Confirmation record

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TheLittleLady said:
If you do not have records of your Confirmation, I would assume that prior to your wedding and/or standing as sponsor there would have been some sort of conditional sacrament.
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No. Typically, that doesn’t happen (at least, not around here). The opportunity is offered, but if the person says “I was confirmed!”, it’s usually left at that.
InThePew said:
When it comes to marriage, baptism is essential - confirmation not as much.
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But, for the OP, it is – she’s looking to join a religious order!

@cb934586, do you have anything that would demonstrate that you were confirmed? A program? Photos? As another poster mentioned, could your sponsor write a letter asserting that the confirmation took place? If not your sponsor, then a parent?

You might consider talking to the pastor at the parish of your baptism. Explain to him what your problem is. Perhaps he might accept testimony and other evidence of your confirmation, and make the appropriate entry in your baptismal register.

If not the pastor, then perhaps the canon law office of the diocese in which you were baptized.
 
thank you for your response. No one remembers my confirmation except me. Maybe I can contact the pastor at the church of my baptism.
 
cb934586 said:
thank you for your response. No one remembers my confirmation except me. Maybe I can contact the pastor at the church of my baptism.
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Oh, boy. What a conundrum!

OK… let’s take this from a different perspective: what do you remember from your confirmation? Who celebrated it? What do you remember doing (in terms of sacramental rite / actions)?

Were you baptized in the Catholic Church as a child or as an adult?
 
The Secretary at your baptismal parish is more likely to access the registers quickly for you 🙂
 
I was baptized as a baby and I have that record. The only thing I remember at confirmation is that there was a bishop.
 
cb934586 said:
I was baptized as a baby and I have that record. The only thing I remember at confirmation is that there was a bishop.
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Hmm…

Is it possible that you’re misremembering the church at which the confirmation took place? Is it possible that it’s a parish that was later shut down or merged into another?
 
Your parish where you were baptized has the official record of your baptism (you have a copy) and your confirmation if done in another parish is to be reported to the baptismal parish; it will be entered on that record (as will a marriage).
 
But apparently that didn’t happen.

I don’t think it’s super rare that the person recording the Confirmation at the parish level (often not the pastor/priest) doesn’t know that they have to notify the parish of Baptism. I was never told I had to do it, I only learned that by accident after I’d been working in the office for a few years, and received notification from another parish of a former parishioner’s Confirmation.
 
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The confirmand does not notify, the parish makes the notification.

Are there times when someone without training makes mistakes with sacramental records? Yes. When the Diocese becomes aware of these, they will make sure that the mistakes are corrected and proper training is done.

Our Diocese did see an uptick in these mistakes, now, there is a yearly training session for any new staffers who are going to be responsible for records.
 
I’m not sure how the diocese becomes aware of these. It’s only in recent years that they started requiring that our records be photocopied and sent to them each year to be kept in a fireproof vault. I doubt anyone is actually examining them.

From 1958 to 197something we had the same priest in the parish. Records were diligently entered in their respective registers. Unfortunately, subsequent recordable sacraments were not also entered in the Register of Baptism if they were entered in the Register of Confirmation or Marriage, requiring diligent searches when issuing a certificate of Baptism.

Then we went through a period when, based on the handwriting, several persons seemed responsible for the entries and that’s where things kind of went off the rails. Missing records, etc.

When I became “secretary” nobody taught me anything, and the Pastor at the time had Alzheimer’s so to this day there are probably missing records. There are certainly several entries in the margins of the register of Baptism to keep entries in the same year at least.

The volunteer who’s doing the work now has also not been trained. That is becoming an issue now that we’ve resumed Confirmation after not having it for a couple of years due to a move from age 7 to age 12. It’s only this thread that led me to ask her if she’d been informing baptismal parishes and she, like I at the start, didn’t know she had to. Father leaves everything up to her.
 
TheLittleLady said:
Our Diocese did see an uptick in these mistakes, now, there is a yearly training session for any new staffers who are going to be responsible for records.
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That’s a good practice. I don’t think my diocese does that. At my parish, we do send out notifications of Confirmation when people were baptized outside of our parish. And being a college town with an international student body, we always have several that go to other countries (which can sometimes be tricky just to find the address for the parish). But we don’t receive as many from other parishes as I would expect to receive.
 
Yes, that’s a great resource! I always go there to look up bishops, but don’t generally think of it as a place for diocesan contact info. I’ll have to point that out to our office assistant who does the sacramental records.
 
Don_Ruggero said:
Beyond that, you can seek help from the archdiocese’s archival center in tracking down the record.
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Exactly. Churches offices burn down every century or so, so it isn’t a good idea to have only one copy (rather than one definitive copy).
 
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PetraG said:
Exactly. Churches offices burn down every century or so, so it isn’t a good idea to have only one copy (rather than one definitive copy).
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Hmm… no. To the best of my knowledge, parishes don’t send copies of their sacramental registers to central repositories.

I think what @Don_Ruggero was suggesting was that, if a parish had been suppressed or had merged with another, then the archives would know about that and would be able to help out. (In that situation, the records would be transferred to either the archives or to the surviving parish.)
 
@cb934586
why don’t you check the parish where you have got married or received your First Holy Communion?

who where the sponsors ? and your God Parents? perhaps they may remember.next step go for the paperwork,if not done.
 
Parish secretary here. Yes, we are required to send our older records to the archive at the Diocese. We only keep the most recent “books”. This is for the safe keeping of the records. They are not only maintained in physical records but they are scanned in for digital safety.

Each year at Easter Vigil and after Confirmation, etc we send copies the records from these to the Diocese.

I have worked at a smaller parish where this was not done for a long time because there was an untrained volunteer doing things. We worked to get it all corrected.

We also had an old parish that was shut down many decades ago. Those records went to one of the existing parishes, then, same process was maintained.
 
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TheLittleLady said:
Yes, we are required to send our older records to the archive at the Diocese. We only keep the most recent “books”.
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Oh… older books? Sure. Those get sent down.
TheLittleLady said:
Each year at Easter Vigil and after Confirmation, etc we send copies the records from these to the Diocese.
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Really? I’ll have to ask around. I don’t think we do that, over here. Literal copies of the registers? All of the registers? Or just a record of the confirmations?
 
Gorgias said:
Hmm… no. To the best of my knowledge, parishes don’t send copies of their sacramental registers to central repositories.

I think what @Don_Ruggero was suggesting was that, if a parish had been suppressed or had merged with another, then the archives would know about that and would be able to help out. (In that situation, the records would be transferred to either the archives or to the surviving parish.)
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Wow. There is no duplication of the originals of sacramental records, in case of fire? Even now?
If the physical church records are destroyed, the evidence is simply lost?
Wow.
 
PetraG said:
Wow. There is no duplication of the originals of sacramental records, in case of fire? Even now?
If the physical church records are destroyed, the evidence is simply lost?
Wow.
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If memory serves, there’s a requirement to store the records in a fire-resistant safe. Can’t remember the exact wording of the requirement, but something to that effect.
 
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