIA, you have responsibility to teach the truth, and to protect the sacraments. I'll be praying for you, and this young mother.

[thessalonian]

Hopefully the priest is working with them. None of what they have done should affect their status in RCIA. But I sincerely hope that he will not water down the Churches teaching because they are in the class. They should hear it straight. But quite honestly if you are not close to them the best that you can do is pray for the situation in this case I think. If the priest does water it down in some way, gently asking questions to prod out the Churches teaching when he gets in to those topics I think would be good. Or some gently worded commentary.

[Church Punk]

I hope you have a good priest.

I raise some issues of concern with a fella I was sponsoring one time in a confessional after confessing just asking for the priest guidance.

I come to the next RCIA meeting and the priest told my candidate everything we talked about. Basically saying oh he said this and this and this about you is that true? He so wanted to kill me after that and a miricle that we are still friends.

So I hope it goes better for you than it did for me.

[Dave]

[quote name='Church Punk' post='1699021' date='Nov 10 2008, 04:54 PM']I hope you have a good priest.

I raise some issues of concern with a fella I was sponsoring one time in a confessional after confessing just asking for the priest guidance.

I come to the next RCIA meeting and the priest told my candidate everything we talked about. Basically saying oh he said this and this and this about you is that true? He so wanted to kill me after that and a miricle that we are still friends.

So I hope it goes better for you than it did for me.[/quote]

Whoa!!!! Even though the priest didn't talk about the sins you confessed, I thought priests weren't allowed to discuss ANYTHING that anyone told them in the confessional!

[Lil Red]

+J.M.J.+
even if it's in a confessional booth or whatever, if you aren't 'doing confession', you don't have the seal of the confessional. usually i just tell my priest that i want the seal of the confessional even if i'm not 'doing confession'.

[prose]

Well, I would definitely steer away from giving her a big scarlet "A"....

[tinytherese]

[quote name='prose' post='1699032' date='Nov 10 2008, 04:07 PM']Well, I would definitely steer away from giving her a big scarlet "A"....[/quote]

Absolutely a no-no.

Edited November 11, 2008 by tinytherese

[tinytherese]

Well, I asked for advice from my mom and she said to take an interest in her and show that I really do care about her and not judge her. I've been praying for her too. She entered the church on the Easter Vigil and I congraduated her and gave her a hug. A week later though I noticed that she, her boyfriend, and the baby were not at mass. I was disappointed because that was on the day that the parish had a special welcoming party for the neophytes and I had gifts that I specifically wanted to give her; a rosary, a prayer book, and another book about the lessons that St. Peter the Apostle has for us in our spiritual journey. I thought it was odd that she wasn't there but then again most of the other neophytes didn't come either.

Last weekend, I didn't see her either but I did see her boyfriend though. I thought that that was odd, perhaps she was sick but at lunch today I found out that it was much more serious than that from my friends that knew her better than me. Apparentally she and her boyfriend got married in court a short time ago between Easter and now. I was really surprised because just a few weeks ago when another friend and I paid a visit to her at the home of her boyfriend she said that they would probably break up in a month.

She's technically an illegal alien since her visa expired last summer when she stayed in the U.S. She remained in contact with her family in Bulgaria and she could have totally gone home to them but then she wouldn't be allowed to come into the U.S. again for years because of her expired visa, and she had wanted to get her bachelor's degree somewhere else but she wouldn't be able to pay for it with her not being allowed to work. She told us that she didn't want to continue school in Bulgaria because she would have to start all over in college career because the classes in the states is different from there and she wouldn't be able to transfer in the classes that she spent two years getting. She also didn't like the idea of going back to her home country because she wanted her son to have a father and he wouldn't be willing to go move over there. Besides, there is the custody issue. It's his baby too. I felt so sorry for her. She just felt so stuck. I chatted with another friend of hers and she seemed to have an idea for how to help her out in regards to paying for school in the states. She knew someone in the same position.

I'm seriously really surprised that they got married civily. She seemed to feel trapped in her situation and resorted to that. Yet that's not the only thing that I found out. The reason that she hasn't been at mass at the parish is because she ran away with the baby and is being charged with kidnapping him and her sort of husband accused her of being on drugs. I'm not sure if she really does that or not though. Some of my friend who know her more than I do and possibly her former roommate that witnessed and had to deal with the abuse that she went through went to see the sheriff to tell them what they knew. I'm going to call one of them up to find out an update.

I feel absolutely horrible about this, like I could have done something more to help her. I didn't know that it had gotten this bad. Her roommate told us about what it was like to deal with her last year a while back. She had tried to help her but she became violent and hostil towards her for trying and when she asked the school to help her with her rommate the school did nothing about it. That really shocked me. I mean, they could have at least put her in counseling here. We have two right on campus, but no they didn't do anything to try to help her. They didn't even give her roommate advice on how to handle it. This is really shocking to me because this is a women's college and our school has worked to promote awareness of violence against women and has allowed a speaker to come in to talk to my psychology class about domestic abuse and yet they didn't even atempt to help this one student? Really, I can't believe that the school did nothing about it.

[tinytherese]

I called one of the girls up and she said that they reported what they knew about her and the police officer gave them a vague, "We'll take care of it" and was rude to them. They don't know much more than that. She suggested that I call or email Fr. about the situation to see if he knows anything. Perhaps he has some advice, knows something that I don't know, or has some words of comfort in the situation. I'm still somewhat nervous though at the thought of calling him though, telling him that I knew about the abuse. I'm afraid that he'll ask why I didn't inform him sooner rather than later.

[CatherineM]

We had a young couple in RCIA two years ago. He was just out of jail, and she was Catholic, and somehow thought this would fix all their issues. About a month in, it was obvious they were both using again, and both ended up in jail eventually. There are jobs that you do where you will see people at their lowest, their most vulnerable, even at their worst. Those are things like cop, emt, doctor, lawyer, priest, and you will find doing RCIA the same happens. You find people in RCIA who are vulnerable or they wouldn't be seeking something more in their life. You find people there just because of their relationship with a Catholic. Because of the process, you will see into their lives and spirituality in a way that you wouldn't normally just going to church together.

This won't be the last time you get involved in a tragic situation. You'll deal with people who go through 2 years of RCIA waiting for an annulment, only to have it denied. You'll have couples break up and the non-Catholic has to decide whether to continue. We've had people dying going through the process trying to make it to Easter to get baptized with the class rather than separately on their death bed. You have to treat this job like a cop would, and turn it over and don't bring it home. There is little you can do except pass on the information to your pastor, and pray for them.

[tinytherese]

I'm sure not in high school anymore. Dang I've been through a lot in the past two years of college.

[CatherineM]

[quote name='tinytherese' post='1851996' date='Apr 28 2009, 11:51 PM']I'm sure not in high school anymore. Dang I've been through a lot in the past two years of college.[/quote]

Growing up can be a real drag, but I wouldn't got through the teen years again for all the tea in china.

[tinytherese]

Well I don't have much else to update on yet. I've tried calling Fr. but I got the ansering machine and I've been tired and busy with some really important stuff that needed to be handled at this time or else I would be in big trouble. My cell phone is malcuntioning now and I sent Fr. an email saying that I wanted to talk to him in person about something that I wanted his imput on that was something that I didn't want to drop in an email about and asked when he would be available tomorrow.