A
Andre1000
Guest
When you don’t believe you are not allowed to receive any sacraments and your parents sin when they pressure you to do this. This is the Church teaching.
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J
Joan_M
Guest
No. A good reason to move confirmation to 7 - to be received before first Communion. That’s where it should be.
Z
zz912
Guest
- I believe the OP is a boy.
- We’re not trying to drive away a child. We’re trying to fraternally correct a stubborn and disobedient child who is transitioning to becoming an adult. The OP goes through multiple periods where he lashes out pretty drastically and in a pretty immature fashion. Pointing this out isn’t chasing away a person. If anything, boys/young men of this age need to be called out firmly. It’s the language that males understand best. Trying to placate and be “nice” will only ensure a hardening of opinions on his part and turn him off from listening at all.
B
Bookcat
Guest
I recommend very much that you encounter these texts from Pope Benedict XVI -to Youth…
vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2011/august/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20110818_accoglienza-giovani2-madrid_en.html
vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/homilies/2011/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20110821_xxvi-gmg-madrid_en.html
and Pope Francis w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/travels/2013/outside/documents/papa-francesco-gmg-rio-de-janeiro-2013.html
and more…vatican.va/gmg/documents/
I started becoming a Catholic when I was younger than you…I sought the Church Jesus founded…and found it…and all the beauty and life within…and was received into the full communion with the Catholic Church when I was 18.
Such has been the most important choice of my life! (I am now 44…)
I invite you to read the above and explore more…
“I invite all Christians, everywhere, at this very moment, to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ, or at least an openness to letting him encounter them; I ask all of you to do this unfailingly each day.”
~ Pope Francis (The Joy of the Gospel)
“Christian joy thus springs from this certainty: God is close, he is with me, he is with us, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health, as a friend and faithful spouse. And this joy endures, even in trials, in suffering itself. It does not remain only on the surface; it dwells in the depths of the person who entrusts himself to God and trusts in him.”
~ Pope Benedict XVI Anglus 16 December 2007
“Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.”
~ Pope Benedict XVI Deus Caritas Est
“Faith opens us to knowing and welcoming the real identity of Jesus, his newness and oneness, his word, as a source of life, in order to live a personal relationship with him. Knowledge of the faith grows, it grows with the desire to find the way and in the end it is a gift of God who does not reveal himself to us as an abstract thing without a face or a name, because faith responds to a Person who wants to enter into a relationship of deep love with us and to involve our whole life.”
~ Pope Benedict XVI (Sunday, 14 August 2011)
In Jesus of Nazareth and thus in his Church - (and thus in Confirmation) is* true life!*
E
EasterJoy
Guest
I would be careful about “supporting” someone by merely waving from the pier as they go drifting off in a random direction. You know about what you wish you had taken with you when you embarked on the same journey. You know the questions that you and others like you would have liked to have known to have asked. You know what you would have gotten from your religious upbringing that others without it did not get, things that come to be valued with at least a secular appreciation even by those who never go back. He or she does not know to ask these questions any more than you did!! Tell the OP what those things were! You will not be forcing advice on him or her, but will be giving some food for thought that might prove very useful.
For instance, I know people brought up with no religious background who hate that they do not have any idea what to do at a funeral and do not know how to act in a house of worship. They hate that they don’t know the Christmas and Easter stories that everyone around them seems to assume everyone else knows. They hate that they have no idea how to address their “higher power,” even though they instinctively feel that connection. They feel as if they have none of the cultural background that people with a religious background take for granted. They have no starting place to call home or to go forth from. They feel like persons without a home country, in a religious sense.
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mek42
Guest
I assumed the OP was female from their concerns about later marriage. This is not a typical 15 yr old male concern. If my assumption was wrong, please accept apologies, no slight was intended.
It struck me since posting, your conscience about getting confirmed, your folks have the same conscience about you taking the ccd classes. So, they cannot let you not attend the classes, just like you can’t accept confirmation.
Regarding what I wish I’d have sought before I left - well, I did skip ccd classes for many years, not just the pre-confirmation classes. I spent a few years, maybe 13 to 16, as an atheist and then had a conversion experience in an evangelical church in the Wesleyan tradition. It actually happened at a retreat I went to in order to spend time with a girl.
OP, I wasn’t planning to, but I’m going to share most of my story with you here, because I respect Easterjoy (I hope I’m remembering her name right) and it feels right to do so. See, now I’m a lapsed agnostic - not atheist, agnostic. Perhaps even a formal agnostic, because, as a scientist, I know that I cannot know most things of a religious / spiritual nature. So, I can neither know, nor know not. But I try to respect my intuition, because maybe it is something more. Hopefully, when I finish getting this down, I’ll have answered Easterjoy’s admonishment.
Anyhow, the girl dumped me pretty much right after my conversion experience. Like, at the retreat still dumpage. So, I asked for a Bible to read, one of the pastors gave me his. A black hardcover NIV - strange the details you sometimes remember. Opened it to the middle and first book I read was Job.
This was a good choice, because, what I felt, after the initial ecstasy of conversion? It was pain. See, my father, at this time he was a non-drinking alcoholic. Later in my life I’d go to open NA meetings to get help with cutting myself. Point is, if someone wasn’t drinking and trying to fix what was wrong in the first place I’d call them a recovering alcoholic.
I ended up at a Wesleyan college near a Franciscan college. I ended up at an intercollegiate retreat at the retreat center associated with the Franciscan college. When asked at the time why I went, I’d say because God asked me what I would do if called to the priesthood. It was a magical place, and I returned for Sunday Mass there semi-regularly. I also spent a holiday break there because I couldn’t stay home. Holidays were hard for me; my peers would share their excitement to be able to go home to visit family; I suffered silently that I had to go home, because the dorms closed.
Ironically, it was at this Christian that I had doubts again. Doubt is not quite the right word. I decided that a merciful God would assign people afterward to where they would be best suited and that perhaps there are those who are so damaged in this life, that, while not deserving of punishment, might find ever-communion with God and others itself painful. For those people, my faith was that God would care for them in the best possible way, though I know not what. I suspected I was such a person and had faith I would be cared for afterward. I graduated and thought less and less about spiritual matters until about five years ago, when I had cause to answer whether I believed in a god and the immortality of the soul. Shortly after that, my little girl was born.
I can’t quite honestly say I hope she is raised Catholic, so no baptism. I do want her to have some exposure ro a moral code; I don’t think I would be me without the path I walked. I thought about getting her into ccd classes without receiving sacraments, but most folks said that would be weird, as ccd is sacrament prep. Maybe I’ll get her involved with the Jewish community, let them do their job of being an example of righteousness.
I don’t think I’ve answered Easterjoy’s admonition, but I just don’t know what I would have liked to know back then. I’ll close with two things - if your folks aren’t bad people, well, you need to become your own person now, and this process is not always smooth and painless, but don’t cast away a relationship with them - let it change over time, just don’t throw it out. If theyare bad people, well, if they were, you wouldn’t be here posting about confirmation doubts. Also, be respectful of things sacred to others, even if not sacred to you. An example, when I go to Mass now and then at this point in my life, while the genuflexion does not have meaning ro me, I do bow toward the altar whenever a genuflexion is called for, to give respect to the sacred.
It struck me since posting, your conscience about getting confirmed, your folks have the same conscience about you taking the ccd classes. So, they cannot let you not attend the classes, just like you can’t accept confirmation.
Regarding what I wish I’d have sought before I left - well, I did skip ccd classes for many years, not just the pre-confirmation classes. I spent a few years, maybe 13 to 16, as an atheist and then had a conversion experience in an evangelical church in the Wesleyan tradition. It actually happened at a retreat I went to in order to spend time with a girl.
OP, I wasn’t planning to, but I’m going to share most of my story with you here, because I respect Easterjoy (I hope I’m remembering her name right) and it feels right to do so. See, now I’m a lapsed agnostic - not atheist, agnostic. Perhaps even a formal agnostic, because, as a scientist, I know that I cannot know most things of a religious / spiritual nature. So, I can neither know, nor know not. But I try to respect my intuition, because maybe it is something more. Hopefully, when I finish getting this down, I’ll have answered Easterjoy’s admonishment.
Anyhow, the girl dumped me pretty much right after my conversion experience. Like, at the retreat still dumpage. So, I asked for a Bible to read, one of the pastors gave me his. A black hardcover NIV - strange the details you sometimes remember. Opened it to the middle and first book I read was Job.
This was a good choice, because, what I felt, after the initial ecstasy of conversion? It was pain. See, my father, at this time he was a non-drinking alcoholic. Later in my life I’d go to open NA meetings to get help with cutting myself. Point is, if someone wasn’t drinking and trying to fix what was wrong in the first place I’d call them a recovering alcoholic.
I ended up at a Wesleyan college near a Franciscan college. I ended up at an intercollegiate retreat at the retreat center associated with the Franciscan college. When asked at the time why I went, I’d say because God asked me what I would do if called to the priesthood. It was a magical place, and I returned for Sunday Mass there semi-regularly. I also spent a holiday break there because I couldn’t stay home. Holidays were hard for me; my peers would share their excitement to be able to go home to visit family; I suffered silently that I had to go home, because the dorms closed.
Ironically, it was at this Christian that I had doubts again. Doubt is not quite the right word. I decided that a merciful God would assign people afterward to where they would be best suited and that perhaps there are those who are so damaged in this life, that, while not deserving of punishment, might find ever-communion with God and others itself painful. For those people, my faith was that God would care for them in the best possible way, though I know not what. I suspected I was such a person and had faith I would be cared for afterward. I graduated and thought less and less about spiritual matters until about five years ago, when I had cause to answer whether I believed in a god and the immortality of the soul. Shortly after that, my little girl was born.
I can’t quite honestly say I hope she is raised Catholic, so no baptism. I do want her to have some exposure ro a moral code; I don’t think I would be me without the path I walked. I thought about getting her into ccd classes without receiving sacraments, but most folks said that would be weird, as ccd is sacrament prep. Maybe I’ll get her involved with the Jewish community, let them do their job of being an example of righteousness.
I don’t think I’ve answered Easterjoy’s admonition, but I just don’t know what I would have liked to know back then. I’ll close with two things - if your folks aren’t bad people, well, you need to become your own person now, and this process is not always smooth and painless, but don’t cast away a relationship with them - let it change over time, just don’t throw it out. If theyare bad people, well, if they were, you wouldn’t be here posting about confirmation doubts. Also, be respectful of things sacred to others, even if not sacred to you. An example, when I go to Mass now and then at this point in my life, while the genuflexion does not have meaning ro me, I do bow toward the altar whenever a genuflexion is called for, to give respect to the sacred.
D
dcana
Guest
So, you’re going to teach them to believe just what you believe? If they begin to express a faith in God and start asking you questions, what are you going to tell them? If you want to be consistent, you must shut your mouth and say absolutely nothing. If you start “correcting” them by telling them “there is no God, He’s just like santa claus” then you are forcing your own beliefs onto your children, the very thing you feel your parents are doing to you. You do know what that would make you, right? A hyp…
God loves you, my friend. He always will no matter what you do or believe.
God bless
A
Angel_Bradford
Guest
If you honestly feel this way, then you should not be confirmed. I suggest having a talk with your pastor and tell him how you feel. He will probably tell your parents that you should not be confirmed. Of course, that probably won’t stop them from dragging you to Mass until you turn 18.
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MBeatty1999
Guest
I’ve actually been thinking the last few days. I actually enjoy going to the Catholic High School. I am doing very well academically, better than I did at the public grammar school before, I am involved in athletics, I have made friends here. My father said that staying at my school and being confirmed went together. I can see his point. He is thinking, “Why pay all this money to send him to a Catholic school if he won’t be confirmed.” hen my father said this, he said, “Just make your confirmation. That is next spring. Once that is over, you don’t have to go to church anymore.” I am going to try to get them to send me back to my school. I think the cat is out of the bag about confirmation, but I will say that if they agree to keep me there, I will keep going to church without complaining and an open mind until I graduate high school. That is 3 years away.
D
D0UBTFIRE
Guest
Hi,
I was just thinking, maybe you should pray about it? I mean you did say you believed in God. Maybe God wants you to be Catholic? I mean, why else would He have you in a Catholic family and in a Catholic high school that you enjoy? I totally get your point about organized religion being, well, bleh, but at the same time there is a lot of depth and wisdom in such an ancient faith. It’s something you might get a lot out of. It might bring you closer to God.
Good luck with your decision!
E
EasterJoy
Guest
Hmmm…I hope you know that your father does not have the authority to release you from your religious obligations. He could say, “once you are confirmed, I will consider you a fellow adult in the Church, meaning that I will admonish you when you aren’t acting according to your confirmation but I will not force you to do duties that have become your obligation instead of mine.” Does that make sense? It is not quite kosher to pressure you to make public pronouncements saying that you are willingly completing your full initiation within the Catholic Church when in fact you are simply trying to get your parents off of your back about religious duties that you and your parents both know you have no intention of fulfilling once the oil of confirmation has been applied.
I hope the duplicity of making public promises you have no intention of keeping is a violation of your integrity that you won’t agree to commit, even if it will get your parents off of your back. If, instead, you see this as one last good-faith effort to see if the experience you have learned to hate and the practice of the Catholic faith are perhaps not the same thing–the Catholic faith perhaps being something you can believe in and the things you have learned to hate being either an unnecessary or a tolerable part of that–then that is a different matter. If that is your intention, the added incentive of continuing on with a Catholic education that you enjoy and value doesn’t taint your decision, per se.
I hope you do continue through with confirmation and that you do give your religious inheritance one last try, this time as a young adult in charge of his own spiritual life. If you leave after having tried on your own terms, with a good will and an open mind, and leave because you cannot reconcile your conscience to the practice of the faith, at least you are not leaving to prove anything. You won’t be leaving with a chip on your shoulder. That would be a vast improvement over what you originally proposed.
G
Gorgias
Guest
Mind if I respond to just a couple things you said? I know you’re talking to the OP, and the things I noticed aren’t even along the main thrust of your post, but they struck me…
(On the other hand, one typically must be baptized in order to attend CCD. You might want to talk with a parish pastor to see what opportunities might be available for your daughter’s participation in a parish CCD program.)
You could, of course, send her to Catholic school. In most Catholic schools, there are students who are not Catholic, but who attend all the classes (including religion classes!). That might be a means of raising her in the context of the Catholic moral tradition…
True, you cannot know things of a spiritual nature as a scientist does – empirically, and ‘provable’ by use of the scientific method – but that does not mean that you cannot know them. Calling your non-empirical knowledge merely ‘intuition’ seems a logical error, here.
This doesn’t fit well with what the Church teaches. When we are in heaven, we aren’t ‘damaged’. Yes, maybe we were in this life, but we will be made clean – “every tear will be wiped away”, remember? – and in heaven, we’ll be perfect; in fact, without that perfection, none of us could be in God’s presence. So, I get what you’re saying, but I think it’s an error in logic: yes, we may be damaged here on earth, but we won’t be damaged in heaven. And therefore, there’s no way that eternal communion with God or others could be ‘painful’.
I don’t know who these ‘most folks’ are, but they’re mistaken: CCD is not merely ‘sacrament prep.’ From 1st to 7th grades, only 2nd grade is a ‘sacramental year’. In 8th (or 9th) grade, one is taught about the Holy Spirit (yes, in preparation for Confirmation, but the teaching is the teaching, not (strictly speaking) only sacramental prep.)
(On the other hand, one typically must be baptized in order to attend CCD. You might want to talk with a parish pastor to see what opportunities might be available for your daughter’s participation in a parish CCD program.)
You could, of course, send her to Catholic school. In most Catholic schools, there are students who are not Catholic, but who attend all the classes (including religion classes!). That might be a means of raising her in the context of the Catholic moral tradition…
M
mek42
Guest
Gorgias, thank you for replying. I was starting to think I severely overshared.
OP, maybe you could honor your parents by cheerfully accepting the confimation preparation classes, attending mass and even regularly meeting with a priest to discuss whether the state of your conscience will allow you to accept the sacrament. If you do this, be open and honest - regardless whether you change your mind, this process will help you learn about yourself.
You are at a tough age right now. You are learning / choosing who you are, trying to be true to that, yet also must honor your folks. Being different people, these two things will sometimes conflict. The trick is to remain respectful and to take a break from talking if things get heated.
OP, maybe you could honor your parents by cheerfully accepting the confimation preparation classes, attending mass and even regularly meeting with a priest to discuss whether the state of your conscience will allow you to accept the sacrament. If you do this, be open and honest - regardless whether you change your mind, this process will help you learn about yourself.
You are at a tough age right now. You are learning / choosing who you are, trying to be true to that, yet also must honor your folks. Being different people, these two things will sometimes conflict. The trick is to remain respectful and to take a break from talking if things get heated.
M
milimac
Guest
Please don’t do that. Taking out your frustrations on the confirmation teacher would be extremely immature and selfish, not to mention being unfair to the other kids who are open to it. Just because you don’t believe doesn’t mean you have the right to harm innocent bystanders.
Perhaps you can tell your parents that if it is so important to them that you are confirmed, then have them teach you themselves. That’s what I would recommend to any parents of troublemakers, but I’m probably not as patient as most. If you really believe, ask God if your behavior would be pleasing to Him.
H
HelenRose
Guest
Do you simply wish to close your eyes to ideas that are not your own?
It will be very easy for you to follow your peers and never ever open your mind to any new ideas except for the ones you want to hear.
Study what you disagree with. Study with and open and honest mind. It will not hurt you and you may learn something.
Or, close your mind,hurt your parents and wallow in the injustice of it all and be miserable and make you parents miserable for the next 10 years.
P
pianistclare
Guest
My priest would take you out of the Confirmation class, yes.
But he would also stress to you that you have been, apparently, VERY poorly catechized. Because no person who has attended good formation classes would so off-handedly reject the teachings of Christ and the sacraments.
That would be a real tragedy. You don’t think so now, but it’s absolutely true.
Keep in mind, that once a Baptized Catholic you are always a Catholic. regardless of whatever place you find yourself in on Sundays in the future. There’s no such thing as “I used to be Catholic”.
If they dragged you to church, then you have not experienced the Mass in it’s proper form.
I suggest you return to study about the faith.
Once you realize what it’s REALLY about, you may feel differently in the future. For now, no, you are in no shape to be Confirmed. You’ll just end up with an oily forehead.
And for those who believe Confirmation should be done at infancy “because that’s the way we used to do it”…those were different times. There was a different need.
In today’s world, we need to keep the teens in formation as long as we can, because they are influenced like this young person. They have a “so what?” attitude to faith. It is their fault? No, It’s our fault. We expect the Holy Spirit to do all the heavy lifting. We expect magical inspiration to keep them on the path to holiness. That’s all well and good, but it’s not enough when the prince of lies works so hard to lead them away from Christ. We have to worker harder if we want our youth to have strong faith, a good morality, a well formed conscience. We can no longer just expect God to handle it for us. We have to cooperate with the mission of the church.
God bless you OP. I hope that you return to the faith.
But because you want to. Not because someone made you.
Peace.
H
HelenRose
Guest
You certainly say things better than I do!
I am getting to be a crusty old Grandma. I am beginning on my third generation of “teens”. All of my past teens have turn out to be wonderful adults but oh…Why do some of them have to be so difficult for five or six years?
I have to say that not all of my own children, nieces and nephews were difficult. But, even the ones that were have turned out just fine. They do grow up.
M
Marvin_parv
Guest
Hello, I`m a little older but in the same position, My view is too go through with it because the eucharist is true, whatever their law decrees…
That`s all _______________________________________ : )
H
HelenRose
Guest
I think the age around ten or eleven is the best age because I have found that children at ten or eleven have an extremely fine development of intellect but have not yet been bombarded with hormones.
Ten and eleven year old children may act perfectly silly when they are together but when you talk one on one with them, you will find out that their thinking is profound. They have become who they are and will return to that after the turmoil of adolescence is over.
I believe that this is the age that is most crucial in the development of spirituality.
Ten and eleven year old children may act perfectly silly when they are together but when you talk one on one with them, you will find out that their thinking is profound. They have become who they are and will return to that after the turmoil of adolescence is over.
I believe that this is the age that is most crucial in the development of spirituality.
P
pianistclare
Guest
You make an excellent point. I do agree…middle school students are the best age group. However, I was confirmed at that age, and the catechesis was zero. It doesn’t matter what the age…if your teachers are really going to teach something.
However, the Bishops that go with 15 do so because they KNOW that parents will not put their kids in formation beyond that last sacrament. Our teen programs would be empty and you can just hand their souls over after they receive Confirmation, whatever the age.
As it is, we seldom see kids after First Holy Communion. They might show up for Mass with their parents like the OP, but they see it as irrelevant to them.
Someone’s going to write in that “not at MY parish!” well, woo-hoo good for that parish. But the sad fact is, that many catechists and pastors see this all the time.
Parents feel like as long as they got their kid’s membership card punched, they are “done”. We even hear it at the reception:
“well congratulations to your family!”
“Oh I know, we’re SO glad to be DONE!”
Thankfully the student has been well taught. We had a record number of kids returning to teen classes after confirmation last year. They got the memo. But it’s a lot of work, a lot of thought into the classes, and much preparation on the part of the teachers and the pastor.
There’s more to it than finding someone “willing” to teach the class.
I’m so thankful we have a solid team that truly cares and is well formed themselves.
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