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What with all the confirmations that are scheduled this time of year, I was musing today on a question that’s several times perplexed me. Why is it that so many Catholics, despite being completely non-practicing, still care so much about getting their kids baptized and confirmed?
The confirmations are the most puzzling of all. I sort of understand why people want to cling to the remnants of tradition at important moments in life. However hostile they are to tradition and traditional religion on an ordinary day, most people still yearn for some of the traditional trimmings when they’re married and buried, and perhaps when a child has just been born. (Of course, without improperly formed sensibilities, they’re liable to want to mix a few traditional elements with a whole variety of sentimental, inappropriate extras. Still, you can see at least a glimmer of the right sort of desire.) That really doesn’t explain, though, why non-practicing Catholics would want to be confirmed. Confirmation is only a rite of passage within a specifically religious context — unlike weddings or funerals, there’s no secular equivalent. And even if parents yearn for their kids to have a “coming of age”, secular society provides substitutes — high school graduation, for example.
A few months ago the Doctor and I were at a talk on the Sacraments which happened to be given by the priest in our diocese responsible for many of the organizational details of the massive confirmation Mass (or maybe there’s more than one, I’m not sure) done each spring in our main cathedral. Apparently it’s customary here to confirm kids around the age of 17, and some of the parishioners were asking him why confirmation can’t be done earlier, so that their kids can have the special graces of confirmation during their difficult high school years. The priest sympathized. But he said that the main reason confirmation is done so late is because it’s needed as a “carrot” to keep parents sending their kids to CCD (and possibly to Mass) for the intervening years. Some kids, once they’re confirmed, will never be pressured to go to Mass again.
Now, as a convert, I have to confess that I find this very difficult to understand. Of course, for me the whole burning question was whether I believed that Catholicism was the true faith. Once I had definitely taken that step, it was perfectly obvious that I ought to be a practicing Catholic. These people seem to be more or less the opposite — apathetic about the belief side, but still wanting aspects of the practice. But if you don’t go to Mass, don’t care if your children go to Mass, and obviously aren’t worried about following the precepts of the Church… why would you care about confirmation? Why is the desire for these Sacraments the last thing to survive, when basic religious practice is apparently gone? Somebody with more experience in such things really needs to explain this to me, because I just don’t get it.
St. Louis-Marie de Montfort,
Pope St. Pius X,
St. Joseph,
St. Ambrose of Milan,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Francis (and St. Clare),
St. Catherine of Siena,
St. Alphonsus Ligouri,
St. John Chrysostom,
Oooo, teacher, I know, ooooooo, I know….
So they can get married in the Church.
Next question.
Seriously though, you as a convert cannot understand the power that tradition holds over historically Catholic peoples. What we have in this country outside of certain ethnic enclaves and certain clubs of eccentric Catholics (traditionalists, charismatics, “JP II Catholics” whatever), is the remnant of various church cultures of the ethnic ghetto. Once they move on to suburbia and the great white-washed “Catholicism lite” that we all know and love, they maintain a thirst for such rites of passage that tie them to their ethnoc past. These are often the same as “Christmas and Easter Catholics”. Such rituals amounted to one’s initiation into the cultural milieu and civil society.
Really though, as much as we would like to moan about it, people ordinarily did not have the same idea of “practice of the Faith” as we have now. For example, in Italy, Spain, and Latin America, men seldom went to church, and only tended to go on their feast days or other special occasions. These would be the same men who would flog themselves and carry the giant floats of the Madonna on their shoulders for six hours straight during Holy Week. And these would be the same men who would walk five miles on their knees to complete a promise to the Virgin of Guadalupe. Yes, you can complain about it, but that is just how it was, and still is in many places. People did not align their religiosity exactly along the lines that the clergy would have liked them to have done.
Now, the catch is that on their death bed, those same men were likely to have a priest by their bed side, or at the very least wear a scapular or the necklace of their patron saint around their neck for protection. Catholic culture tends to supply various grades of conversion for those who are too lazy to go all the way. But that all assumes that Catholicism has a “captive audience”; that there are no religious beliefs competing for the hearts and minds of the lukewarm. In this country, even such folk religiosity is non-existent. You either have the sentimental agnosticism of the occasional Catholic pew warmer, or the a-historical fundamentalism of Catholic punditry. There seems to be no middle ground.
There is a sort of “secular equivalent” to confirmation. In Communist East Germany they had a school ceremony called “Jugendweihe” at which 14-year olds would promise to be worthy members of the socialist community, to work for closer cooperation with the Soviet Union, etc. After the ceremony you were considered to be no longer a child. You weren’t forced to take part in Jugendweihe, but if you didn’t you could suffer disadvantages later. The ceremony is still practised today in Germany in some nostalgic communist circles.
My cousin, whose parents don’t practice, was recently confirmed. I suppose his parents see the ceremony as just part of the process of growing up – another of the boxes to be ticked along the road to adulthood, like getting acne and learning to drive. That said, they live in a country that is overwhelmingly Catholic and where nearly everyone is confirmed, so that a child who was not confirmed would stand out. In societies which are more religiously mixed, the pressure on non-practicing parents to have their kids confirmed must be considerably less. So I share your puzzlement, to an extent.
Brian T.:
The Jugendweihe is not only practiced in nostalgic communist circles. In the former GDR regions of Germany still about 40% of the youth take part in it. It’s a good example of the yearning of people for some sort of coming of age ceremony. The Jugendweihe was exactly invented because even religiously indifferent people attended Confirmation.
I actually think that those confirmations pose a real problem, because you teach the confirmands that it’s OK to be dishonest.
I (in West Germany) was one of the few among the Catholics in my grade who was not confirmed. Ironically for all I know I was one of the few who actually prayed daily. But as I could not honestly say “I believe in the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church” I felt I could not go to confirmation. I was confirmed in my mid-20s.
WOW, what a great couple of comments in this combox.
I too am a Convert, and one of the largest inhibitors to my conversion to Catholicisim was, well, Catholics.
This is one of the largest struggles I have as a Catholic is, other Catholics.
It took a couple of books to help me understand (I still do not ACCEPT it, I just understand it): “The Faithful Departed” by Phil Lawler, and “The Two Towers” by John Meehan, and, in an opposite sense; i.e., if you want to see it from the heterodox (nice way of saying heretic) point of view, read “What Makes us Catholic” by Thomas Groome.
God bless,
PMG
I wonder if the Holy Spirit might have something to do with it? (You know, just to play Spirit’s advocate here…)
But why would the Spirit want people to come to church only long enough to get confirmed, and then disappear?
Or, to put it another way, if you were so eager to have the Holy Spirit and be a Soldier for Christ, why wouldn’t you want to keep coming to Mass?
Thanks to everyone for the comments, by the way. Sorry I haven’t been around to respond.
Arturo’s comment was interesting to me, and it is interesting to consider that ours is far from the first culture to be less than totally committed to regular Mass attendance. Still, in the cultures you mention, it does seem that Catholicism was an important part of people’s lives, albeit not in all the ways we might think it should have been. I mean, they were still doing the Holy Week floggings and crawling pilgrimages, so they did have some sense of Catholic piety. What’s different about our culture is that, in other respects, there doesn’t seem to be much sign of identification with Catholic culture in many of these nominally-Catholic people. Holy Week isn’t a big deal to them, and they’re not making pilgrimages, or keeping icons in their homes, or or continuing to pray their Rosaries at home even if they don’t go to Mass. Or at least, I don’t get the impression that they are. That’s what makes the Confirmation business seem sort of odd to me.
I think there are cultures where Catholicism is so deep in the blood that, even when people aren’t really practicing, certain remnants remain. When my father was a (Mormon) missionary in Brazil, he sometimes encountered this. They made a lot of quick converts, often among people who seemed to be very nominally Catholic, and who likely became only very nominally Mormon; a lot of people, he speculates, joined largely in hopes that there would be some sort of welfare or aid program from which they might benefit. Or maybe they were just curious about the random Americans wandering through these Brazilian slums in their white shirts and ties. Anyway, they “baptized” most anyone who would agree to do it, but he said they occasionally encountered problems with things like icons or statuary. Mormons regard such things as a kind of idol worship, so they told their new converts that they should get rid of them. Most people, he said, would just nod their heads and agree when you explained this to them in the abstract. But when you explained to them that they needed to trash that particular statue of Our Lady that had been in the family for decades or more… well, sometimes that turned out to be a deal-breaker. People who appeared in theory to be totally ready to renounce their Catholicism, would turn out in practice to have much deeper attachments to their devotions, and devotional objects, than a Mormon would ever have expected.
With American Catholics, though, it seems a little different. Our cultural foundation isn’t suffused with Catholicism the way it is in countries like Brazil, so once people assimilate into the mainstream culture, they seem to lose their Catholic identity much faster. Except you still have these oddities, like wanting confirmation.
Yes, I suppose it’s harder to explain with Confirmation why the Spirit would move people toward the sacrament, than, say, it is with Baptism. When I was in a 99% Latino community, otherwise non-practicing Catholics showed up to have their kids baptized, only to be told that they’d have to attend catechesis first (that’s a parish policy, folks, not canon law). Many then crossed over to Mexico and had them baptized there (or had a family friend baptize for them in the US).
But anyway, all I was trying to get at is, assuming the sacrament is a site of grace (completing the grace of baptism), the Spirit might guide people to the sacrament. Tradition and sentimentality no doubt contribute, but I’m not willing to discount the Spirit and grace here.
Would you say that the Spirit does NOT have a role in guiding people to the sacrament in this case? I’m sure you don’t want to challenge the efficacy of the actual sacrament. Or do you?
No, of course not. Or at least, I wouldn’t challenge the validity of the Sacrament in such cases, though it’s my understanding that, with the Sacraments of the Living, it’s necessary to be in a state of grace before you can receive, well, the graces. If you’re not in a state of grace, the graces are withheld until the next time you are in such a state, at which time you will receive them.
Now, obviously I’m not in a position to declare who is and isn’t in a state of grace. But it seems to me that it would be hard to be in a state of grace while effectively making commitments that you don’t intend to keep, as it seems to me the “good-thing-today-is-confirmation-because-now-I-can-stop-coming-to-Mass” confirmand is doing. Obviously psychological states can be complicated, but at any rate, such an upbringing clearly isn’t optimal for putting one in a state of grace to receive the Sacraments.
As for whether the Spirit has a role in guiding them there… how should I know? I’ve admitted that I don’t understand the psychology of this very well. It’s also far from clear to me whether/when it’s better for people to get Sacraments (because hey, at least they have some access to grace then) and when it’s better for them not to (when much is given, much is required, and the person who has no intention of really practicing doesn’t seem to be living up to those requirements.) St. Thomas argued that it was wrong to sneak-baptize pagan babies because (among other reasons) the graces they received would only count to their shame in the end if they didn’t live an upright life in the faith. As they probably would not, given a pagan upbringing. If we followed that logic out, it would seem like it was probably better for the lukewarm not to receive Sacraments until such a time as they were actually prepared to make an effort to live the faith.
Clara do you have the citation from St. Thomas? That sounds too interesting not to read.
He references it here:
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3010.htm#article12
But I feel like I’ve read a more detailed account that expands on what he says in this passage. If I find it I’ll post the reference.
Thanks, Clara.
Some issues have been raised in this string of responses worthy of comment. Confirmation is an important and necessary sacrament (see, e.g., Acts 2:1-47 & 8:14-17). Its effects are essentially a deepening of the grace received in baptism and an increase in the gifts of the Holy Spirit (see CCC Paras. 103ff.) It is not principally a rite of passage. This fact can be seen from the Eastern Churches’ valid practice of confirming all initiates, including babies, immediately after baptism. Now the Roman Catholic Church has recognized a certain appropriateness to postponing confirmation until the “age of discretion,” which various bishops fix at various ages (see CIC, can. 891). Some have, understandably, concluded from the timing of this postponement that confirmation is a kind of graduation ceremony. They have concluded wrongly.
I assume that most parents understand that confirmation is an important sacrament of initiation, albeit that they often do not know why, and that they wish their children to be confirmed because of this understanding. I doubt that these parents intend to prevent their children from attending mass thereafter. The parents probably also recognize the good in attending mass. They simply do not recognize the good in their attending mass; and the children, following the parents’ example, come to the same conclusion about themselves. The parents have no response to the children’s argument that the children should not have to attend mass, if the parents do not have to do so, after the children have completed their Christian initiation. Consequently, the whole family ceases to attend.
I would note that one is not really making any new promises or commitments in being confirmed, unless one is also converting to Catholicism. One makes a renewal of baptismal promises and a profession of faith prior to confirmation. This renewal and profession are, in essence, equivalent to professing the Creed weekly at Sunday or vigil mass. One is not, to be specific, making a new promise to attend mass at least once weekly. That promise was made, in effect, at one’s baptism. The argument, therefore, that the confirmand (as distinct from candidate or convert) is now pledging to do something that he was not obligated to do before and will, therefore, bring additional condemnation upon himself, is false. One becomes Catholic through baptism. That is, one is already a Catholic and, therefore, obligated to live as a Catholic, before one is confirmed, unless one is also converting. Confirmation gives one additional grace actually to live as such.
Aquinas does not, Clara, make the argument you ascribe to him in the location cited. Look at the original Latin of this article of the Summa (see http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/sth3001.html). The shame or, better yet, “detriment” Aquinas writes about in this article is that of the Faith, i.e., the Catholic Faith, and not of their or his faith, i.e., the individual’s faith. Aquinas simply points out that it is detrimental to the Faith for Christians to reject the Faith; and it is likely that a baptized child of non-Christian parents, whose parents tried to convince him to reject the Christian Faith, would, in fact, reject it. The Church, for a very closely related reason, makes a diligent inquiry into whether a family is practicing the Faith before agreeing to baptize a minor in that family.
I note that the reference to the Catechism in my response above should be to Paragraphs 1303ff., and not 103ff. I apologize for the typographical error.
Well, I doubt there are many Catholic parents who actively prevent their children from going to Mass, but they don’t seem to care very much whether they go or not. Which is sufficiently bad.
I don’t see that it matters very much whether the commitments one makes in confirmation are specifically new. Old commitments are renewed, and that is enough to make a person a hypocrite if he has no intention of following through on those commitments.
I don’t really see what point you’re making about St. Thomas. Does he or does he not think that a person who is going to de facto reject the faith (even if, as in the pagan baby, that might be the tacit rejection of simply never pursuing it) is better off not receiving the Sacraments in the first place? It seems to me that he does. That’s all I need.
I understood your position, Clara, to be that these parents “don’t care if [sic] [their] children go to Mass.” I disagree with that position, as I have explained above. Note that their indifference could, in a way, prevent their children from going. I do agree with your new position, viz., that “they don’t seem to care very much.” The parents would actually have to understand the true importance of attending mass at least weekly to care very much about their children’s continuing to go to mass after confirmation; and these parents, in general, do not understand.
You claim above that “it’s better for…[a confirmand] not to” be confirmed, if he is not “actually prepared to make an effort to the live the faith.” The implication is that the confirmand brings additional condemnation upon himself by being confirmed. This claim only makes sense, if it is actually the case that one makes a commitment to live the faith in confirmation in addition to the commitment made in baptism. Otherwise, why is one who breaks a renewed commitment significantly worse off than one who breaks an original commitment, especially assuming that we are speaking of what actually occurs (i.e., that the confirmand renewed this commitment a week or so previously during Sunday or vigil mass)? Confirmation does not, however, entail a new commitment. In fact, the renewal of the baptismal promise is not an essential part of the sacrament per se. There is no such renewal of baptismal promises in the case of the rite of confirmation of the baby in an Eastern Church and, in some instances, in the case of confirmation in an emergency in the West (see CIC can. 889ff.).
Confirmation is not the sacrament of a new life and does not essentially entail the promise to live a new life. It is the strengthening of grace to live well the new life of baptism already begun. The “lukewarm” confirmand, then, who is not yet “prepared to make an effort to live the faith,” as distinct from rejecting the Faith altogether, should especially be confirmed; for confirmation gives the confirmand exactly the grace to make that effort.
You now change your above argument to “a person [is] a hypocrite[,] if he has no intention of following through on those commitments” and renews them. This position is very different from the one above; and I agree with it. If the confirmand understands that attending mass regularly is entailed in his renewal of the baptismal promise and he renews that promise with full intent to break that promise by not attending mass regularly, or even at all, then he is a hypocrite, or, more precisely, a liar and an oath breaker. I doubt, however, that the confirmand realizes that regular mass attendance is, in effect, part of what one pledges in the baptismal promise. I also doubt that most confirmands who cease to attend mass regularly after being confirmed fully intended to do so before they received the sacrament. I have described above what most likely happens. Their culpability, in this case, is greatly mitigated.
The point I am making about Aquinas is that you cannot argue persuasively for the conclusion you do about his position on baptizing the initiate who will certainly reject the Faith from the passage you cite. Aquinas is not making that argument there. He is not even addressing the specific question you raise. You may conclude that Aquinas would make the argument you ascribe to him without any specific evidence for your conclusion; and this manner of reaching your conclusion may be all that you need. It is not, however, all that others need. You must supply some specific evidence to support your conclusion to be persuasive. Note that you should read the section of the Summa you cite in light of Aquinas’ discussion in IIIa, q. 68, a. 1 (see http://www.newadvent.org/summa/4068.htm#article10 and http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/sth4066.html)
before extrapolating Aquinas’ views from his comments in that section.
Err… okay. I feel as though you’ve tried to take our little discussion and turn it into a high school debate round, searching zealously for ticky-tack details on which to put us at odds. I said that parents “don’t care” whether their children go to Mass… but the truth is that they just don’t care very much! Better get that cleared up!
This does not seem to me like the path to gaining a greater understanding of the issue.
With respect to my claims about the intentions of confirmands and their parents, my thinking is guided in part by the fact that, according to the description of the priest in question, the disappearance of confirmands post-Sacrament, is very regular and widespread. It isn’t just that they trickle off gradually over the next few years. He even told a joke about a priest who was unable to get rid of the rats in his rectory, and was finally told, “Just confirm them, Father! Then you’ll never see them again!” This seems to me to speak to something more than just a sort of general lukewarmness on part of both parents and confirmands. Both appear to see their behavior — getting confirmed and then never coming to Mass again — as being acceptable and even in a way customary. And that matters, because it does suggest that the parents probably have no (or extremely little concern) for their children’s Mass attendance, and the children may well receive the Sacrament with a fairly conscious idea in their minds that this is the end of their Massgoing days, just as we go to a graduation with a conscious realization that we’ve reached the end of classes. What makes this seem all right to them is not that it’s subconscious, but that it’s normal; they’ve known so many people who did it, and it’s a tendency of human nature to think that anything that is popularly “done”, can’t really be very bad.
So, all this being the case, I just can’t see how it’s so very important the extent to which there are both explicit and new promises made in Confirmation. Often, as I understand it, there is a reiteration of baptismal promises, and at the very least the Creed will probably be recited, and it does seem to me that a hypocrite or oathbreaker brings dishonor (and in this context, perhaps condemnation) to himself each time he insincerely renews his false promises. (And by the way, as long as we’re being ticky-tack, I can’t have “changed my argument” on this because I never did claim that explicit new commitments were made in receiving Confirmation.)
But in this Sacrament especially, surely one shames oneself by receiving it without any serious intention to follow through. You point out that it’s a Sacrament of the Living as though that’s somehow mitigating. It doesn’t seem mitigating to me. In Confirmation one is commissioned as a soldier for Christ, and equipped with weapons and armor before being urged to go out and do battle for Christ. I just don’t see how a person who has no serious intention of even continuing as a practicing Catholic does not greatly dishonor himself by receiving such a Sacrament. To say that such persons most need Confirmation is like saying that a battle commander should take most care to distribute protective gear to soldiers who are planning to desert and run away from the battle… after all, such cowardly men are liable to be particularly in need of protection! As in all cases, we could debate the extent to which invincible ignorance mitigates, but in itself, this seems like a serious failing to me.
As for the quote from St. Thomas, of course it doesn’t address the specific question I asked; I made that clear from the start. And I also acknowledged that it doesn’t fully articulate the argument that I was making, but I think it does offer support. St. Thomas declares that it would be dangerous to baptize the children of unbelievers because they would be liable to lapse in the faith. Evidently he regards that as more dangerous than simply not being baptized and living out one’s whole life in unbelief. The clear implication is that it’s worse to receive a Sacrament and lose the faith, than not to receive it at all. The cross-application to my subject should be obvious.
My purpose in joining this string of responses was both to correct a misunderstanding about the nature and importance of the sacrament of confirmation and to point out a mis-reading of a passage from the Summa. I fear that it have not fulfilled either part of my two-fold purpose very well; and it appears likely that further discussion on my part will not yield greater success. I will, therefore, withhold further comment.
I appreciate the opportunity to communicate with you, Clara. Perhaps we will have reason to correspond in the future. Cura te ut valeas.
I wasn’t trying to be harsh with you, Peregrine. What you say about the sacrament is correct; I just didn’t see how it cut to the heart of my question. Perhaps there was some misunderstanding, however. Sorry! Dominus vobiscum!