CatholicBoard

A parish R.C.I.A. ministry should always retain a well-stocked and up-to-date library for participants to shuffle through and use to their advantage. Even if your parish is not one that is full of veracious readers, you never know who will end up attending your R.C.I.A. sessions. Within my first year of having put together an R.C.I.A. Library, I had participants tell me just how much a particular book they checked out made such a difference in their life.

My faithful friend, Rob, shot me an email the other day asking for a list of books that I would consider indispensable for such a library. One of his friends was requesting this as she was helping her parish begin an inquiry program. The list below is the same list I emailed him.

Of course, the books should be geared towards the people you are serving. For example: if you find freemasonry to be a popular phenomenon in your area, be sure to carry a text on the incompatibility between freemasonry and Christianity. Each participant should be given either the Catechism of the Catholic Church or the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and if the latter is given, the full Catechism should be available in the library.

What follows are the first 15 texts that popped into my head (and these are texts we have in our own parish R.C.I.A. Library). So, this list is in no way a systematically thought-out list. Rather, these are recommendations in no particular order.

1. Catholicism & Fundamentalism by Karl Keating
2. What Catholics Really Believe by Karl Keating
3. Rome Sweet Home by Scott & Kimberly Hahn
4. Surprised by Truth edited by Patrick Madrid
5. Unabridged Christianity by Fr. Mateo Romero
6. By What Authority? by Mark Shea
7. A Call to Joy by Matthew Kelly
8. Crossing the Tiber by Stephen Ray
9. Catholic and Christian by Alan Schreck
10. Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic by David Currie
11. Introduction to Mary by Mark Miravalle
12. Mary of Nazareth by Kenneth Howell
13. Where Is That in the Bible? by Patrick Madrid
14. Why Is That in Tradition? by Patrick Madrid
15. Evangelical Is Not Enough by Thomas Howard

In addition, it is always good to have DVDs such as The Footprints of God Series by Stephen K. Ray (published by Ignatius Press), audio compact discs, and audio cassette tapes available to checkout. The Mary Foundation is a great place to find inexpensive compact discs.

Try finding a donor to purchase Mary Foundation CDs for participants. The Foundation requests a minimum donation of $1 per CD. Every year, I give each participant a copy of (1) Scott Hahn’s Conversion Story, (2) Confession by Fr. Larry Richards, and (3) The Mass Explained by Fr. Larry Richards.

Note: R.C.I.A. is an abbreviation for ?The Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults? and is the process by which an adult comes into full communion with the Catholic Church. It is structured after the method of the early Catholic Church in the first centuries of Christianity.