The Rite of Christian Initiation

McGrail explores the relationship between ritual form, ecclesial self-understanding and constructs of the world that are at play as adults become members of the Church. Analysing the rites by which adults were taken into the Church for three and a half centuries, this book goes on to explore attempts to find a new ritual expression for the journey to Christian Initiation, set against the divergent and even conflicting ecclesiologies which were at play before and during the Council.