Confirmation Confusion

The Archdiocese of Baltimore recently announced that children there can now be confirmed at age nine. The change ostensibly is intended to deepen their faith and better engage their parents in their religious formation.

Baltimore’s decision follows a growing trend among American dioceses to lower the average age of Confirmation, which in some places has creeped into the early-to-middle teens. It is a good change but one likely both to cause confusion and have its own perils. Let me explain.

The confusion is likely to come from how we have explained Confirmation, stemming in part from the history of Confirmation in the Roman Rite. In the East, Baptism, Confirmation, and First Communion all occur together in infancy. The unity of the sacraments of initiation is owed in part to the non-collapse of the Eastern Roman Empire. Even though Confirmation was eventually delegated to priests, bishops in the East were in more direct contact with their people than in the West, which succumbed to chaos after the fall of Rome.  

In the West, bishops remained the ordinary minister of the sacrament, which meant opportunities to confer it were less frequent. It also tended to foster an independent sacramental theology—confirmand as “soldier of Christ”—that tended to tally with the later age of the recipient.

But we should not forget that, until the early 20th century, Confirmation normally preceded First Communion. It was only after Pope St. Pius X sought to encourage earlier and frequent reception of the Eucharist that First Communion came earlier, pushing Confirmation past it into the anomalous situation of a sacrament of initiation that followed “the source and summit of the Christian life.”  But we should not forget that, until the early 20th century, Confirmation normally preceded First Communion. Tweet This

Returning Confirmation, then, to an earlier age makes sense (even if First Communion and Confirmation remain inverted). It should also remind us of the limits of analogies in theology: the grace of assuming Christian responsibility for one’s faith does not necessarily presuppose some chronological age. In fact, since grace disposes us toward the things of God, Confirmation—whenever it occurs—fosters that responsibility.

Where I think the greatest confusion may lie, however, stems from the images we have promoted by pushing the age for Confirmation forward. In defense of that delay, it’s often been said that Confirmation is a time the young person “takes personal responsibility” for his faith. He “confirms” his commitment to Christ and the Church.

Well, no. Especially if we couple that idea with the false notion of freedom, prevalent in America, that thinks of liberty as some place of neutrality between good and evil.

Yes, by receiving Confirmation (and every time one receives any sacrament) one “confirms” one’s commitment to Christ and the Church. But it does not follow from that that the decision to “confirm” that commitment or not is equally valid or legitimate. Failing to “confirm” that commitment does not “unbaptize” you. It does not release you from your Christian commitments. It is not a decision about which God is “good” either way.

I mention this because there is still thinking in some quarters that, at a certain moment, religious upbringing handed off to that child-now-adult becomes discretionary or optional. Its extreme form finds expression in the nonsense that “we don’t want to baptize our child so that he can pick when he grows up.”  

The fact that some people still entertain such thoughts suggests ongoing problems in the spiritual formation of our people, especially with regard to the notion of “freedom.” Freedom does not leave us neutral to “choose” good or evil; freedom exists so that the good we ought to choose becomes ours.  

Happily, even with the idea that young people “confirm” their membership in the Church by receiving Confirmation, most still do so under parental influence. The question is then whether that decision is as much their conscious embrace of their faith as much as perhaps a path of “least resistance” to parental expectations.

Why do I ask this? Because it is no big secret that, far from being a sacrament of initiation, Confirmation often becomes the de facto sacrament of exodus. Having “checked that sacramental box,” how many young people end their formal religious education after Confirmation (and their affiliation with the Church sometime thereafter)? Far from accepting the sacramental mission to be witnesses of Christ and His Church to the world, many new confirmandi become the exact opposite?  

Let us also not ignore a troubling contemporary trend. When Confirmation became the “sacrament of exodus” from religious education (and often religious practice), the next sacramental encounter that tended to bring such “cultural Catholics” back to the Church was marriage. But that “restoration moment” has been weakened. Young Americans, if they marry, are marrying at the latest ages on record. And “if” they marry is no syntactical slip because all sorts of formal and informal “arrangements” now compete with marriage, while mixed marriages involving Catholics are growing.  If the typical American Catholic male now marries sometime around 30 and we will be confirming him at nine, what is the plan for keeping him religiously committed for 21 years?

Let me also add that, after marriage, the next “sacramental” event that tended to bring lapsed Catholics back home was their own child’s Baptism. But with marriage deferred and increasingly separated from parenthood (which is either further delayed or—with questions for marital validity—refused) how do we address these gaps?  

The Church has traditionally been faulted for being least engaged with young adults:  senior high schoolers, collegians, and young people starting out in life. Sociologically, it’s often the time in life many young Americans become “nones” (religiously non-identifying and disaffiliated). Relying on God’s grace, we pray that earlier Confirmation may foster a richer, more lasting engagement with the Church. But grace builds on nature, and given U.S. Catholicism’s track record this past half century, doesn’t the Church need a richer plan of staying in young people’s lives than just accelerating Confirmation?