Article recently published in the Magazine of Our Lady Star of The Sea Parish, Howick.  Written by the Parish Priest Fr Pat Brady.  (Used with permission on this website).


Why Confirm Children before their First Communion?

This is by far the most common question parents ask about the sacrament of Confirmation. The easy answer is: it’s the policy in Auckland diocese. The full answer is more complicated.

It involves the history of Confirmation, going back further than we can remember. It involves recognising Confirmation as one of the three sacraments of Initiation. Baptism is not the only sacrament of initiation. Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist together form the gateway through which people enter into full participation in Catholic life.

Let me share my own experience and how I came to support the Auckland policy of completing the initiation of baptized Catholics, 7 years and over, with the sacraments of Confirmation and Eucharist.

My Experience

a) Some Background

Although I had been confirmed back in the 50s as an 8 year old, during the 70s I got used to the idea that teenage Confirmation allows greater expression of faith commitment. I just presumed that this was the new approach to Confirmation following the 2^nd Vatican Council (1962-65). Then in 1984, while studying liturgy in the USA, I learned the full history of the Church’s initiation of new members. I learned how different the early Church’s practices were from our own, and how even now Catholics in many parts of the world do things very differently from us.

I learned the crucial and close relationship between Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist, the three sacraments at the heart of Christian initiation. I discovered the changes in Church practice from the early centuries through to the practice of my childhood in the 50s, when Confirmation followed First Holy Communion, usually about 2-3 years later. But then I also learned what Vatican II had to say:

“The rite of Confirmation is to be revised also so that the intimate connection of this sacrament with the whole of Christian initiation may be shown more clearly.”

By this stage I knew the history. I knew how closely linked the sacrament of Confirmation had been with Baptism and Eucharist, and how Confirmation really belonged before Eucharist. I had also experienced Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist, in that order, at St Patrick’s Cathedral in the early 80s, when we initiated adults through the “Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults” (RCIA).

And so it all made sense that we should return Confirmation to its place before Eucharist, and allow First Holy Communion to be the climax of our entry into full participation in the life of the Church.

In the late 80s and early 90s this way of seeing Confirmation gradually spread in Auckland diocese. It was a slow process, but the more people came to understand the history, the relationship between the three sacraments, and the supreme importance of Eucharist, the more people realised the reason for changing the order.

b) Difficulties

We were also facing difficulties with the 70s- 80s practice of teenage Confirmation:

• because the practice of teenage Confirmation was based so strongly on the idea of the sacrament as an expression of more mature faith commitment, many teenagers who did not feel ready for that kind of commitment decided it was more honest not to be confirmed;
• people had come to presume that a deeper level of faith and knowledge was required for Confirmation than was required for Eucharist; there was something odd about a situation where young people would readily receive the Eucharist, the fullest expression of Church membership and Catholic faith, and yet would believe their faith wasn’t strong enough for them to be confirmed;
• the teen years were not a suitable period for young Catholics to be asked to make a serious commitment of faith, given the uncertainties of adolescence and strong peer pressure;
• the age for Confirmation was steadily rising, from about 12 to 14 to 16 and even older; people were feeling they needed more time to make a mature decision;
• at the same time we were beginning to implement the Church’s new rites of initiating not only adults but also children aged 7 and over who had not been baptized; this meant that an unbaptized child of 8 had to be baptized, confirmed and admitted to Eucharist all in the same ceremony while older children, even in the same parish, who had been baptized as babies, were being told: sorry, you can’t be confirmed until you’re 14.

As well as difficulties with teenage Confirmation, there were difficulties with the new proposals. People saw teenage Confirmation as an important time for teenagers to explore and deepen their faith. They saw earlier Confirmation as a retrograde step, removing a way to keep young people in the Church.

While this view had merit, it was also seen that once the Confirmation programme was over, many newly confirmed dropped away. And so, instead of being one of the sacraments of entry into the Church, Confirmation was sometimes called the “sacrament of exit” from the Church. The problem of the drop off of young Catholics from Church life still must be addressed, but advocates of earlier Confirmation would say: don’t rely on teenage Confirmation as the answer to this problem. Experience shows it’s not that easy.

c) The Auckland Diocesan Policy

In June 1994 Bishop Denis Browne announced that in Auckland the order of the sacraments of initiation would be restored to Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist. By this time dioceses in several countries had already taken this step. The new diocesan policy was published in 1995 and implemented in 1996. Since then most New Zealand dioceses have followed suit. In a recent survey 85% of parishes in Auckland diocese now adhere to the diocesan policy.

The majority of parishes that celebrate Confirmation before Eucharist do so in the same Mass, as we do in Howick. Others separate the two sacraments by as little as a day, or as much as several months.

d) Recent Reflections

It is encouraging to read the words of Pope Benedict in his February 2007 document following the Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist:

“If the Eucharist is truly the source and summit of the Church’s life and mission, it follows that the process of Christian initiation must constantly be directed to the reception of this sacrament. As the Synod Fathers said, we need to ask ourselves whether in our Christian communities the close link between Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist is sufficiently recognised.......Our pastoral practice should reflect a more unitary understanding of the process of Christian initiation........ The Holy Eucharist, then, brings Christian initiation to completion and represents the centre and goal of all sacramental life........Attention needs to be paid to the order of the sacraments of initiation.....It needs to be seen which practice better enables the faithful to put the sacrament of the Eucharist at the centre, as the goal of the whole process of initiation.

It is good to know that, despite the challenges, we seem to be on the right track.

A Brief History of Confirmation

New Testament and early Church writings say little about how new Christians were initiated. We know that water baptism was involved, and the laying on of hands. But how these and other rituals, eg anointing with oil, actually fitted together we can’t say.

The first real evidence comes from the early 3rd century when writers like Tertullian and Cyprian show that, after baptism, new Christians received anointing with oil and the laying on of hands.

This applied to babies as well as adults, as did the reception of Communion as the completion of Initiation. The normal times for these rites were Easter and Pentecost.

In the 4th century, when Christians were no longer under threat of persecution, things started to change, at least in the west.

In countries at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea the rites of initiation remained the same, with Confirmation following Baptism and leading into Eucharist. This order remains, even for babies, in those parts of the Catholic Church which have continued this eastern tradition.

In western countries, however, things changed as the influence of Roman practices spread. Without the threat of persecution Christianity flourished; communities grew larger, and bishops had less contact with parishes, especially in countries with wide-spread dioceses.

Probably to ensure they had at least some involvement in the initiation of new members, bishops in the west began to reserve for themselves the rite of Confirmation.

New Christians, including babies, continued to be baptized and given Eucharist by the priest, usually at Easter, but Confirmation was postponed until the Bishop visited. To begin with, bishops tried to visit their parishes at least annually, but as time went by new Christians had longer to wait to be confirmed, even up to seven years.

Without the kinds of historical records that we take for granted, the Church in the Middle Ages lost the sense of connection Confirmation had with Baptism and Eucharist.

Confirmation came to be understood as a separate sacrament, offering the spiritual strength that Christians need to be soldiers of Christ. Even now people still associate these ideas with Confirmation.

The understanding of Confirmation as a sacrament of strengthening became so wide-spread that some dioceses where infants were still being confirmed changed the age to seven, an age people thought was more suited to the meaning of the sacrament.

The 9th and 10th centuries saw much controversy about the Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. This resulted in a greater concern for reverence for the Eucharist, which led to not only fewer people receiving Communion but also fewer people willing to give Communion to infants. The Council of Trent (1545-63) finally abolished altogether in the west the practice of infant Communion. This resulted in a minimum age of seven for both Communion and Confirmation. On the subject of Confirmation, however, Trent said very little.

After Trent, although the Church was still unaware of the history of Confirmation as a sacrament of initiation, it was decided to celebrate Confirmation before Eucharist, using each sacrament as a goal of successive stages of a revamped religious education programme.. Confirmation was to be received about 9 years of age, with Eucharist around 12-14.

This pattern stayed in place until 1910 when Pope Pius X issued a decree reducing the age for Eucharist to “about the seventh year, more or less” so that children could benefit from the grace of the Eucharist. This change, good in itself, resulted in Confirmation once again being celebrated after Eucharist. This was inevitable since even in the early 20th century Church leadership had not yet come to appreciate the role of Confirmation in the Church’s tradition of initiation.

This was finally addressed at the 2^nd Vatican Council, which decreed that “the rite of Confirmation is to be revised also so that the intimate connection of this sacrament with the whole of Christian initiation may be shown more clearly. Recent decisions in Auckland and elsewhere show that steps are being taken to fulfil this goal.