Do I have to be confirmed again?

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I am currently Catholic and I attended Catholic schools for my entire education. My parents are both Atheists despite sending me to a Catholic school. So, from a very young age I was an atheist as well. When I was 8 or 9 or so I went through the confirmation process. At the time I didn’t really understand what was happening, I just knew I had to stay after school one day a week and do religious activities at the parish center. My confirmation went fine and I just got on with being an 8/9 year old.

After many years of being an Atheist I became Catholic. I currently go to mass every Sunday and do confession very often. I pray the rosary daily and pray mornings/evenings. Feeling a little nervous about my confirmation, since I knew I was an atheist at the time, I decided to see what the actual Church law on the subject is.

Can 889. §2, ‘To receive confirmation licitly outside the danger of death requires that a person who has the use of reason be suitably instructed, properly disposed, and able to renew the baptismal promises.’

Proper disposition means being in a state of grace but since I was an atheist I was in a state of mortal sin. According to this law, my confirmation was not licit.

This really upset me, I don’t know what to do. Do I have to do confirmation again? How do I even ask for that?
 
Well, I’m not an expert, but here is what I have learned over the years. You can’t be confirmed a second time. It leaves an indelible spiritual mark on the person confirmed. If the conditions are not met (the ones you listed from that quote), the sacrament may not have been valid at that time but as soon as the conditions are met, it becomes valid and you receive all the graces conferred from it.

You already met the “suitably instructed” and “able to renew the baptismal promises” (assuming you are baptized). The only thing left would be properly disposed. You definitely were not in a state of mortal sin at 8 years old, but if you didn’t believe you would still not meet that criteria despite it not being a sin. If you have now come to believe, you should have met that criteria. All three have been met, so you have received all the graces from it.

I suggest you make an appointment to talk to your pastor or priest about this. No matter what people online say, you may still have uncertainty. Best to be reassured by a priest who knows these things a lot more.
 
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Illicit doesn’t mean invalid. A person can only be (validly) confirmed once.

Anyway, I’d say you should talk to your priest to get more authoritative clarification on the matter.

(Now, just as a side note, I don’t think we can say you weren’t in the state of grace on account of your unbelief at age 9 or whatever; seems the knowledge and consent aspects of mortal sin were lacking. But I guess that’s beside the point now.)
 
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Thank you dearly my friend, that explanation makes good sense. In the absence of instruction from the Church regarding this particular scenario, good sense suffices. I will also ask my Priest as you suggested.
 
Alpha3 said:
Proper disposition means being in a state of grace but since I was an atheist I was in a state of mortal sin. According to this law, my confirmation was not licit.
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Licit and valid are two different things.

Confirmation is invalid if the bishop does not confer it properly, or the person does not have faculties. You are the one being confirmed. You do not do the confirming.
Alpha3 said:
This really upset me, I don’t know what to do. Do I have to do confirmation again? How do I even ask for that?
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You don’t need to do anything. You’ve gone to confession and resumed the sacramental life. That’s all you need to do.
 
This is an excellent question! God catch!

The OP makes no mention of baptism. The school should have reviewed the sacramental record of each candidate for confirmation beforehand— but… errors can be made.
 
I don’t think we can say it was illicit with any level certainty. What we can say is that IF it was illicit, it was still valid.

He was instructed, and properly disposed in that he was going to a Catholic school, receiving the sacraments, and presented himself for confirmation. At 8 years old, I doubt he was all that different than any other 8 year old being presented for confirmation.

And, as for being an atheist, again at 8 years old I’m not sure abstract thinking is to the level that an 8 year old really grasps what that means as much as maybe saying it because he heard his parents say they were atheists.
 
Well I disagree. Proper disposition has both an external component, which I think is clearly demonstrated by participating in the sacramental life of the church and presenting himself for confirmation. As for internal disposition, none of us can judge that and we have the adult rememberings of his 8 year old self, which may or may not be entirely accurate.

Yes, a moot point, but I don’t think we should go around proclaiming that someone’s confirmation is illicit from a paragraph he wrote on the internet.
 
“Properly disposed” is interpreted with a lot of leeway, because the recipient is not the One Who makes a sacrament work.

The general teaching is that, as long as you consent, and you aren’t doing it to perform a Satanic ceremony or such, you are okay -ish. If you become more properly disposed later on, you get more of the supplemental graces later on.

The usual example is someone who received a non-Baptism, non-Confession sacrament while in a state of mortal sin. That is illicit and kinda sacrilegious, but not invalid. Once they confess later on, they can receive whatever graces that their sin was blocking, but they don’t have to receive the sacrament a second time.
 
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