The Roman Catholic Church is an institution roiled by scandal. Its handling of an epidemic of child sex abuse has brought scrutiny from law enforcement and undermined the moral authority of bishops, who have struggled to assuage followers whose confidence in the church, and in them, has eroded.
But those lined up were not thinking about that.
“Welcome to fullness in the church,” Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, archbishop of Newark, New Jersey, told the 15 people converting to Catholicism — known as catechumens — after they had been baptized, confirmed and received Communion, the sacraments that solidified their entry into the Catholic Church. “You’ll always have a home here with us.”
The Easter vigil service is when the church welcomes newcomers. There were thousands of people in the New York area going through the same rites of initiation as the group gathered that night in the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark. (The Archdiocese of Newark alone saw more than 1,000 people receiving the sacraments this Easter, roughly the same number of people as have been welcomed fully into the church each year over the past decade.)
Many catechumens this Easter were part of groups that were well over a dozen people, huddled together in large churches. But there was also a service with just one woman, surrounded by family and friends, alone in her neighborhood parish.
Why convert, and why now? It is not a capricious choice. Converting required months of preparation, diving into the abundance of rituals and traditions of Catholicism and the theology that underpins it all. For each catechumen, there was a different path.
Finding God, Gradually
Many of the other worshippers at St. Rose of Lima in Short Hills, New Jersey, had assumed that Joanna Huang was already a Catholic. She had been in Mass nearly every Sunday for a decade, and she brought her daughters, now teenagers, to religious education classes.
In truth, her daughters were Catholic because it was the religion of her ex-husband. When they married, she had promised to raise their children in the church. She continued to attend Mass because it was easier than dropping the girls off and coming back to pick them up.
She had not been especially spiritual before, but she found herself looking forward to the readings and to having a set-aside time to reflect. At some point, she said, a belief in God took hold.
“I don’t know if it was five years into it, or three years,” Huang, 49, said. “It was a gradual process.”
Huang, who works in marketing and strategy for a technology company, said the shadow of scandal has not crept into her relationship with the church, as she has gotten to know priests and sisters through her initiation.
She appreciated the sense of community at her parish and the way she saw faith shaping her daughters. Her younger daughter, a competitive skater, says a short prayer before stepping onto the ice. It also helped them weather the divorce.
“It helped to have that faith,” she said, “to know that God has a plan for them.”
Her daughters had pushed her to be baptized, telling her, “You’re more Catholic than a lot of Catholics we see.” Yet when she casually inquired about the conversion process roughly a year ago, she did not expect that she would be standing at the front of St. Rose of Lima as this year's only catechumen, her daughters serving as her godmothers as she was baptized.
She figured it must be part of a plan.
A Spiritual Quest
He met with an imam. He met with a rabbi. He met with a priest.
The man, a 20-year-old college student in New Jersey, was raised by Pakistani-American parents who are Muslim. As a teenager, he abandoned his faith in God, becoming an atheist. He believed for a time that following the golden rule — treating others the way you want to be treated — was sufficient.
But his beliefs shifted. “You need some authority that is higher than a human,” he said.
He went on a search, exploring various faiths. Somewhat to his surprise, Catholicism appealed to him the most. He had friends in the church; they seemed to enjoy life, he said, adding, “They have philosophically vigorous backing for their beliefs.” (The student, who was introduced to a reporter by an official with the Archdiocese of Newark, spoke on the condition of anonymity because he has not told his family and others of his conversion.)
In classes, he soaked in conversations exploring notions of heaven and hell, and what a Christian marriage looks like. “What does it really mean when two bodies become one when you make a covenant with your spouse?” he asked.
After months of preparation, he was ready.
“It’s what I believe now,” he said. “I can, with confidence, say I’m a Catholic, say with confidence I want to be associated with the church despite the state it’s in or the problems. I believe it.”
Yet the situation with his family weighed on him. He was carefully planning how to tell them. He worried about upsetting his grandparents and fraying his bond to the rest of his family.
“I don’t think it will be the end of the world,” he said, adding, “It is going to be quite difficult.”
Learning Lessons
“How do you pray?” Sister Patricia Cigrand asked the half-dozen or so catechumens sitting in a semicircle in an elementary-school library. “When do you pray? Where do you pray?”
For months, the group had assembled for Monday night classes at St. Bridget of Sweden, a parish in Cheshire, Connecticut.
Some were there because they were marrying Catholics. Michelle Madeux had been married to a Catholic for years, and she was raising her children in the church.
Days before Easter, Madeux said she had gone through the process unsure if she would follow through and convert.
“I have been open to the movement of the spirit,” said Madeux, a 47-year-old nurse who was raised Methodist. “If the spirit moves me this year or if the spirit moves me five years from now to become Catholic, I’m ready.”
But that decision, she said, would not be linked to the sex abuse scandal. “The church has been here 2,000 years,” she said. “It has withstood scandal upon scandal, crusades, political upheaval, and yet it still exists.”
She added, “There’s a greater presence at work.”
Christopher Jones, a 35-year-old grocery store clerk, had grown up in the church, but he had never finished the series of sacraments that young Catholics typically receive.
Jones said he was thrilled that much of his family was planning to see his initiation into the church. He had an uncle flying in from out of state.
“I’m pretty sure my mom will cry,” Jones said. “And my grandmother.”
“I might cry when I see you,” Madeux told him.
In the end, she watched him from the pews. This was not her Easter for conversion.
Sharing the Faith
During Mass one Sunday, a priest at Our Lady of Perpetual Help led the converts through a list of intercessions:
So that those who inherit the earth know of a true creator of all things who gives us the privilege of spirituality and life, we praise him.
We praise him, the catechumens replied.
Among them was Elizabeth Velasquez. She knew well the turmoil that had shaken the church, drawing criticism and rattling some Catholics’ faith in the institution. She was not discouraged. The allegations were from long ago, she said, and the sins of others had little bearing on her faith.
“God’s only son was tempted by the devil,” she said in Spanish, “so who am I to judge anyone else?”
What was important to her was sharing the same faith as her husband and children. Becoming Catholic, she said, would unify them. “I have my family together,” she said. Her son was preparing to receive his first Holy Communion just a few weeks after she took part in the sacrament.
“I’m waiting for that day with so much emotion,” Velasquez, 31, said, “because I’ll be able to go to the front and accept the body of Christ.”
Her parish, anchored in an old and enormous basilica in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, reflects the church’s evolution. The afternoon Mass in Spanish follows one celebrated in Chinese, and just before another in Vietnamese. And the Masses are often quite full.
Velasquez, who left Guatemala when she was 16, had been raised in an evangelical church, the kind that has surged in popularity in Latin America.
Still, her family has embraced her conversion. “If you want to be Catholic, it’s OK,” her father told her. And her brother figured they worshipped the same God.
Ultimately, Being Summoned
A bed of Easter lilies and carnations blanketed the marble in front of the altar at Sacred Heart Cathedral, and row after row of pews were full.
The night the catechumens had waited for had arrived. Yet they still had to wait some more, through readings in English and then readings in Spanish, and a litany of prayers.
“There are no shortcuts in this vigil,” Tobin told the congregation. “This vigil makes us wait and wait.”
Eventually, though, the cardinal ladled holy water onto their heads and anointed them with oil. Then, they received Communion for the first time.
The first several rows of pews were packed with men and women draped in white robes. They were neocatechumens; they were initiated in the church earlier in their lives only to drift away. Some had detoured through addiction, infidelity and jobs that consumed their lives.
The vigil marked their return to the church, like prodigal children.
Patricia Cottman spent part of her childhood in the church, but her mother died when she was 10 and her father when she was 14. She was one of six children, and they all, for their own reasons, turned away from Catholicism.
Yet, she said, God had summoned her. She had spent years doing missionary work overseas, and now, she was ready to return.
“The church at times can be frustrating,” she said. But she added, “People are people. Priests are people, too. There are those who are faithful and there are those who maybe struggle somehow. But God, and his word, is faithful.”
She hurried over to the others near the altar for a picture with Tobin. It was nearly midnight, and the cathedral was empty except for them. They cheered. They hugged. And together, they burst into song: He rose from the dead! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! He rose from the dead!
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.