What would happen if I didn’t do my service hours for confirmation?

[Matt26]

I just found out I’ve been denied my confirmation and now I feel very guilty for not taking responsibility for my service hours. Well, thanks everyone for giving me some ideas and tips. I am planning to still do my hours this Saturday and all of next week.

 

[CilladeRoma]

Denied or delayed?
If you get your hours done, can you be Confirmed with another parish group at a later date?

In my diocese we have Confirmations from October through May. Ideally, you are Confirmed with your parish, but we always have kids who have conflicts of one sort or another, and they go to a Mass that works for them.

 

[edward_george1]

In a strict technical and canonical sense, you can’t be denied confirmation for failing to complete your service hours. Only if you truly aren’t prepared for it, and service hours aren’t necessarily an indicator one way or the other. You should probably appeal to your pastor or your Diocese about this.

@acanonlawyer might have some more insight.

-Fr ACEGC

 

[Matt26]

It was denied and can I get confirmed next year in the same diocese? Or is that something I ask them?

 

[edward_george1]

If you are prepared for it now, there shouldn’t be anything preventing you from receiving it this year in your Diocese. While the parish can ask you to do those service hours, you can’t actually be denied the sacrament for failing to complete them, provided you are actually ready for it.

-Fr ACEGC

 

[Horton]

Which requirement? Service hours? I have no idea when YM’s got lazy and just told kids to do hours. The intent is to teach the youth about service to the Church, that as a member of the Church we are all called to serve in some manner. It’s a teaching method, or it should be, rather than a requirement.

But then we have those here who feel sacrament prep isn’t necessary as confirmation is a gift from God, just give it to the kids without teaching them anything.

I am the DYM in my parish and take my role very seriously. Over the years I have changed the way all ministry is delivered to all the youth including confirmation prep. It’s not about learning a set of facts and being prepared to answer the priest’s questions. I want them to develop and increase their relationship with our Lord, learning how to love the Mass, learning how to pray. We do frequent adoration, teaching them "O Salutaris Hostia” and
“Tantum Ergo Sacramentum”, & the proper way to do adoration. We do use a prepared program but I’ve made changes to it to make it much less classroom and more dialog. Their text book is the bible and an inexpensive comp notebook.

I’ve never heard of a young person being denied the sacrament because service hours were not done. I find it hard to believe a priest would allow that as they are the ones who have the final say.

,

 

[acanonlawyer]

It was denied

By whom?

Dan

 

[Matt26]

By the father himself.

 

[Horton]

Did he deny or delay your confirmation? What reason did the priest give?

 

[tafan2]

Father, I truly appreciate your thoughts on this. Unfortunately for the OP, the fact that he didn’t do his service hours will likely be ipsi facto evidence of him not being prepared for the sacrament. Been there, done that. That’s the way confirmation works in many areas of this country these days. I once told a DRE that kids did not have to earn the sacrament, and she looked at me as if I was crazy.
As a priest friend once told me: confirmation is a sacrament in need of theology.

 

[adgloriam]

Father, I truly appreciate your thoughts on this. Unfortunately for the OP, the fact that he didn’t do his service hours will likely be ipsi facto evidence of him not being prepared for the sacrament. Been there, done that. That’s the way confirmation works in many areas of this country these days. I once told a DRE that kids did not have to earn the sacrament, and she looked at me as if I was crazy.
As a priest friend once told me: confirmation is a sacrament in need of theology.

I was denied Confirmation 3 times with no other reason than the parish priest “testing my resolve”. But I’m an adult and there’s no such thing as RCIA here. So rule of thumb is creating some difficulty just to see if the proponent wants it enough to ask again.

(Eventually the priest told me over a drink I could get it anytime I wanted and that he thought I was more than prepared and certainly better than most. That I just needed to know the dates of Confirmation mass and warn him a couple of weeks ahead.)

 

[Horton]

As a priest friend once told me: confirmation is a sacrament in need of theology.

Which is exactly many of us in the business of youth ministry, including confirmation prep are always looking for a better approach. Reading and researching what the latest thinking on doing a better job of increasing the kid’s faith.

 

[Horton]

Confirmation prep seems to be a series of checklists

I read most of the current experts in youth ministry, including confirmation, and none of them call for a checklist.

In my program there are two items the youth must do, choose a saint and write a letter to the Bishop requesting confirmation. Both of these are required by our diocese. It is my job to ensure the kids get these things done by giving them the opportunities to do them.

The teens however, wanted to keep moving along, just like at school, to get ahead.

This is exactly why I am working very hard to make confirmation prep not a “classroom”. I want less “teaching” and more experiential learning. I limit classroom time to make this happen. My biggest hurdle to this is many of my catechists are school teachers and want to lecture rather than talk with kids. In small group time they want to do all the talking rather than letting the kids talk to each other.

With all this I love my work, love seeing these kids from year to year, watching them grow in their faith, watching them serving the parish in whatever manner. Really, that is the goal, making disciples.

 

[CTBcin]

Oh how I hate how parishes handle confirmations these days. First of all, it is administered way too late in life. It is treated as an rite of passage to adulthood. Then they add on all of these requirements, eg service hours, and are effectively teaching the kids that sacraments have to be earned.
I have taught middle schoolers confirmation prep classes under these systems, and that is exactly how it goes: do this, do that, do this or we won’t confirm you. Then its up to the teacher to try to convince the kids that the sacraments are a free gift from God.

You hit the nail on the head. Delaying confirmation has made it viewed as a rite of passage- I’ve even heard it directly compared to a Bar Mitzvah. Putting confirmation after religious Ed is almost like turning it into Catholic graduation. A cynical priest that I know calls it “the Rite of Exit.”

The sacraments of initiation ought to be restored to their proper order- and indeed they are in some dioceses. 14 is much too old. I absolutely don’t want to see confirmation being tied to service projects or even religious Ed. There’s plenty of time for that in midddle/high school.

Confirmation is one instance where I am much more fond of how the Eastern Churches administer it.

 

[CTBcin]

God bless your work!

 

[edward_george1]

I didn’t really give my thoughts. I was merely stating what Canon Law says. While I agree that there’s a high degree of, let us say, comorbidity between failing to complete program requirements like service hours and not being prepared for confirmation, this is not really a necessary connection. In other words, not doing service hours is more a sign that one is disengaged, which might also lead one to not be prepared in the other ways. I don’t think that not doing service hours is by itself sufficient to say that someone is ipso facto unprepared for confirmation. It would strike me rather as a symptom of a larger problem, if other factors were present, namely poor class attendance, poor Mass attendance, and, most importantly, a lack of the requisite understanding for receiving the sacrament.

All that said, I think we would be better off confirming children before their First Communion, i.e. to go to “restored order.” We do this for adult converts, we confirm infants in danger of death, all of the Church’s liturgical rites make reference to the sacraments being conferred in this order (the rite of Baptism actually speaks of them in that order, Confirmation and then Communion). Confirmation isn’t about giving meaningful religious experiences to middle and high schoolers in hopes that we will hook them on the way out the door and they will still go to Church into adulthood. If we think it is that, we have failed marvelously. Confirmation is first and foremost about giving the faithful the gifts of the Holy Spirit so that they will be equipped with the capacity to live faithfully and virtuously. If we really believe the sacraments do something, then we shouldn’t hesitate to confirm at a younger age, so that those gifts will be given and the child is put on a far better trajectory far earlier. I realize it’s not a magic bullet and there are never any guarantees; the gifts must be utilized. But it strikes me as a better way of doing it.

-Fr ACEGC

 

[TheLittleLady]

Having been part of Confirmation prep for more years than I can recall off the top of my head, I pray for the day that the Church requires restored order of the Sacraments in every Diocese on earth.

 

[tafan2]

I agree with you completely Fr. Our parish, at one point and for the CCD kids, moved confirmation to the second grade and restored the order. This went on for about 3 or 4 years. It was not done for the kids in the parish school because the diocesan school superindendent would not allow it. I got involved in the discussions, pushing for the school to do likewise. I was a lone wolf, all the other parents had grown accustomed to it being part of the 8th grade graduation stuff towards the end of the year. The pastor, a friend of mine, supported it, but could not get the Bishop to override the superindentent. There eventually were three or four parishes in the diocese that did the same. Then a new Bishop was appointed and he wanted to standardize it and formed a committee of pastors and DREs. My pastor was on the committee. It was a lost cause, and every parish had to go back to doing it in the eigth grade. He told me that he doubted if anyone on the committee believed in the efficacy of the sacrament. Their reasons for keeping it in the 8th grade were a) we need it to force kids back to faith formation classes in middle school and b) too many parents see it as a big family event for their 8th graders. Hence the comment “it is a sacrament in need of theology”.

 

[tafan2]

I cannot say I was involved for years. 25 years ago I taught middle schoolers confirmation prep classes for 4 or 5 years, and then again about 5 years ago for the years. It does not work at all. But most importantly we are denying kids the gifts of the Holy Spirit, during their formative years, in a time when they need it more than ever. It is a travesty IMO.

 

[edward_george1]

Hence the comment “it is a sacrament in need of theology”.

I think it has a theology, quite a vibrant and robust one. It’s Pneumatology. Either we believe in the Holy Spirit, or we don’t; and either we believe that the Holy Spirit is given to us in Confirmation, or we don’t. It’s that simple.

The problem is not a lack of theology, it’s that those in charge in certain corners don’t really care what the theology is.