TYLER -- Bishop Alvaro Corrada, S.J., has restored the sacrament
of confirmation to its original order, allowing Catholics in the
Diocese of Tyler to more fully celebrate the sacrament of Eucharist.
“The place to make your commitment to the Catholic Church
is in the Eucharist, not in confirmation,” he said.The bishop
outlined the change in pastoral practice in an Oct. 7 letter titled
Pastoral Reflection on the Sacrament of Confirmation. “The
sacraments draw humanity into the truth and love of God revealed
in Christ, thereby disposing the faithful to live this love more
deeply in their daily lives of Christian freedom and witness,” the
bishop said. “The relation
of baptism and confirmation to the Eucharist becomes clear; each
prepares a person to take his appointed place within the life of
the Church. Baptism makes one a member of Christ’s
body, the Church, sharing in the apostolic mission as a child of
God offering him spiritual worship.
“Confirmation is given to strengthen the baptized so that
they might be more perfectly bound to the Church and, as true witnesses
of Christ, spread and defend the faith by word and deed,” he
said.
This reordering of the sacrament is not an unusual practice, according
to Bishop Corrada. “A good number of dioceses in the United
States, Canada, and Europe have reordered the sacraments to go
back to the usual way, which is baptism, confirmation, and the
Eucharist,” he
said. “In our diocese, there is a pastoral need with so many
people coming into the Church by conversion, and many more from
Mexico entering the process of Christian initiation.
“Many of our Catholics (with baptized children) are requesting
that confirmation be done before (the sacrament of) the Eucharist,
at an earlier age. After discussing this for many months with the
priests council and the deacons council, with the
clergy, the Christian initiation team and the liturgical commission,
I decided that it was time to make the change.” Confirmation “is
not a sacrament of maturity, where you get old enough to be like
a little soldier for Christ,” said
Linda Porter, diocesan director of faith formation.
“You used to get slapped on the cheek, a sign that you were
going to suffer for the faith and that you needed to be strong
because you were a soldier for Christ. But that’s
not the terminology we use now in understanding the sacrament.
It’s
tied very closely to our baptismal promises and tied very closely
to the Eucharist. Confirmation strengthens the gifts that we celebrate
receiving at baptism, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and helps us
prepare for entering into the celebration of the Eucharist.” According
to the bishop’s pastoral letter, the early Christians “entered
the Communion of the Church through baptism and the laying on of
hands.” These sacraments “introduced
Christians into the life of the community and prepared them to
celebrate the Eucharistic sacrifice . . . Receiving the Body of
Christ in the Eucharist, they became fully members” of the
Church. The practice gradually changed as bishops faced difficulties
in visiting the far-flung parishes in their dioceses and were unable
to baptize all new Christians, who, for the most part, were infants.
The celebration of confirmation was delayed until a bishop could
be present.
“In the beginning of the twentieth century,” according
to Bishop Corrada’s pastoral letter, “children would
have received first Communion very near the time of their confirmation,
generally about the age of 12. When Pope Pius X defined the age
for first Communion to be as young as seven, the same age of reason
that was used in the celebration of first reconciliation, it was
designed to increase liturgical participation and the living of
the Christian life. In Quam Singulari, Pope Pius X set
forth that children in fact had an obligation toward both confession
and reception of Communion at the age of reason.”
The age for first Communion was lowered, but confirmation remained
at age 12. “They left it up there by itself, and what happened
was that publishers came out gearing (catechetical material) toward
older children; and we adapted to the practice,” Porter
said. “Then we tried to define our theology based on that
practice, rather than the other way around.”
As a result, challenges have developed. The most prominent is a “checklist” mentality,
in which confirmation is the final act on a list of sacraments
that a child must receive before completing a catechetical program.
“The sacraments are separated. We start with this sacrament,
baptism, and sometimes we don’t see the families again until
a child prepares to make his first Communion. Then you might not
see them again until they come for confirmation. And once they’re
confirmed, you don’t
see them at all because you've got them already in the mindset
that this is school, that these are kind of ‘sacramental
stations’ where you come and get filled up; then you’re
finished after confirmation. The average Catholic adult has not
been back for any kind of formation since he or she was confirmed,” Porter
said. “Confirmation cannot be properly looked at as a single
event, done and then forgotten, like some type of immunization
or graduation,” Bishop
Corrada agreed. “Confirmation
establishes an ongoing relationship with God which animates the
ongoing growth in holiness which is the vocation or call of all
the baptized.”
Another problem area is conflicting theology presented by the RCIA
and Christian initiation processes.
“We’ve ended up with two theologies of initiation,” Porter
said. “One for those who are baptized Catholic, another for
those who are not Catholic. It’s confusing and
it creates tensions.”
Restoring confirmation to the order first adopted by the early
Church does not “give uniformity, but greater unity in the
church, so that those who were baptized as children may also receive
the sacrament of confirmation at an earlier age before they receive
the Eucharist,” Bishop Corrada
said. A third challenge is providing proper catechesis in an environment
where Protestantism reigns.
“Because it’s East Texas, and because we’re comparing
it to other Churches, we look at confirmation as what theirs is;
but it’s not that,” Porter said, describing
how at an in-service for parish directors of religious education,
there were “10 different answers when I asked them to describe
the sacrament of confirmation. They all had Eucharist down, and
they all knew about marriage and holy orders, but confirmation
was like a sacrament looking for a theology. We have to (better)
educate our adults, our catechists, the parents and the average
person in the pew.” Confirmation isn’t about an individual’s
decision “to
embrace the faith of baptism,” Bishop Corrada said. “It
is not a human act similar to that of non-Catholic Christians who,
perhaps in their early teens, choose to publicly profess that they
have accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
“It is not
our ‘confirming’ baptism or our
faith in Christ; it is Christ confirming in us the Christian life
that we are already living. It is particularly important that we
avoid any sacramental catechesis that reflects the notion that
confirmation is the time for a person to individually embrace the
faith or to become personally engaged in the work of the Church,” he
said. In restoring the sacrament’s order, “we are getting
away from a checklist of sacraments and obligations (and moving)
to the call to holiness, in which people (experience a sense of)
fluidity in the life of the Church, in the reception of sacraments
and the celebration of liturgy,” Bishop
Corrada said. “People will understand the sacramental liturgy
of the Church from the beginning.” Porter agreed. “It
makes sense that confirmation be the catalyst, because if we start
catechizing in a different way, if our models shift and the pastors
are focusing on adult education, parents are focusing on formation
of their families and bringing them to the sacrament. They’re
seeing that sacraments are integrating them into the life of the
community, and then those families are going to grow in holiness.
And that means a strong relationship with Christ.
When people feel that way, they can’t help but share the
faith,” she said. The new practice flows smoothly into the
three processes, which have led people “to understand that
the order of
sacraments is important in their lives,” the bishop added. “The
great advantage of doing it this way is that the sacrament of reconciliation,
the confession of our sins, will be brought more into perspective
and used in the church,” he
said. “I want people to go back to the reception of the sacrament
of reconciliation at an earlier age and on a more constant basis.
So, for a year, the young people will be encouraged to practice
the sacrament of reconciliation before they receive confirmation
and Eucharist together,” Bishop
Corrada said. As the program is implemented, three groups will
be preparing for confirmation. “One would be a kind of catch-up
group. Those kids in a two-year confirmation program in their parish
will finish out that program, and everybody else will fall into
one of two groups. One is those who have not yet celebrated their
first Eucharist, ages seven and older, who would begin a year long
preparation for the sacrament of reconciliation, then the following
year they’d begin preparing
for confirmation and Eucharist together. The other group would
be those who have already celebrated their first Eucharist, but
haven’t
been confirmed, again anybody aged seven and older,” Porter
said.
