Methodist Confirmation

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Yeni76

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I was confirmed in the catholic church. I am a converted methodist. Is my confirmation valid in the methodist church?
 
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We are Catholics, dear, not Methodists.

We are all loyal attendees of Mother Church and it breaks our heart you left us. I’ll pray with all the angels and saints for you to come back home.
 
I think you came to the exact right site.
What drew you to Methodism? Former Baptist asking.
 
You need to ask your Methodist minister what’s valid and not valid in the Methodist Church. This isn’t Methodist Answers, and we don’t know what Methodists do. Unless you have another Methodist here by chance who can answer.

Plus, we Catholics don’t approve of you leaving the Catholic Church, and your remarks denigrating Mary and the Saints don’t make God happy and simply show that you don’t know much about Catholic prayer. Every prayer goes to God, and the only thing Mary and the saints do is pray to God with us and for us.
 
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Yeni76 said:
I am home! Part of the reason I left the catholic church…all that praying to saints had to go …pray to Jesus and him alone! Only He answers prayers, not Mary, Saint Jude, or whomever else you pray to! Obviously, I came to the wrong site!
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I would say i will pray for you but i dont want to be offensive!

Peace!!!
 
I have to say that you do not seem to be very aware of what either the Catholic Church or Methodist ecclesial communities do. Catholics do pray to Our Lady and the saints. We pray only to God but do ask Our Lady and the saints, who are in heaven, to intercede for us. I would be very, very surprised to find that any of the many Methodist ecclesial communities have confirmation. Your confirmation is valid because you received a valid sacrament in the true Church of Christ.
 
TomH1 said:
I have to say that you do not seem to be very aware of what either the Catholic Church or Methodist ecclesial communities do. Catholics do pray to Our Lady and the saints. We pray only to God but do ask Our Lady and the saints, who are in heaven, to intercede for us. I would be very, very surprised to find that any of the many Methodist ecclesial communities have confirmation. Your confirmation is valid because you received a valid sacrament in the true Church of Christ.
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The Methodists do have something they call Confirmation. They don’t view it as a sacrament, of course.
 
Yeni76 said:
I left the catholic church…all that praying to saints had to go …pray to Jesus and him alone! Only He answers prayers, not Mary, Saint Jude, or whomever else you pray to!
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If you somehow have the idea that Catholics believe that saints actually answer prayers, your religious instruction was horrifically inadequate, with culpability on the part of those that taught you!

“Prayer” to saints is in the same use of the word as, “I pray thee” issued to another living person. It is a request that the saint pray on behalf of the beseecher, and not, in any way, shape, or form, a request for action by the saint.

hawk
 
My understanding is that yes your Catholic confirmation is seen as valid by the UMC (if that is your Methodist branch). They do offer “reception” similar to what most Anglican churches do if you are joining as a confirmed Catholic (which I found personally very fulfilling when I undertook it). But reception is not one of the lesser sacraments like confirmation is viewed as by the UMC and most Methodist and Anglican churches.
 
I knew for certain they would not class it as a sacrament. Do they even have sacrament? I know they do not consider their ministers to be any different from anyone else. They do not have a group they class as ordained.

I am very surprised to learn they have confirmation. I understood their preference regarding baptism was for people to choose baptism in adulthood. Therefore, I had assumed they would see something like confirmation as unnecessary plus never, ever heard of it.
 
I was baptized as an infant in the United Methodist Church; as far as I know, my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins likewise had all been baptized in infancy in Methodist churches. I was baptized by an ordained UMC minister. I have their Book of Worship, published by the United Methodist Publishing House in 1965 in front of me right now: it contains ceremonies for the sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion, for Confirmation and Reception into the Church, for the ordination of deacons and elders, and for the consecration of bishops. Of course, their understanding of these sacraments and orders is not Catholic, but they certainly have them.
 
I hear a lot about the United Methodist Church on this forum and believe it is a US Methodist church. I do not think we have the United Methodist Church here in the UK. I do know that because I have not heard of infant baptism it does not happen.

One problem, I am sure you will appreciate, is there is no one Methodist church so generalising is obviously difficult.

You use the phrase “for the sacrament of …”. Do Methodists call these sacraments, setting aside our different understanding of that term?

This is also the first time that I have heard of Methodists having bishops.

Does the United Methodist Church consider deacons, elders and bishops to be in some way different from other members of the church?

I am aware of a controversy that happened here in England. The General Synod (the governing body) of the Church of England wanted to recognise Methodist ministers as being on an equal footing with Church of England priests. That upset a lot of Anglicans because the Church of England holds a view of its clergy similar to the Catholic one and Methodists (at least here in the UK) do not. Anglicans were arguing that that decision would effectively mean the Church of England agreed with Pope Leo XIII’s decision about Anglican orders in Apostolicae Curae that they were “absolutely null and utterly void”.
 
The UMC was formed by the joining together of (at least) two other denominations in the USA, but it is actually a worldwide denomination with a significant percentage of members in Africa. (I don’t know the details.) Yes, they call Baptism and Holy Communion “Sacraments”, but not Confirmation. As far as I know, their understanding of Baptism is in accord with the Catholic understanding, but their idea of Holy Communion is not. They do not profess Apostolic Succession for their bishops, but they do distinguish between clergy and laity. But they also license laity as preachers, who are typically called “lay preachers”: they would not ordinarily administer the sacraments, though. (At least, I don’t think so.) But, as you said, there are many different kinds of Methodists. There is, for instance, in the USA an African Methodist Episcopal denomination, having historically a predominately black membership, which is usually referred to simply as AME.
 
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Methodists consider Communion and Baptism as Sacraments. I was baptized Methodist as an infant.

Think of Methodism as really evangelical, middle-of-the-road Anglicanism.
 
I really didn’t learn a lot about Methodism when I was one haha ! I don’t know about confirmation but you can have infant baptisms - I was an adult (well, teen) baptism. Have some lovely but also unpleasant memories about it 😦
 
TomH1 said:
I hear a lot about the United Methodist Church on this forum and believe it is a US Methodist church.
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The United Methodist Church is the historical branch of Wesleyan Methodism that began in the US, but it has spread to other countries through missionary work and is now an international church. However, it is not in the UK.

The UK branch of historical Methodism is the Methodist Church of Great Britain. There are some differences between UK and US Methodism on church government (the UK does not have bishops, but the US does, I’ll explain below), but their beliefs are basically the same.
TomH1 said:
One problem, I am sure you will appreciate, is there is no one Methodist church so generalising is obviously difficult.
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There are different national branches of Methodism, but the beliefs of historical Methodism all come out of John Wesley’s teachings, so there isn’t as much historical diversity as you claim.
TomH1 said:
You use the phrase “for the sacrament of …”. Do Methodists call these sacraments, setting aside our different understanding of that term?
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Yes, baptism and the Eucharist are sacraments in the Methodist Church. Confirmation is not a sacrament, but Methodists do have it.
 
TomH1 said:
This is also the first time that I have heard of Methodists having bishops.
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Not in the UK. John Wesley was an Anglican priest, and so Methodism originally grew up as an evangelical revival within the Church of England. Wesley initially did not ordain anyone to the Methodist ministry. He relied on “lay preachers” who could preach, but they could not administer sacraments. For that, Methodists were supposed to go to their Church of England parishes. Later, Methodism in Britain developed into a separate church.

While Wesley was alive, the US Revolution happened, and many Anglican parishes in the US were left without priests. As a pastoral response to this crisis, Wesley took it upon himself to ordain Methodist presybters or elders for America. He claimed this right because it was his understanding that presbyters (priests) and bishops were essentially one and the same order of ministry. Therefore, if a bishop can ordain, so can a priest. Wesley was a priest, so he began ordaining other priests for America.

One of the ministers he sent to America was Thomas Coke, who was already a Anglican priest. Wesley made him the “superintendent” of all the ministers in America. Once Coke got to America, the Methodists held a conference and organized a separate church. They also changed the name of the “superintendent” to “bishop”.

Therefore, in the US Methodist church, they have bishops, but these bishops lack apostolic succession in the sense that Catholics would understand.
TomH1 said:
Does the United Methodist Church consider deacons, elders and bishops to be in some way different from other members of the church?
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Bishops are simply elders with greater leadership responsibilities. Elders can administer sacraments and have a teaching/preaching role. In the US at least, deacons can teach/preach but can’t administer sacraments unless given special permission by the bishop.
 
TomH1 said:
I am aware of a controversy that happened here in England. The General Synod (the governing body) of the Church of England wanted to recognise Methodist ministers as being on an equal footing with Church of England priests. That upset a lot of Anglicans because the Church of England holds a view of its clergy similar to the Catholic one and Methodists (at least here in the UK) do not. Anglicans were arguing that that decision would effectively mean the Church of England agreed with Pope Leo XIII’s decision about Anglican orders in Apostolicae Curae that they were “absolutely null and utterly void”.
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The UK Methodists and the Church of England have been in discussions about a reunion of their churches for a while now. The problem, as you point out, is for their to be a reunion the Methodist elders will have to be “re-ordained” by bishops in apostolic succession (at least as Anglicans understand it).

This is also true of the United Methodists and the US Episcopal Church (the Anglican church in America). They have been discussing entering into “full communion”, but the Methodist bishops and clergy would have to be “re-ordained” or at least all future ordinations would have to include bishops in historical succession.
 
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To Yeni76. I’d recommend that you check with your pastor to be sure. In short, Catholics are respected and considered fellow Christians. Just keep in mind that it takes much less time to become a Methodist than it does to become a Catholic.

For example, my adult son was non-denom but decided to become Methodist and join my congregation after attending for a year and joining an adult Sunday School class. The whole process took less than a month. He met with one of the pastors in the church office for a couple of hours to gauge where he was at in his spiritual journey and his motivation for joining. He then attended a class on Methodist beliefs on a Friday night/Saturday setting the following week.

A couple of Sundays later he joined the church on Palm Sunday. When he joined, his adult Sunday School class came up and stood by him in solidarity, which was nice to witness because he is kind of shy and was fearful of standing in front of our large congregation by himself while being introduced.
 
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