To: The Most Reverend Christian Riesbeck, CC, Auxiliary Bishop of Ottawa
Date: October 14, 2014
Your Excellency:
Our eldest son
is in Grade 2 this year and in accordance with diocesan policy we
have been invited to prepare him for his first Communion (as well as first
Confession). We have some concerns about this regarding which our pastor advised me to write to you.
We wish to be
faithful in fulfilling our duties as Catholic parents, we wish to keep the
promises we made when Isaac was baptised (especially: “You have asked to
have your child baptized. In doing so you are accepting the responsibility of
training him (her) in the practice of the faith”), and we wish to live in the
spirit of the blessing pronounced upon us at his baptism (especially: “God is
the giver of all life, human and divine. May he bless the father of this child.
He and his wife will be the first teachers of their child in the ways of faith.
May they be also the best of teachers, bearing witness to the faith by what
they say and do, in Christ Jesus our Lord.”). In order to teach our son “the
ways of faith,” we try to do so with reference to authoritative and reliable
sources, so that we hand on the authentic Catholic faith.
As I understand it,
the universal Catechism published in the early 1990’s is supposed to constitute
a “sure norm for teaching the faith,” so I take this as a primary point of
reference. In the first paragraph of the section on the Eucharist, the
Catechism reads:
CCC 1322: “The holy
Eucharist completes Christian initiation. Those who have been raised to the
dignity of the royal priesthood by Baptism and configured more deeply to Christ
by Confirmation participate with the whole community in the Lord's own
sacrifice by means of the Eucharist.”
I read this as
indicating that Confirmation, like Baptism, should precede reception of
the holy Eucharist, since it is “the holy Eucharist” which “completes Christian
initiation.” I think this is even more clear in Pope Paul VI’s 1971 Apostolic
Constitution on Confirmation, Divinae consortium naturae: the ordering
of the sacraments of initiation is first Baptism, second Confirmation, and
lastly (the “summit”) Eucharist. (At the same time, I do recognize that it
is possible to licitly receive Communion without having been Confirmed,
while it is not possible to licitly or even validly receive
Confirmation without having first been Baptized.) I don’t see how this
claim of CCC 1322 is compatible with receiving the holy Eucharist (which is
supposed to complete Christian initiation) in grade 2, and then
receiving Confirmation (without which Christian initiation remains incomplete
(cf. CCC 1306)) four years later in grade 6. In light of what I understand the
Catechism to say, this current diocesan policy would seem to imply that for
children between grades 2 and 6, their Christian initiation during this four
year period is both complete (thanks to the holy Eucharist) and incomplete
(since they have not been Confirmed), at the same time.
I will be grateful
to be enlightened about this, but in the meantime, as a believer in the
compatibility between faith and reason, this state of affairs rather unsettles
me. Further, I humbly suggest that this policy inherently lends itself to
generalized theological confusion regarding the specific nature of each of the
sacraments and their ordering towards one another. I think there is a tendency,
in light of this policy, for people (parents, children, pastors) to regard
Confirmation as a second-rate sacrament, an after-thought, which we will
(probably) get back to, but only after we’ve visited the summit (the
Eucharist); and/or a tendency to obscure the fact that the Eucharist is the
summit, and is indeed (unless I have misinterpreted CCC 1322) supposed to complete
Christian initiation. Finally, most Catholics I have talked to seem to think
that Confirmation is more or less equivalent to a Protestant altar call where a
young person is deemed/deems himself mature enough to decide and publicly
announce that he personally accepts Jesus into his heart as his Lord and
Saviour (or just that he want to be a Catholic), as opposed to a Catholic
sacrament, instituted by Christ to freely confer grace. I, of course, do not
mean to intimate that I suppose the pastoral motivation behind the diocesan
policy is to encourage this kind of attitude, but I think the policy does feed
into this common misconception.
Over the past few
months I have discussed this matter with three different priests of the
diocese. Two of the three were markedly sympathetic to my concerns and actually
mentioned that they would prefer we followed the practice of the Eastern Churches
of conferring Confirmation on infants at the time of their Baptism. Each of
them mentioned some of the history of the changes in diocesan policy and
mentioned that there had been a letter explaining the current
policy sent out some years ago, but none of them was currently
prepared/inclined to give an explanation or defense of the policy on their own
behalf. On the diocesan Chancery website I do find a link entitled “Revised
policy on the sacrament of confirmation,” but the link is not currently functional
(that is, at the time of my writing).
In Christian
humility, we wish to obey the lawful pastors of the Church. At the same time,
as parents, we wish to conscientiously carry out our duties as the primary
educators of our children. In light of the foregoing considerations, then, we
would like to request, first, an explanation of the diocesan policy on
these matters, in particular in relation to the seemingly problematic, i.e.,
incompatible, passages from the Catechism; and, second, permission for our
son to be Confirmed this year, having reached the “age of discretion” (CCC
1307) (and pending appropriate instruction and preparation) such that he “can
and should receive the sacrament of Confirmation” (CCC 1306). (Please note that
in making this request my understanding is that such a request might be unusual
but is not unprecedented and is indeed canonically warranted - see,
for example, http://www.canonlaw.info/a_preparingchildren.htm).
Yours in Christ,
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