Moving Confirmation to go with first Communion

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Wow. If anything it should perhaps be done later. Even done in 7th grade, it seems most have hardly any knowledge of the Catholic faith. I wouldn’t expect one younger to be any better in this sense.
 
A couple that presents for the baptism of their child is refused if, in the judgment of the priest, the child will not be supported in the faith. Think about that. The Church already makes these wise prudential judgments.

And the fact is, the vast majority of parents do not in fact raise the child in the faith. The statistics may vary, but we are talking maybe 25% of these parents will practice the faith with their children.
But they present for the sacraments anyway, with false pretenses, and the children go on to leave the Church within 10 or so years.
So, the grace of baptism is not magic, nor is the grace of confirmation. Grace asks for a response, and the Church can encourage that response by instituting disciplines that do not allow the sacraments to be trivialized to this degree.
 
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Wouldn’t count on it. In my Catholic diocese growing up they changed the grade year that confirmation occurred from 8th to 7th the year I went from 7th to 8th. They did not include 8th graders in the confirmation classes to bridge the gap year. I ended up in a “remedial” confirmation class a few years later in high school at my parents request.
 
My father-in-law was confirmed when he received 1st Communion in Italy, back when he was five years old.

Today, we use Confirmation to keep kids in CCD, which is why it keeps moving up in age.

Our parish Confirms seniors in High-School.

I was confirmed in the 7th grade.

Jim
 
I am sure your parish can answer your concerns. It’s a wonderful thing IMO. It is a return to the proper order and likely signals a return to the proper understanding of confirmation. Most importantly, the kids will have the grace of the sacrament available to them as they grow up!!!
 
Padres1969 said:
Wouldn’t count on it. In my Catholic diocese growing up they changed the grade year that confirmation occurred from 8th to 7th the year I went from 7th to 8th. They did not include 8th graders in the confirmation classes to bridge the gap year. I ended up in a “remedial” confirmation class a few years later in high school at my parents request.
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Not all parishes are the same. The year we went from Confirmation around the age of 12 to Confirmation before First Communion our Confirmation group included everyone older than 6 who had not been confirmed yet. The older group underwent a different preparation and IIRC, the Bishop imposed Confirmation at both the Saturday evening and Sunday morning Masses. We split the groups alphabetically by last name.
 
That is the complete reason for moving it to an older and older age. It is a very stupid thing to do. It does not work and it denies our children the grace of the sacrament.
 
If it’s done for the reason as I stated, keeping kids in CCD, it’s wrong.

However, I accept the concept that an infant is Baptised out of the faith of the parents and godparents.

Confirmation should be from the faith of the now adult child alone.

Jim
 
Churchman25 said:
One thing that scares me is what about those kids that have received, first Communion in second grade a couple of years ago but have not received confirmation yet. How will they be confirmed when my local church has switched over to confirming kids right around the age of reason
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Don’t worry about it, the church keeps records and know who has been confirmed and who hasn’t been. No one has been forgotten on this. In the 19th Century it was my understanding that kids got confirmation at 7, but didn’t get communion until later.

I think they switched it so Catholic kids got confirmed at the same time that their Jewish neighbors were getting bar mitzvah’ed.
 
JimR-OCDS said:
Confirmation should be from the faith of the now adult child alone.
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Adult or child? If by adult you mean 18 years (or even 16) or older, it reflects a poor understanding of the sacrament IMO. The proper age specified by Canon law is the age of reason, this can be changed by a national Bishops conference, which shows that the Church does not see it as a matter of adulthood.
 
Adult-child = the maturity of the individual with regards to their faith and commitment to following Jesus Christ.

Jim
 
Confirmation is not intended to be a point where the “confirmee” makes his own profession of faith after being baptized as an infant. It’s simply a strenghtening of the gifts of the Holy Spirit receieved at Baptism. There’s no theological reason to put it off. The’re not “confirming” (the English definition) their faith. The name of the sacrament comes from the Latin word “to strengthen.” It’s more practical in some cases, maybe.

Of course any adult converting to the faith must have his own faith in order to receive both baptism and confirmation.
 
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Wesrock said:
Confirmation is not intended to be a point where the “confirmee” makes his own profession of faith after being baptized as an infant. It’s simply a strenghtening of the gifts of the Holy Spirit receieved at Baptism. There’s no theological reason to put it off. It’s more practical in some cases, maybe.

Of course any adult converting to the faith must have his own faith in order to receive both baptism and confirmation.
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…which points out that grace is not the mere topic of theological ruminations, it is personal and real. The whole Christian life is personal (and no, not personal in an individualistic way, but personal in the Christian sense),
it is a personal response to the invitation of God’s personal offer of grace, through a relationship with Jesus Christ.
And that personal response or even the inclination to respond is absent to a large decree. The Church’s mission is to bring Christ to all people, and that is more than getting the sacraments.

While confirmation is not a reward, it is also not something trivial to be given to the radically indifferent.
 
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Padres1969 said:
Wouldn’t count on it. In my Catholic diocese growing up they changed the grade year that confirmation occurred from 8th to 7th the year I went from 7th to 8th. They did not include 8th graders in the confirmation classes to bridge the gap year. I ended up in a “remedial” confirmation class a few years later in high school at my parents request.
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While I believe this happend, I fail to understand what the DRE was thinking!?!?

That year, both 7th 8th graders should have been in the Confirmation classes together. Not doing that would have been pure stupidity
 
goout said:
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Wesrock:
Confirmation is not intended to be a point where the “confirmee” makes his own profession of faith after being baptized as an infant. It’s simply a strenghtening of the gifts of the Holy Spirit receieved at Baptism. There’s no theological reason to put it off. It’s more practical in some cases, maybe.

Of course any adult converting to the faith must have his own faith in order to receive both baptism and confirmation.
Click to expand...
…which points out that grace is not the mere topic of theological ruminations, it is personal and real. The whole Christian life is personal (and no, not personal in an individualistic way, but personal in the Christian sense),
it is a personal response to the invitation of God’s personal offer of grace, through a relationship with Jesus Christ.
And that personal response or even the inclination to respond is absent to a large decree. The Church’s mission is to bring Christ to all people, and that is more than getting the sacraments.

While confirmation is not a reward, it is also not something trivial to be given to the radically indifferent.
Click to expand...
I agree there should be a reasonable expectation that the receiver of the sacrament will practice/be brought up in the faith. It is not a magical pill. But we should not deny that the sacrament confers real graces which, given a faithful disposition, can bear fruit.

There may be practical and prudential arguments for withholding the sacrament until a later age, but it’s not a theological argument. Age is different than whether there’s a reasonable expectation the faith will be practiced.
 
The Sacrament of initiation, Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Communion, are sacraments of faith.

Originally, it was the individual’s commitment to faith that was warranted.

However, as the sacrament of Baptism was understood to remove original sin, entire households were Baptised, including infants.

However, it is the faith of the parents and the godparents, who have an infant Baptised.

It’s understood that Confirmation is also given as a third part of Christian initiation, but the Church chose to hold it until the child reached the age of reason, so they would understand what they were committing to.

Jim
 
Wesrock said:
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goout:
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Wesrock:
Confirmation is not intended to be a point where the “confirmee” makes his own profession of faith after being baptized as an infant. It’s simply a strenghtening of the gifts of the Holy Spirit receieved at Baptism. There’s no theological reason to put it off. It’s more practical in some cases, maybe.

Of course any adult converting to the faith must have his own faith in order to receive both baptism and confirmation.
Click to expand...
…which points out that grace is not the mere topic of theological ruminations, it is personal and real. The whole Christian life is personal (and no, not personal in an individualistic way, but personal in the Christian sense),
it is a personal response to the invitation of God’s personal offer of grace, through a relationship with Jesus Christ.
And that personal response or even the inclination to respond is absent to a large decree. The Church’s mission is to bring Christ to all people, and that is more than getting the sacraments.

While confirmation is not a reward, it is also not something trivial to be given to the radically indifferent.
Click to expand...
I agree there should be a reasonable expectation that the receiver of the sacrament will practice/be brought up in the faith. It is not a magical pill. But we should not deny that the sacrament confers real graces which, given a faithful disposition, can bear fruit.

There may be practical and prudential arguments for withholding the sacrament until a later age, but it’s not a theological argument. Age is different than whether there’s a reasonable expectation the faith will be practiced.
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Yes it is true that age is not the intrinsic factor.

In all of this, the Church already employs this judgment. We have had children refused baptism here, multiple cases. In one case the parents weren’t in our school, and the pastor didn’t think the parents were committed to the faith. No baptism.
We had a mother last year in RCIA who badly desired baptism for her child and the parish would not do it due to some very complicated domestic issues.

She was passionate about her faith, and at the same time many others are radically indifferent to sacramental graces and receive sacraments from the parish reflexively. And their lives demonstrate that no commitment to the faith ever existed.
It’s almost a membership benefit for those attending our private, er Catholic, school. The Church, generally speaking, could give more thought to this process.
 
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Not always. Withholding Confirmation until later is actually the more recent development, which seems to have started because the Bishop could not make the rounds to all the parishes quickly enough. Giving all three sacraments in infancy if there were believing parents is the more ancient norm and still practiced in the Eastern rites. And First Communion traditionally comes after Confirmation.

This is not to say the Church’s prudential judgment in our era and regions is incorrect.
 
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It has a lot to do with the individual understanding and making a free commitment to follow Jesus Christ,

Orthodox Baptise, Confirma and receive Holy Communion as infants.

They receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but the gifts are not part of the experience of faith if the individual doesn’t have faith ever in thier lives.

Jim
 
If there’s one thing we aren’t saved by it’s our own knowledge. That argument holds no water for me. There are plenty of people who frankly don’t have the mental capacity to ever meet a threshold of knowledge that most 7th graders could. Some people never learn. Some people take the whole faith completely on faith despite being intelligent.

What, are you gonna start handing out exams to be confirmed? That right there is why this is a dangerous conception of the sacrament. The HS confirms us. Not the other way around.
 
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