www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology What ages to confer sacraments

Erie Byz:

Actually, I think this slight tangent is really germane to the full understanding of the problem. It makes a point that often seems to be there but many catechists just cannot put their finger on.

My son told me a story about his confirmation retreat--an event planned in the last period before confirmation. He said that once the adults went off to bed, and the young men were left alone--juniors in high school--they spent the time mocking the adults and the whole program. He said from what he saw of his colleagues--how they changed from giving all the right answers with straight faces to the adults during their sessions to actually mocking the whole program and the whole idea of what they were about to do with the bishop at the cathedral in the upcoming weeks--he actually thought about giving up the Faith altogether. He said that if this was all it was about, then it was not worth another second of his time or energy. A few of the people in his group actually had parents who were on the confirmation teaching team and my son wondered if the parents were also "going through the motions." I might add that many of this group of young men have not darkened the door of the church since their confirmation and a few have even married in civil ceremonies, much to the chagrin of their parents.

In reality, I see this whole process as an attempt to restore, somehow, the bad catechesis of the years immediately after the Council when everything was up for grabs and anything that came before the Council was viewed as being "out" as one priest constantly repeated in my parish. And in some cases I've seen, it just isn't working.

Bob

To change the Western systemic view of the Sacrament of Confirmation is far beyond the controls of any parish catechist. All of the Bishops I have either worked with or talked to, see no reason to change when the Sacrament is administered. They all believe is should be in adolescence sometime, which can vary greatly from diocese to diocese.

As Robert Taft has both written and said, "The bishop is the 'ordinary minister' of confirmation, but the bishop is ordinary minister of all the sacraments. Having habitually delegated the administration of the other to the presbyterate, they hang on to confirmation because it is the only one they have left".

Since the definition of "adolescence" (a term that really did not exist before the 20th century) is constantly expanding, I fully expect that the age of confirmation will gradually be pushed back into the early 20s (this being the terminus ad quem for adolescence according to the most "progressive" psychologists these days).

Stuart:

By then they might have no one to confirm. In my parish, we used to have two ceremonies because the numbers were large and the church was small. But then young people were confirmed in the 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. Now that we have pushed it to junior year in high school, we have far fewer in the program. Part of the reason is that there are some parents who firmly believe that no one should have to continue to attend religious education beyond the 8th grade. These people consciously take their children out of the program and figure that there is no reason for more "religion" after that time. Something like "that old time religion"--if it was good enough for me, it's good enough for my kids. I had one adult tell me if a child doesn't "have his religion" by 8th grade he'll never have it anyway.

BOB

All the more reason to move confirmation forward, if anything. If kids receive first communion at age seven, then confirmation should follow no more than a year or two later, and certainly no later than the age of ten. Kids are at their most impressionable then, and if you can inculcate the faith in them early, they tend not to lose it.

But, while we're talking of this sort of change, if the Latin Church won't change the order of confirmation again (they swapped communion and confirmation only at the beginning of the 20th century), they can at least move first communion back to age five. After all, we send our kids to kindergarten at that age, so we expect them to have some degree of understanding.

Not that "age of reason" is a valid excuse for denying communion to infants.

In several parishes locally, children are confirmed at age 7, just prior to their first Communion. It is not the norm, but is certainly possible under canon law and diocesan policy. It takes considerable education of the parents, though, who invariably see confirmation as an "adult" acceptance of the faith.

As to the original question, I wholeheartedly second the idea of basing the class on the liturgy of the Church and the liturgical calendar. Also, don't neglect the basics. Chances are these kids don't know the Sacraments, the 10 Commandments or the Beatitudes. Kids this age are usually idealistic and it is a good opportunity to encourage social responsibility by teaching the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. It is also important to help them develop a prayer life. Introduce them to some of the prayers of the saints and help them internalize them. (I'm thinking of, among others, the Anima Christi, Prayer of St. Francis, the Memorare, St. Patrick's Breastplate, etc.) They probably don't really have any idea how to pray and if you provide them with good models it will be a start. Maybe introduce some Catholic or appropriate Contemporary Christian music and teach them that we pray by singing. What about the lives of the saints? If you want to use media, show them a movie about Padre Pio. His story is fascinating and very difficult to write off as superstition because it was in living memory. Do a study of miracles in the modern world. Maybe look at some of the miracles that have been approved by the Church for the beatification/canonization of saints. I think the supernatural can really reach kids.

Good luck! I taught a similar class to high schoolers once. If they don't have a foundation in the faith, they're a tough group. I took mine to visit my childhood Byzantine parish and the next year, I was no longer teaching because I had decided to return to my childhood parish.


Elizabeth

Stuart:

My son received his "first communion" by accident--no, by his own intention.

We had decided to have him start school later than boys his age for our own reasons. He took an interest in going to church and started to demand that he be allowed to receive Jesus--yes, he actually said he wanted to receive Jesus--about the time he entered the first grade. He had an understanding of the sacrament that many older children sometimes don't have. He was always asking when he could receive, almost every time we went to Liturgy. Of course the rigid system wouldn't allow it and he was told he'd have to wait for his class.

One night he went with me to Liturgy in another parish. The priest asked me to read and be an extraordinary minister of the Eucharist. When I told him I had my son with me and didn't want to leave him in a pew by himself, he had my son vest and follow the servers around. Well, communion time came and my son got hold of a paten, held it under his chin and got in line with the servers. You can't imagine how thrilled he was to have finally received Jesus. The priest apologized, but I wasn't upset. My wife, however, had herself a fit because First Communion is supposed to be a big deal and we'd "ruined it."

I don't get it. If a child is so focused, knows what is going on enough to ask for what he knows the Eucharist is about, why must we be in these rigid mindsets?

Bob

This thread is wandering. One of the moderators may split it into two threads when time permits.

"In several parishes locally, children are confirmed at age 7, just prior to their first Communion. It is not the norm, but is certainly possible under canon law and diocesan policy. It takes considerable education of the parents, though, who invariably see confirmation as an "adult" acceptance of the faith."

It is good to see such an enlightened policy. One would hope it spreads widely, and soon, too.

"As to the original question, I wholeheartedly second the idea of basing the class on the liturgy of the Church and the liturgical calendar. Also, don't neglect the basics. Chances are these kids don't know the Sacraments, the 10 Commandments or the Beatitudes. Kids this age are usually idealistic and it is a good opportunity to encourage social responsibility by teaching the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. It is also important to help them develop a prayer life."

Most of the basics can in fact be derived from participation in and study of the liturgy. With regard to the prayers, before all private devotions, the Divine Office is the fundamental prayer and piety of the Church, so the basic prayers of Vespers, Matins and Compline should come before all else.

On works of mercy, it is important to stress the "liturgy after the liturgy", that our whole lives are meant to be lived liturgically, which is why the dismissal, "Let us go forth in peace, in the name of the Lord" marks not an end, but a beginning.

You don't chrismate and commune immediately after baptism?

Taft dealt with the issue of the integrity of the rites of initiation in his essay "Liturgy in the life of the Church (also available on CD from Eastern Christian Publications). Though he is dealing mainly with the reluctance of some Eastern Catholics to restore infant communion, his argument leaves no doubt that the Latin Church should also return to the ancient usage of the undivided Church.

The key parts are below:

Infant Communion

A final example is the question of giving Holy Communion to infants who have not yet reached the “age of reason”. Here again, it is a question of the constantly reiterated will of the Holy See, resumed in the Vatican II Decree On the Eastern Churches, Sections 6 and 12, that the Eastern Catholics 1) avoid latinization, 2) preserve their own tradition in its purity, and 3) return to their tradition where they have departed from it.

In harmony with this unambiguous will of the Church, the commission preparing the new Code of Eastern Canon Law prepared new legislation restoring the ancient discipline of infant Communion:

The traditional discipline of the Eastern Churches prescribes the communion of newly baptized infants as the completion of initiation. . . The commission has not ignored a problem so important as the communion of neophytes, for which reason it was obliged to reestablish the ancient common discipline by composing a new canon in the following terms: “Sacramental initiation into the Mystery of Salvation is perfected through the reception of the Most Holy Eucharist. Therefore let it be administered as soon as possible after baptism and chrismation with the Sacred Myron, according to the discipline proper to each Church”

This decree has become Canon 697 of the new Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches. This has warmed the hearts of Western Catholic experts on Christian Initiation, who for some time now have been arguing for the restoration of the integrity of the threefold rite of initiation in the Roman rite. Unfortunately, it has met with less than enthusiastic acceptance in some Eastern Catholic communities that long ago abandoned in favor of the Latin discipline the ancient common tradition of infant Communion immediately after baptism and chrismation.

Now, in the case of Christian Initiation, modern historical research and historical reflection have shown that the universal primitive tradition of both East and West viewed the liturgical completion of Christian Initiation as one integral rite comprising three moments of baptism, chrismation and Eucharist, and without all three the process is incomplete. In Christian antiquity, to celebrate initiation without Eucharist would have made about as much sense as celebrating half a wedding would today. For this reason, contemporary Western Catholic experts on the liturgy and theology of Christian Initiation have insisted on the necessity of restoring the integrity of this process which broke down in the Middle Ages.

I expect that some of the Eastern Catholic clergy, educated in Latin seminaries or at least in Latin categories of a previous epoch, are convinced that the practice of infant communion is not “Catholic”—or at least not as Catholic as the Latin practice of delaying first Communion until children have attained the use of reason. Why they might think this is no mystery. The prevailing Latin thesis was that the use of reason was necessaryto receive the Eucharist fruitfully. But if this is so, what could be the point of infant Communion?

This problem, too, can be dissipated by a knowledge of the facts. From the beginning of the primitive Church in East and West, the process of Christian Initiation for both children and adults was one inseparable sequence comprising catechumenate, baptism, chrismation (confirmation) and Eucharist. History is unmistakably clear in this matter: every candidate, child or adult, was baptized, confirmed, and given Communion as part of a single initiation rite. This is the universal ancient Catholic Tradition. Anything else is less ancient and has no claim to universality.

For centuries, this was also the tradition of the Church of Rome. In 417, Pope Innocent I in a doctrinal letter to the Fathers of the Synod of Milevis, teaches that infant initiation necessarily includes Communioon:

[Note: From the text, it is obvious that Innocent I is teaching principally that without baptism infants cannot be saved. But the argument he uses from John 6:53, which refers to the necessity of eucharist for salvation, shows he simply took for granted that communion was an integral part of Christian Initiation for infants].

That this was the actual liturgical practice of Rome can be seen, for example, in the 7th century Ordo romanus XI, and in the 12th century Roman pontifical, which repeats almost verbatim the same rule (I cite from the later text):


Until the 12th century this was the sacramental practice of the Roman Church and the doctrinal teaching of Latin theologians. Christ Himself said in John 6:53 that it was necessary for eternal life to receive his Body and Blood—“Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you”—and the medieval Latin theologians applied this to everyone without exception, infants included.

The practice began to be called into question in the 12th century not because of any argument about the need to have attained the “age of reason” (aetus discretionis) to communicate. Rather, the fear of profanation of the Host if the child could not swallow it led to giving the Precious Blood only. And then the forbidding of the chalice to the laity in the West led automatically to the disappearance of infant Communion, too. This was not the result of any pastoral or theological reasoning. When the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) ordered yearly confession and Communion for those who have reached the “age of reason” (annos discretionis), it was not affirming this age as a requirement for reception of the Eucharist. Even the 1910 decree Quam singulari issued under Pius X mentions the age of reason not as required before Communion, but as the age when the obligation of satisfying the precept begins.

Nevertheless, the notion eventually took hold that Communion could not be received until the age of reason, even though infant Communion in the Latin rite continued in some parts of the West until the 16th century. Though the Fathers of Trent (Session XXI,4) denied the necessity of infant Communion, they refused to agree with those who said it was useless and inefficacious—realizing undoubtedly that the exact same arguments used against infant Communion could also be used against infant baptism, because for over ten centuries in the West, the same theology was used to justify both! For the Byzantine rite, on December 23, 1534, Paul III explicitly confirmed the Italo-Albanian custom of administering Communion to infants.

So the plain facts of history show that for 1200 years the universal practice of the entire Church of East and West was to communicate infants. Hence, to advance doctrinal arguments against infant Communion is to assert that the sacramental teaching and practice of the Roman Church was in error for 1200 years. Infant Communion was not only permitted in the Roman Church, at one time the supreme magisterium taught that it was necessary for salvation. In the Latin Church the practice was not suppressed by any doctrinal or pastoral decision, but simply died out. Only later, in the 13th century, was the ‘age of reason’ theory advanced to support the innovation of baptizing infants without also giving them Communion. So the “age of reason” requirement for Communion is a medieval Western pastoral innovation, not a doctrinal argument. And the true ancient tradition of the whole Catholic Church is to give Communion to infants. Present Latin usage is a medieval innovation.

The real issue, of course, is not infant Communion, but the universal tradition of the integrity of Christian Initiation, which the West abandoned only in the 12th century. The traditional order of initiation (baptism, chrismation, communion) was maintained until Quam singulari in 1910, when in some countries first Communion began to be given before confirmation. But the Holy See has in the official praenotando of the new Roman Rite of Christian Initiation promulgated May 15, 1969, reaffirmed the traditional order and interrelationship of these rites:

1. Through the sacraments of Christian initiation, men and women are freed from the power of darkness. With Christ, they die, are buried and rise again. They receive the Spirit of adoption which makes them God’s sons and daughters and with the entire people of God, they celebrate the memorial of the Lord’s death and reurrection.
2. Through baptism, men and women are incorporated into Christ. They are formed into God’s people, and they obtain forgiveness for all their sins. They are raised from their natural human condition to the dignity of adopted children. They become a new creation through water and the Holy Spirit. Hence they are called, and are indeed the children of God.
Signed with the gift of the Spirit in confirmation, Christians more perfectly become the image of their Lord and are filled with the Holy Spirit. They bear witness to him before all the world, and work eagerly for the building up of the Body of Christ.

Finally, they come to the table of the Eucharist, to eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man, so that they may have eternal life and shoew forth the unity of God’s people. By offering themselves with Christ, they share in his universal sacrifice: the entire community of the redeemed is offered to God by their high priest. They pray for a greater outpouring of the Holy Spirit so that the whole human race may be brought into the unity of God’s family.

Thus the three sacraments of Christian Initiation clearly combine to bring the faithful to full stature of Christ and to enable them to carry out the mission of the entire people of God I the Church and in the world.

Thus the Catholic Church has reaffirmed the normative value of the ancient tradition preserved from time immemorial in the East—a renewal received with enthusiasm by all the experts in the field. So both universal early tradition and the present teaching of even the Latin Church show Eastern practice to be not a strange exception that should be abandoned, but the traditional ideal that should be preserved or restored.

"You don't chrismate and commune immediately after baptism?"

We do; Latins don't.

I learned from our former pastor that in "missionary territory," confirmation is conferred upon toddlers. He had been a missionary in the southwestern US (to Indians).

I think this came up when I asked about his tolerance for the "baby breaks" during liturgy--nothing to a man who had dealt with "classes" of toddlers . . .

hawk

Hi all ... as a newly Chrismated Antiochian Orthodox - Western Rite - we have a little boy - I believe about age 11 or 12 months - who receives the Eucharist every Sunday. He was Baptized and Chrismated the same time as his parents.
abby
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