P
Phemie
Guest
Because Confirmation isn’t about accepting Christianity into your life. Otherwise we wouldn’t confirm infants who are being baptized in danger of death.
- Status
P
Phemie
Guest
You weren’t confirming anything. Confirmation isn’t something you do, it’s something that’s done **to **you.
L
Lypher
Guest
Shoot…almost two years in RCIA and I can’t get together with a Bishop to get confirmed… My son was this past season…awesome…
Hopefully next year…
C
CDNowak
Guest
Good point! It helps to keep in mind the origin of the word: confirmare: to establish, to make firm, to confirm, to strengthen. To strengthen, to make lasting, to support. (taken from Cassell’s) Far more to do with the establishment and fortification (of the Faith) than any assent.
P
Phemie
Guest
If you’re in RCIA why would you need to get together with a bishop? Doesn’t the pastor of the parish where you are preparing confirm those that he receives into full communion?Shoot…almost two years in RCIA and I can’t get together with a Bishop to get confirmed… My son was this past season…awesome…
Hopefully next year…
L
Lypher
Guest
Phemie,
No the Priest can confirm an adult if he is also Baptizing them, but for a convert that is up to the Bishop, unless the Bishop allows the local Priest to bring them in. In our case we had 3 people that could not bring into the Church because the Bishop refused. Father Tom could only bring in one Non-Baptized adult. The other Adults will hopefully find another Church.
On a positive note I will be transferring this next year and may
be stationed in Italy. If that happens then I may very well get an Italian Bishop and just forget about the American Military Bishop…just too hard.
P
phoenixrrt62
Guest
Hey, I get what you are saying.
I admire people who are devout in their faith, and I’d venture to say if you have some kind of rule that people have to understand and follow the tenants of their faith in order to go to church, you’d lose half the members of your church…ha!
See, that’s one thing about organized religion I never got. My ex didn’t either. He thought it was hypocritical. Me, well, I see it like this.
You are born (insert faith) and your family, doing the right thing according to the social norms of their collective group, do what Mom and Dad did for them, they teach the kiddies surface knowledge about the religious faith.
Why?
Because.
That’s what everyone does. That’s the way it is.
SO little Johnny goes to the religious training required of this faith, and when he reaches the age of reason, he decides, like Mommy and Daddy (or whomever his guardian is) he’s going to do what they did, as did others before them.
If he strays, uses his critical thinking skills, and says…whoa, this religion is nonsense, I think religion B makes more sense…well, then you just upset the social apple cart, you can’t do that!
So, Johnny goes on, goes through the motions, and the religion…the TRUE rules, tenets of said religion, they go by the wayside…it’s a social club, is all.
My foster parents were like probably 75-80% of the RC people I managed to run across as a child.
I went to Mass more than they did BY FAR, and I wasn’t even Catholic. Go figure.
(mind, half to 3/4 of WHAT they were doing escaped me).
-I lived for the reading of scripture..
I used to take the book they used for the scripture readings and read the whole thing every mass while they were going through all the prayers that I couldn’t relate to-
-and the homily…
well, sometimes-when the priest went on a tangent about political stuff-that annoyed me -
reading the bible
(mind, it wasn’t a catholic bible)
So, seeing this growing up, I started to get pretty jaded…assorted stuff a typical catholic was supposed to do. I came to see it as a bit of a joke…well.
Whatever.
Again. I say they are rules, made by man, and I bet, given the ability to do so, a lot of people would agree.
***However, there is a still, small voice that is saying…no, you are wrong. there IS something…
So. Here I am. Pfft.
L
Lypher
Guest
Phoenix… Yeah it is tough during the search, but like your comment up above says we know something is there, the question is what?
I find many areas that point to God… Good luck in your search I am sure you will find God someday…
Take care,
E
excubitor
Guest
I’m not in the process of judging anyone. That is the priests job when people front up asking for sacraments. However I am making a general observation.
Did anyone consider my point about the early church. In the severe persecutions many Christians were martyred and had their property confiscated or damaged and yet they remained faithful. Whereas others had fallen away even before they had any injury done to them. How would you expect these faithful Catholics to react when these unfaithful catholics turn up to receive the sacraments after the persecution stopped. To have Catholics who have bailed out of the faith in the face of persecution receiving the same gifts as those who have endured hardship.
Many harsh Catholics at the time who had felt abandoned by these unfaithful Catholics believed that the unfaithful Catholics should be completely ejected for ever from the church. However the Council of Nicae thought that was too harsh. And so they implemented some measures such as public confession to the Confessors. These were Catholics who had endured persecution and had survived marytrdom and who heard the confessions of the unfaithful Catholic. Then the Council imposed penances of many years upon the unfaithful to prove themselves as being fully repentant before they could receive the sacraments again. This is what penance used to be, denial of the sacraments for a certain period. In this wise decision people could eventually be restored to full communion as well as satisfying the reasonable concerns of faithful Catholic martyrs who had endured the persecutions.
Council of Nicea Canon (325). Which teaches that those who had lapsed from the faith without persecution were to spend twelve years as public penitents before they might be readmitted to the sacraments – and then of course only if a sincere conversion be evidenced by perseverance in a new life.
Here is Canon 11
These lengthy penances seem incredibly harsh to us, but to those people they were considered merciful. What would they think of our penances? Today many people receive the sacraments after being apostate for many years, having made no confession or performed no penance. The sacrament of Confirmation given to children who have not been to church for years. That is a monumental disorder in our communion which needs to be corrected.
Today apostates are treated no differently to the rest of us. Today penance is incredibly light. Say a couple of prayers and then come back next week for communion.
All I am calling for is for our policies to swing back more to a traditional approach to handling apostates. In the early church apostasy was the worst sin imaginable. There were even various zones in the church where disgraced apostates needed to spend years expressing their contrition before they could move back into full communion.
These were the audientes (hearers) substrati (prostraters) genuflenctes (kneelers) then the consistentes (these could hear the whole mass without receiving) concilium (a council to test whether an apostate was deserving of readmission, then at Holy Thursday they were readmitted in a ceremony of the penitents.
In this process the gravity of sin and apostasy was emphasised. The public nature of confession and penance was also emphasised. You could judge how grave their sin was by how long they spent in the audientes or in the substrati etc. But most importantly the sacrament was never despoiled and was kept available for the holy, faithful ones only. In fact the apostate never even got to see the Eucharist for many years because they could only attend the mass of the catechumens and had to leave the church for the mass of the Faithful. So the Mass of the Faithful was truly a mystery available only to those holy and fully reconciled to God and the church. Today the priest has to call out to the pagans attending confirmations to stop popping their flash cameras during the mass. What a disgrace.
This process of restoring an apostate and other grave sinners to the full communion was called exomologesis .
How many of my critics would also incline themselves to criticise the early church for being too harsh and judgmental. And why is apostasy an absolutely horrendous disgraceful appalling sin in the early church and yet today we put out the welcome mat for pagans and apostates even to the extent of giving them the childrens bread Mark 7:27
So why can’t we implement an early church type process of exomologesis to tackle this growing problem of apostasy in our church today? Because half our number would leave somebody said. I would say that it would be more than half. But so what? Are numbers more important than holiness?
**
Let the children be confirmed in holiness not in apostasy. **
Did anyone consider my point about the early church. In the severe persecutions many Christians were martyred and had their property confiscated or damaged and yet they remained faithful. Whereas others had fallen away even before they had any injury done to them. How would you expect these faithful Catholics to react when these unfaithful catholics turn up to receive the sacraments after the persecution stopped. To have Catholics who have bailed out of the faith in the face of persecution receiving the same gifts as those who have endured hardship.
Many harsh Catholics at the time who had felt abandoned by these unfaithful Catholics believed that the unfaithful Catholics should be completely ejected for ever from the church. However the Council of Nicae thought that was too harsh. And so they implemented some measures such as public confession to the Confessors. These were Catholics who had endured persecution and had survived marytrdom and who heard the confessions of the unfaithful Catholic. Then the Council imposed penances of many years upon the unfaithful to prove themselves as being fully repentant before they could receive the sacraments again. This is what penance used to be, denial of the sacraments for a certain period. In this wise decision people could eventually be restored to full communion as well as satisfying the reasonable concerns of faithful Catholic martyrs who had endured the persecutions.
Council of Nicea Canon (325). Which teaches that those who had lapsed from the faith without persecution were to spend twelve years as public penitents before they might be readmitted to the sacraments – and then of course only if a sincere conversion be evidenced by perseverance in a new life.
Here is Canon 11
The judgement was less harsh upon Catechumens
In those days and probably for most of Christianity there was a name given to Catholics who fell away from the faith and who did not attend church for periods of years. They were called apostates.
These lengthy penances seem incredibly harsh to us, but to those people they were considered merciful. What would they think of our penances? Today many people receive the sacraments after being apostate for many years, having made no confession or performed no penance. The sacrament of Confirmation given to children who have not been to church for years. That is a monumental disorder in our communion which needs to be corrected.
Today apostates are treated no differently to the rest of us. Today penance is incredibly light. Say a couple of prayers and then come back next week for communion.
All I am calling for is for our policies to swing back more to a traditional approach to handling apostates. In the early church apostasy was the worst sin imaginable. There were even various zones in the church where disgraced apostates needed to spend years expressing their contrition before they could move back into full communion.
These were the audientes (hearers) substrati (prostraters) genuflenctes (kneelers) then the consistentes (these could hear the whole mass without receiving) concilium (a council to test whether an apostate was deserving of readmission, then at Holy Thursday they were readmitted in a ceremony of the penitents.
In this process the gravity of sin and apostasy was emphasised. The public nature of confession and penance was also emphasised. You could judge how grave their sin was by how long they spent in the audientes or in the substrati etc. But most importantly the sacrament was never despoiled and was kept available for the holy, faithful ones only. In fact the apostate never even got to see the Eucharist for many years because they could only attend the mass of the catechumens and had to leave the church for the mass of the Faithful. So the Mass of the Faithful was truly a mystery available only to those holy and fully reconciled to God and the church. Today the priest has to call out to the pagans attending confirmations to stop popping their flash cameras during the mass. What a disgrace.
This process of restoring an apostate and other grave sinners to the full communion was called exomologesis .
How many of my critics would also incline themselves to criticise the early church for being too harsh and judgmental. And why is apostasy an absolutely horrendous disgraceful appalling sin in the early church and yet today we put out the welcome mat for pagans and apostates even to the extent of giving them the childrens bread Mark 7:27
So why can’t we implement an early church type process of exomologesis to tackle this growing problem of apostasy in our church today? Because half our number would leave somebody said. I would say that it would be more than half. But so what? Are numbers more important than holiness?
**
Let the children be confirmed in holiness not in apostasy. **
P
ProVobis
Guest
I’m not that theologically astute to agree or disagree with what you say. But we were prepared for Confirmation when I was age 10 or 11, can’t remember exactly. Preparation took a long time, but basically it consisted of practically memorizing the catechism because those were the questions that would be asked of us at confirmation by the bishop. The public school kids were included in the preparations as well. Since my confirmation I was asked to be sponsor three times and I don’t see any disadvantage of adequate preparation for the sacrament. Had I been confirmed earlier, I would have had the choice removed sure, but I also would have missed out on the catechism discipline.
P
phoenixrrt62
Guest
Now, see…I find many areas that point AWAY from a supreme being, God, whatever.
But, hey.
Who knows. Perhaps I am wrong.
L
Lypher
Guest
Oops…I read that differently… Oh well…good luck on your search…
On a side note, do you find it easier to believe in evil then good?
L
Loboto-Me
Guest
Semantics
E
excubitor
Guest
Only half right? But where did I say that the confirmations were not real or that they lacked grace. However we know that sacraments which ordinarily convey grace can in fact convey condemnation to those who receive them unworthily.
Perhaps what we are actually doing for these children is confirming them in apostasy. We are admitting their families practice of only showing up to church for match-hatch-despatch type events and confirming them in that practice. What are you talking about “bless their non-believing hearts” and “support them”. I will not. I will call loudly for their conversion, repentance, and public penitence and would if I had the authority (which I admit I do not) deny them the sacraments for their own sakes, so that they may learn the horrors of apostasy and sin and that all fear and trembling may return to our fellowships
“11 And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things”
C
CDNowak
Guest
What it is adequate preparation for the Sacrament of Confirmation? If we look at the Church’s discipline as a whole we cannot say that this preparation is necessary, any more then we can say consent is necessary, given that the Eastern Church Chrismates immediately following Baptism and immediately before the First Communion (as we Latins do for our converts, and ought to be doing [by the books] for children of converts who have already reached the age of reason).
Given the current law, the memorization of the basics of the faith is possible for children as a rule, in their seventh year (using the catechism, particularly one suited for their age). This should not be the end of their catechesis, but the beginning, a concept hampered by the notion that we are to understand the faith before Confirmation.
E
excubitor
Guest
No its not. If confirmation was an act of the child who is being confirmed then the Eastern practice of Confirmation at baptism in infancy would be illegitimate. Confirmation is something which is done to you not something you do yourself.
It means “To support or establish the certainty or validity of; verify.”
How is a child in a position to make such an establishment? Only the most educated and wisest of us is qualified to make this judgement. In the West this is no less than the bishop who can affirm that the individual is established in the faith and may be sealed with the Holy Spirit.
How we can confirm the certainty and validity of a child’s catholic nature and life when the child has not attended mass except on sporadic occasions, whose parents are basically apostates?
It seems to me that sealing them in this apostate state is doing them more harm than good. It would be far better to wait until the child has grown and left home and has spent a few years on his own inititiative faithfully attending church if his parents. But today the bishops are handing out confirmations like candy. In our junior schools we now have graduation ceremonies. Families even pay for limousines to take their “little dears” to the schools to outdo their friends. This social showmanship and oneupmanship is evident in our modern confirmation ceremonies also. “Don’t they look cute” with their cubic zirconia necklaces and the low cut bridal gowns and makeup and hairdo’s? No they don’t, they look ridiculous. I want to run these little beauty queens out of the church along with all their pagan apostate sideshow families. Don’t they realise that a sacred service is taking place? Don’t they realise that the Holy Spirit in person is descending upon the candidate to bless them and invigorate them in what has already been begun and has started to form in the child?
At the local cathedral the sign says “Sacred ceremony taking place. Please maintain a reverent silence” This is for the tourists who wander in and out to examine the architecture. But these tourists show more respect than these confirmation parties.
If tourists behaved half as badly as the confirmation parties they would be respectfully asked to leave.
So here are my new rules for confirmations.
- Children must attend weekly mass with their parents for a period of 3 years.
- Evidence must be produced that children have been provided proper catechesis over a period of at least 3 years. (not just the short confirmation programme)
- Children must be confirmed in the parishes in which they attend and are known by the priest
- Confirmation is to be a solemn ceremony of the parish. The sealing of the Holy Spirit.
- Non-catholic family or non-practicing catholics (apostates) are not welcome at the event.
So that all men may learn to fear the church and the bishop.
P
ProVobis
Guest
But where is the motivation to study catechism after Confirmation? How do the Easterners do it? We can’t assume et ceteribus paribus here so what applies to them should apply to Westerners.
K
karennascargo3
Guest
It breaks my heart to see the attitude of the OP and those who agree with her. Goodness folks, isn’t this whole thing actually between those being confirmed, the priest, and God?
The status of these folks isn’t even our business. It isn’t up to any of us to keep tabs on when someone attends Mass or doesn’t attend Mass. It isn’t up to us to determine anyone’s relationship with God. In fact, it’s terribly wrong to even verbally critise these dear children, parents, and guests even if the thought runs through our mind. If we are concentrating on our own worship, relationship with Christ, and our heart during the eucharist, how is it even possible we have time to look and judge others in that one short hour?
You know, there will always be things that annoy us or we would do differently if we were in charge; however, when it isn’t our place to judge – it’s our place to keep that opinion to ourselves.
Frankly, you can justify it all you want by calling it “an observation”, it’s still judging others and putting yourself above them.
Remember that this is exactly what Jesus’ issue was with the religious leaders; they judged the holiness, intentions, and commitment of others and expressed a desire for those of offended them to act more like they do – holy and religious. Jesus’ response was not that they were right; rather He condemned them for their attitude and lack of charity toward others. Jesus saw that these dear nonreligious folks just didn’t 100% ‘get it’ yet – BUT that one day they may. More importantly, how they were treated and encouraged today held the key for that day to come!
The status of these folks isn’t even our business. It isn’t up to any of us to keep tabs on when someone attends Mass or doesn’t attend Mass. It isn’t up to us to determine anyone’s relationship with God. In fact, it’s terribly wrong to even verbally critise these dear children, parents, and guests even if the thought runs through our mind. If we are concentrating on our own worship, relationship with Christ, and our heart during the eucharist, how is it even possible we have time to look and judge others in that one short hour?
You know, there will always be things that annoy us or we would do differently if we were in charge; however, when it isn’t our place to judge – it’s our place to keep that opinion to ourselves.
Frankly, you can justify it all you want by calling it “an observation”, it’s still judging others and putting yourself above them.
Remember that this is exactly what Jesus’ issue was with the religious leaders; they judged the holiness, intentions, and commitment of others and expressed a desire for those of offended them to act more like they do – holy and religious. Jesus’ response was not that they were right; rather He condemned them for their attitude and lack of charity toward others. Jesus saw that these dear nonreligious folks just didn’t 100% ‘get it’ yet – BUT that one day they may. More importantly, how they were treated and encouraged today held the key for that day to come!
J
jtodisco
Guest
alsoTrue, true.
It seems that Confirmation and First Communion become shows, for exactly the reasons you listed.
However, maybe the ones being Confirmed will change in the long run. Maybe they’ll become devout. You never know!
As has been said many times already in this thread, Confirmation is a Sacrament. As such it confers graces upon the one being Confirmed. Even if at the time they are not as knowledgeable about their faith as they should be. I firmly believe that due to the fact that I was Baptized, received First Communion, and was Confirmed I was bestowed with countless graces (as are all who receive them). And though I went through a period in my life when I strayed from the Church (mainly due to ignorance) I eventually was drawn back (seemingly despite all of my initial efforts to resist being pulled in that particular direction). I am convinced that it was God who brought me back despite myself, and I am just as convinced that the graces I received early in life through these Sacraments greatly aided in my returning to the faith in ways I cannot begin to imagine.
So as the Lord said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.” - Matthew 19.14
E
excubitor
Guest
All you are doing is confirming my claim that confirmation ceremonies are a cacophony of noise, music, ribaldry and confusion. You however seem to be excusing this and that the holy, faithful and reverent catholic needs to just put up with it. I am almost speechless. Utterly speechless.
…
But not for long. All this confirms is that holy, faithful, reverent Catholics are second class citizens in their own parishes. They are expected to put up with every kind of indecency and insult to themselves, the Holy Spirit in the confirmation ceremony and Jesus in the blessed sacrament. Should Jesus and the Holy Spirit also just retreat into themselves? Is that what you all want? No. You want Jesus and the Holy Spirit to come out and enter into us. If that’s what you want then you better join me and start working to drive out the ribaldry and confusion from the sacred sanctuary.
- Status