A LITTLE known program aimed at 13-15 year olds is slowly increasing Catholic numbers in Nambour parish.
The 12-week Rite of Communal Initiation of Youth, or RCIY, program is probably a Queensland first and evolved five years ago to meet a need among the parish’s teenage population.
Jan Imarisio, who runs RCIY, said it was originally established as an alternative to the RCIA program.
‘These are youths who have fallen through the sacramental program net or who have come to a Catholic school from a non-Catholic background.
‘We found that the RCIA program was simply too long for young people.
‘They wanted to know more about the Catholic faith but ended up dropping out of RCIA.’
Jan said the original plan was to find and run a youth based program for about six months but the parish was unable to find anything.
‘We had a youth pastoral worker who could really communicate with the students and it was her idea to put our own program together because we found six months was still too long.
‘It was then basically handed over to me.’
She said although she had a teaching background, the spiritual content was checked by parish priest, Fr Graham Gatehouse, who evolved the program even further. It had now been operating quite successfully since then.
Jan said the 12-week program relied on the Bible for the first few weeks as many of the participants had no Church experience.
‘Once they have a grasp of the Bible we do each of the sacraments.
‘We look at various types of initiation along with baptism, then reconciliation, Eucharist and confirmation.
‘Then we spend several weeks dealing with issues that are important to them, and the majority of teenagers are not really dealing with a lot of adult topics.’
Jan said a lot of issues involve such topics as family or drugs and the youths were given information to deal with them within Catholic teaching.
‘They want to deal with feelings and emotions and we finish off with a retreat to Najara Centre for Spirituality and Ecology, run by the Good Samaritan Sisters.
‘Some of the kids still don’t go through with it but we have had others who have gone on to join the NET team.’
Nambour parish is calling for teenagers interested in the parish’s RCIY program.
Jan said RCIY would start in first term in early 2004 and would be timed to finish in conjunction with the parish’s RCIA celebrations around Easter.
For more information, phone Jan Imarisio on (07) 5448 5004 or Nambour parish on (07) 5441 1034.
