Can an unconfirmed Catholic receive Communion

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A friend of mine, said that he’s a baptized Catholic and received his first communion years ago.

He’s saying that he’s been getting mixed messages about whether he can receive Communion since he’s unconfirmed.

Can he receive Communion?
 
As far as I’m aware, only children are allowed to receive the Sacrament before Confirmation.
 
Where do you get this? I’ve never heard of confirmation needing to precede communion for an adult who, for whatever reason, has never been confirmed.

It’s unusual for an adult not to have been confirmed, but it can happen.
 
Thom18 said:
As far as I’m aware, only children are allowed to receive the Sacrament before Confirmation.
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No, any Catholic who is unconfirmed can receive the sacrament. It’s generally administered in childhood or the teenage years, but it can and certainly should be administered to unconfirmed adults who desire it.

OP, since your friend has already received Communion he can receive again provided he is properly disposed to do so. That would mean not being in a state of mortal sin, having gone to confession, etc. He does not have to be confirmed to do so. But he certainly should look into being confirmed.
 
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Episcopalian said:
A friend of mine, said that he’s a baptized Catholic and received his first communion years ago.

He’s saying that he’s been getting mixed messages about whether he can receive Communion since he’s unconfirmed.

Can he receive Communion?
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Yes if course.

If he has been away from the church he may need to go to Confession first.

Also he can ask the pastor of his local parish about adult confirmation.
 
Normally he can receive communion.
A lot of Catholics adults has not received this sacrament.

He can asks his pastor before, if he wants to be extra sure.
 
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Thom18 said:
As far as I’m aware, only children are allowed to receive the Sacrament before Confirmation.
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While in most places children do receive communion before confirmation, once you have begun receiving, you can certainly continue whether you’ve been confirmed or not.
 
Phemie said:
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Thom18:
As far as I’m aware, only children are allowed to receive the Sacrament before Confirmation.
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No, any Catholic who is unconfirmed can receive the sacrament. It’s generally administered in childhood or the teenage years, but it can and certainly should be administered to unconfirmed adults who desire it.
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Oops, sorry, I misunderstood your statement, I thought you said only children could receive the sacrament of Confirmation.

That said, if they were given Communion as children they can continue to receive as adults whether or not they have been confirmed.
 
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Episcopalian said:
A friend of mine, said that he’s a baptized Catholic and received his first communion years ago.

He’s saying that he’s been getting mixed messages about whether he can receive Communion since he’s unconfirmed.

Can he receive Communion?
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I would guess from your username that you are Episcopalian (a.k.a. Anglican). I can understand your confusion. As I understand it, in the Anglican/Episcopalian Communion you normally must receive confirmation before you can start to receive communion.

This is not the usual practice in the Catholic Church. Our ‘norm’ for a long time as been baptism in infancy. Then when a child reaches what is called the “age of reason” (about 7 years old) he/she makes her/his first confession and receives her/his first communion. After that he/she can regularly receive communion. Confirmation was often administered in adolescence, although there is a lot of difference now with the age this is administered.

It is not, I believe, cast in stone that Anglicans/Episcopalians must wait until they have been confirmed. When I was at school my friend and I were altar servers and he was one in an Anglican Church. He became an altar server prior to being confirmed and his priest allowed him to take communion before he was confirmed.
 
TomH1 said:
It is not, I believe, cast in stone that Anglicans/Episcopalians must wait until they have been confirmed. When I was at school my friend and I were altar servers and he was one in an Anglican Church. He became an altar server prior to being confirmed and his priest allowed him to take communion before he was confirmed.
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As a former Anglican, I’d say that this is correct. As a rule, Anglicans do not give communion to people who have not been confirmed. However, there is also room for variation, as you say. There is an Anglican parish near me which essentially practices a kind of First Holy Communion for children in the parish that precedes their being confirmed (or not, as the case may be) several years later. I have no idea why they have developed this custom, as it is not particularly Anglican. They are not even an especially High Church parish. There are some Anglo-Catholic parishes that are so High Church that they essentially imitate whatever the Catholic Church does, but this parish that I know is more like middle-of-the-road Anglicanism with fancier vestments and the odd ceremonial flourish.

Interestingly, I also knew two brothers whose parents were both Anglican priests, and they had for some reason been admitted to communion before confirmation. I don’t know whether it was a tradition of their parents’ former parish or whether it was a kind of privilege accorded to them as the children of priests. It always irked me somewhat that when the boys moved to a new parish for school term time (without the parents) where those who had not yet been confirmed were emphatically not invited to receive communion they continued to receive communion while all the other children in the parish who had not yet been confirmed had to abstain. Perhaps the argument would have gone that since they had already received communion it would now be wrong for them to desist. I suppose this is the problem when individual parishes, and even individual clergy, begin to do things that aren’t the norm. Also, the situation could have been very easily normalised by having the boys confirmed at the earliest possible convenience, but this was not done.
 
Well I was raised Catholic myself, and went through the whole sacramental life of the Catholic Church before being received into the Episcopal one. I’m not sure of the specifics regarding their Eucharist or Confirmation sacraments since I was older than when the rules applied, when I converted. :confused:

However, my friend was just like me, a cradle Catholic, he just never got confirmed. He “got the essentials”, which were baptism, eucharist, and confession but never confirmation.

Now that he’s 26 and un-confirmed, he’s been getting push-back from some of his Catholic friends and acquaintances that he can’t receive Communion since he’s un-confirmed.
 
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The order of the sacraments are baptism, confirmation (chrismation) then the holy Eucharist. In the west holy Eucharist now comes before confirmation. We see in adults that come into the Church they are baptized, confirmed then receive the Eucharist. Your friend should talk to his priest.

ZP
 
Your Catholic friend has a serious obligation to pursue confirmation. The Code of Canon Law, Canon 890, says, “The faithful are bound to receive this sacrament at the proper time.” At 26, your friend is well past the age established by his episcopal conference for the faithful to receive confirmation. If he is aware of this serious obligation and, without good reason, willfully chooses to ignore it, then I think that is a serious sin which would make him ineligible to receive communion at this time.
 
Episcopalian said:
Now that he’s 26 and un-confirmed, he’s been getting push-back from some of his Catholic friends and acquaintances that he can’t receive Communion since he’s un-confirmed.
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They are wrong. Catholics generally make first communion at about the age of seven. Once you have made first communion you can continue to receive communion providing you do so in accordance with the Church’s teachings: state of grace, fast, number of times per day, etc. Nowhere does the Church say that once you have made your first communion you must stop unless you get confirmed.
 
TomH1 said:
This is not the usual practice in the Catholic Church. Our ‘norm’ for a long time as been baptism in infancy. Then when a child reaches what is called the “age of reason” (about 7 years old) he/she makes her/his first confession and receives her/his first communion. After that he/she can regularly receive communion. Confirmation was often administered in adolescence, although there is a lot of difference now with the age this is administered.
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It is not our norm, but it is what usually happens. Our universal norm is to receive confirmation first. And it has not been the usual practice for a long time, only for about 100 years, when the age of first communion was lowered.
 
tafan2 said:
It is not our norm
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A ‘norm’ is something that is usual (Oxford English Dictionary). It is what usually happens.

In my own diocese we got a bishop who changed things so that children were confirmed at the age of seven by their own parish priest. When he was promoted elsewhere as an archbishop my diocese switched things back to confirmation in adolescence.

We are not talking about what happened in times past and not what may be the ideal order in which to administer the three sacraments of initiation. It is simply about what happens usually in the present day.
 
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