Rite of Election and Call to Continuing Conversion Celebrated in Maine for Those Preparing to Be Welcomed into the Catholic Church

March 3, 2021
PORTLAND---Despite the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, many people from around Maine are preparing to enter the Catholic Church this Easter season, and on the first weekend of Lent, Bishop Robert Deeley joined with them in celebrating the Rite of Election and Call to Continuing Conversion (11 pictures below).

“In the midst of what can be seen as a bleak time, indeed, for many, one of great suffering in this pandemic, we gather for this celebration of hope and new life. I think what we do here reminds us of the importance of the community of the Church,” Bishop Deeley told those gathered. “As we come today to witness an important part of the journey of those who will be baptized and received into the full communion of the Church at Easter, we are powerfully reminded of the great gift that is our faith.”

The bishop presided over the Rite of Election and Call to Continuing Conversion at three churches: Holy Rosary in Caribou, St. Mary in Bangor, and the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Portland. For the first time this year, the Masses were also livestreamed. Many parishes projected the livestreams onto screens at Maine churches for participants to take part locally at socially distanced gatherings in parish halls.   

The Rite of Election is celebrated for catechumens, those not previously baptized in any Christian faith, while the Call to Continuing Conversion is celebrated for candidates, people who have been baptized in other Christian faiths and now wish to enter into full communion of the Catholic Church by receiving the initiation sacraments of confirmation and first Eucharist. 

During the Rite of Election, catechumens are presented by parishes to the bishop and the congregation. The catechumens’ godparents then attest that they are sufficiently prepared to continue their journey, while others in the congregation commit to supporting them. The catechumens themselves then publicly affirm their desire to be baptized, and their names are entered into the Book of the Elect, reflecting that the bishop, in the name of the Lord and on behalf of the Church, is electing them to share in the Easter sacraments.
“It was lovely,” Blaine Stevens, a Bowdoin College student who is a catechumen, said of the rite. “It is something that I think is going to give me the energy and the motivation to get through the 40 days of Lent. I am very excited.”

During the Call to Continuing Conversion, parishes present the candidates to the bishop and the congregation. Their sponsors then attest to their preparedness, and members of the congregation affirm their support. The bishop then recognizes, on behalf of the Church, the candidates’ desire to be confirmed and receive first Eucharist.

“The choice of those whose journey to the Easter sacraments of baptism, confirmation, and Eucharist continues with a new purpose after this celebration is a sign to us that, in the message we gather to hear and celebrate, these people have found a special meaning by which they, too, seek to guide their lives. They want to join the community of the Church. In that, we see God’s loving presence, his guiding grace, but we also see that the communities of the Church to which we belong are, in fact, places of hope and life. That makes our gathering a wonderful moment of grace.”
“It’s kind of like climbing the summit of a hill and finally reaching the top, getting close to your goals,” said Michael Fortier, a catechumen from Augusta.

“It actually feels real,” said Travis Peaslee, a catechumen from Winthrop, who attended the Rite of Election at the cathedral, accompanied by his wife, who is serving as his godparent. “We were both kind of awestruck by the architecture of the building itself and being in the presence of the bishop, It was all really neat for both of us.”

Peaslee, who attended an apostolic church while growing up, said he has been going to Catholic Masses since he began dating his now wife about a dozen years ago. He said he decided it was time to become a member of the Church because his eight-year-old son is preparing to make his confirmation and receive first Eucharist, and he wanted to be able to support him and answer any questions he had.

“I wanted to be a good example for him,” he said. “I kind of considered myself Catholic right along. I thought because I was going to Catholic Church, I was Catholic, and it’s pretty much what I told people. We were raising our kids in the Catholic Church, and I go to Catholic Church; it was just the missing piece of not fully understanding it, especially the piece around Communion, not fully understanding what it meant and why I couldn’t do it.”
He said he’s been listening to podcasts and reading books but said participating in the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) with Deacon Jeff Lewis through St. Michael Parish has helped him find answers to his questions.

“It hadn’t really clicked, and I think through the process, it’s really bringing home some of the stuff I’ve read in the past. It’s being explained differently,” he said. “It’s been connecting the Gospel to a lot of things I’ve read.”
Fortier, who has been participating in RCIA alongside Peaslee, said he, too, has found the program enriching.

“Deacon Jeff is a blast to listen to, so it’s very interesting,” agreed Fortier. “It is establishing that sense of community, a sense of family, learning the values of the Catholic faith and stuff like that.”

Like Peaslee, Fortier said he was already attending Mass with his wife.
“She led me along, and things started clicking after we got married, so I thought I would look into it a little bit further,” he said.

He said he was unsure at first, even telling Deacon Jeff at one point that he had decided against it. However, he said as soon as he sent the message, he instantly regretted it, and now he is committed to staying on the path to the Church.

“I signed back up and proceeded to go with it pretty much full-fledged,” he said. “It’s a very enjoyable experience.”

Blaine Stevens began the RCIA process before the pandemic, but when the Bowdoin campus shut down last spring due to the pandemic, her journey was put on hold. She started again this year, participating through All Saints Parish in Brunswick.  

“It’s something that I think both stimulates me emotionally and educationally, I guess you could say. It’s something that I truly love. There have been a lot of great questions and discussions, and I feel like I’ve gotten a lot of answers through Marcy Brenner [RCIA coordinator], who has been amazing, and through conversations with Father [Thomas] Murphy. It’s been great. Just having them available as resources throughout the program has been wonderful,” she said.

Stevens said her mother’s background is Catholic and her father’s Protestant, but she described her upbringing as fairly secular. Seeking her own religious identity as she got older, she began attending various churches, both Protestant and Catholic.

“I had several friends who were Catholic, and I think, speaking to them, it was definitely something I found myself drawn to,” she said. “When I started attending the services, it was incredibly comforting in a way that I don’t think I felt before.”

She said she appreciated the structure of the Catholic Church, rather than feeling she was being left more or less on her own.

“That is something I really have found in the Church, and that is something that I am remarkably grateful for, in addition to things such as the Trinity, and the unity of the Trinity, and the Immaculate Conception,” she said. “Those have all been very important to me in my faith journey.”
It’s a journey she described as enlightening.

“I think that this has shown me that I can find extreme grace within me,” she said. “I think I’m going to carry that with me going forward. It’s something that really has me looking inward to my own motivations. It encourages me to ask why I make the decisions that I do and whether the decisions that I’m making will benefit others over myself.”

The catechumens and candidates will now spend Lent in final preparation to receive the initiation sacraments. Peaslee said he and his wife have committed to 20 minutes of prayer each day, along with listening exclusively to religious programming on the radio. They have also given up coffee. Stevens said she has given up social media so she can spend more time in prayer and meditation.

“It’s hard because that’s a way for me to keep in contact with my friends, but it’s better for me, I think, just to have a clear mind and to use this time as a real reflection time. That’s something I do in the morning when I wake up and before I go to bed. Using that time for prayer and meditation acts as a very good bookend to my day,” she said.

Stevens said she is looking forward to Easter with anticipation.
“I think it is going to be very rejuvenating, and I am really looking forward to that.”