My baptismal certificate reflects what I was told and what jmcrae shows was probably normative prior to the institution of what everyone is calling the RCIA program: I was taught privately, baptised (conditionally baptised–I had been baptised in a Protestant denomination, but the priest was concerned about scruples arising later), and told I would have to wait at least 1 year before being confirmed by the local bishop. There is no record of confirmation. The only confirmation I received was from an Episcopalian REC bishop, a few years ago.
I think that was is throwing a lot of people off is that the RCIA program has been around a long time now–since 1980. When the local priest learned that I was going to be going into the Army, he asked me if I wanted him to get a special dispensation from the local bishop allowing him to perform my confirmation. (I’m only just remembering this). I declined, mainly because we thought that I would be home from BCT and AIT (Army jargon for training) at about the time the bishop was visiting. Again, because the priest was worried about ‘scruples’ arising if I wasn’t actually ordained by a bishop. He left it up to me, but sort of ‘steered’ me according to what he considered the best way of doing things. In the 1970’s and earlier, apparently, it was very unusual for a regular parish priest to perform a confirmation.
Again, you jarred my memory. In the Army, one of my BCT/AIT priests indicated that he could make arrangements to confirm me. The problem was finding the time–a soldier in training has his (or now, her) days pretty well programed and it’s tough to find time for personal affairs. In my permanent assignment, the priest did not consider the issue of confirmation a very important one. As I say, he was drastically, radically liberal–he was visibly angry when Cardinal Ratzinger was made head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and actually had disparaging things to say about virtually anything that seemed to him too ‘conservative’ or ‘traditional’. When I asked him to bless something for me–a scapular I think–he asked what the h— I was wearing something like that for: we weren’t living in the Middle Ages. He was that kind of priest.
Meanwhile, the only devout Christians I was meeting my own age were Protestant Evangelicals and Pentecostals. (We didn’t yet refer to conservative Protestants as Evangelicals btw–it was that long ago that the word had not yet come into vogue). So I had the good example of holy Protestants and the bad example of a priest. Not to make excuses for myself but you can see why I went the direction I did. But I’m derailing my own thread with personal reminisciences.
What puzzled me in my opening post was the impression that most more-recent converts who post here or whom I read about elsewhere were baptised/confirmed/confessed/given First Communion all in the same fell swoop. Or, in the case of persons whom I assume were baptised as infants, did not receive First Communion or go to their first confession until they were confirmed at whatever age is normative for that.
First Communion normally seems to be a major rite of passage for Catholics, but in my case was actually a postlude to the main event which was my baptism. I was beginning to wonder if my reception of Holy Communion and confession prior to my confirmation were irregularities.
Anyhow, things are starting to ‘gel’ a little bit as respondents to this thread clarify things. Thanks folks.
