c. 1996 Religion News Service

LOS ANGELES (RNS)-Converts to Catholicism are increasingly being baptized by immersion, an historic shift by the church back to ancient ways of initiation.

The change is taking place so gradually that many Catholics are unfamiliar with the splashy ritual.”You will get very wet,”Msgr. Gerald Wilkerson, a pastor in suburban Encino, Calif., advised a dozen initiates at the start of their year-long studies leading to their baptisms.

Nearly 850 newcomers to Catholicism were baptized recently in parishes of the large Los Angeles archdiocese. They typically knelt in waist-high water in a baptismal pool as a priest poured water over them.

In giving preference to dousing the initiates rather than pouring a little water on their foreheads, the Roman Catholic Church is restoring the fuller, centuries-old symbolism of dying to the old life and rising to the new in baptism.

Some parish priests have resisted the change, and some traditional Catholics dislike the introduction of baptismal pools into churches, saying it smacks of Protestantism.

Many Catholics, however, are merely surprised to hear that it’s even done in the church. One reason is that adult-immersion baptisms normally are conducted only once a year, during the lengthy Easter vigil rites on Holy Saturday. What’s more, though such baptisms were approved by the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and articulated in later church documents as the preferred way to baptize young people and adults, the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) with its watery ritual is only gradually taking hold in parishes.

In a typical U.S. diocese,”I think at least half (the parishes) conduct the RCIA classes but less than half do immersion baptisms,”said Maureen Kelly, associate director of the North American Forum on the Catachumenate, based in Falls Church, Va. The non-profit organization provides RCIA training and resources to dioceses and parishes. A catachumen, in church parlance, is an unbaptized person preparing for entry into the church.

The slow changeover around the country over the last dozen years, Kelly said, may be due either to priests being uncomfortable with the new baptisms or thinking that parishioners will be.

Kelly was a member of Visitation Parish in Kansas City, Mo., which in 1984 was the first in that city to do baptisms by immersion-using a hot tub decorated to not look like a hot tub.”People who heard about it said, `Oh, my God, we’re becoming like Protestants,’ but the next year several more parishes tried it,” she said.

Priests in the Los Angeles archdiocese find that once people see what happens, they like it.

“I have never met anyone who has been baptized by immersion who hasn’t been totally wowed by the experience,” said the Rev. Richard Albarano, director of the archdiocese’s office of worship.

“Los Angeles is probably no slower than other U.S. dioceses in making the switch,” he said. “It’s taking some time because it’s a whole different mindset that we are trying to change.”

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One church traditionalist in nearby Orange County, Calif., criticized the baptismal pool in a recent letter to a Catholic periodical as”a bleak, undevout thing, a danger to small children and a distraction to all.” Similarly, a Catholic couple who displayed their company’s fast-selling, lightweight baptismal pools at the large Religious Education Congress in Anaheim, Calif., this year said they were offended by a few people who dropped by their booth and questioned if they were”really Catholics.”

The baptismal rite is the first step in a big moment for new Catholics. In many cases, initiates wear a robe over a bathing suit or undergarments, then dry off after the dousing and put on another robe, usually white. A priest dabs a cross on their foreheads with oil as a sign of confirmation in the faith. The third, climactic step is partaking of first Communion, the bread-and-wine ritual central to Christian worship.

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Some Catholic parishes completely submerge the catachumen. In Rowland Heights, Calif., adults are submersed in the large baptismal pool at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton parish.

“The choir sings part of the `Hallelujah Chorus’ as they come up from the water, then they change from their long, heavy robes into white robes and carry a white candle,” said Msgr. Michael Killeen, the pastor. “This brings out far more clearly than the old way the meaning of baptism-coming out of the water cleansed and entering in the new life.”

The Rev. Robert Duggan said that he has been doing full submersion baptisms at St. Rose of Lima Church in Gaithersburg, Md., for almost 10 years. While a Catholic being baptized technically may elect to be dabbed with water on the forehead, Duggan said at his parish,”The old (sprinkling) way is not presented as an option here.”

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The significance of baptism as a life-changing rite is gaining new importance in some old-line Protestant denominations as well.

The United Methodist Church, at its quadrennial convention in Denver in April, decided that infants become full members of the church when baptized, not simply when they are old enough to profess their beliefs.

Similarly, Lutheran Pastor David Berkedal of San Dimas, Calif., said the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is coming to a new appreciation of baptism as”an experience of God’s grace-an invisible, mysterious gift-and a transformation that comes when we accept that gift.” But, by tradition, Lutherans hold that the amount of water used is not the key element.

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The Catholic restoration of a more watery rite has captivated the enthusiasm of priests who like the impact the liturgical symbols have on parish families and membership.

Although parishes with older buildings often have no permanent pool, their pastors are allowed to use portable Jacuzzis or even children’s plastic wading pools, sometimes disguised with plants and decorative stones.

Aware of the problems of temporary pools and the $30,000 to $40,000 cost of constructing a new baptismal, a California priest suggested to friends Marty and Denise Menichiello that they figure out a way to build attractive but cheap pools.

“I was hoping for an aesthetic way to baptize adults other than in a plastic wading pools-something with dignity,” said the Rev. Bill Barman, pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes in Santa Ana.

The Menichiellos last year built a fiberglass pool to sell for about $3,600. Their Living Waters company, based in Huntington Beach, Calif., sold 18 pools before Easter this year to parishes from California to Texas, and Nebraska and to Illinois.

MJP END DART