Gallup, N.M., Feb 12, 2019 / 04:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Bishop James Wall of Gallup has announced in a pastoral letter the restoration of the order of the sacraments of initiation in the mission diocese.
Once the new policy is implemented, children will receive Confirmation and First Holy Communion in the same Mass, at around the age of 7 or 8.
“Receiving the Sacrament of Confirmation long after the reception of Holy Communion, tends to weaken the understanding of the bond and relationship that the Sacraments of Initiation have with one another,” Bishop Wall wrote in his Feb. 11 pastoral letter The Gift of the Father.
“Because the Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation lead the faithful to the culmination of their initiation into the Christian Life in Holy Communion, the practice of postponing the reception of Confirmation until the teenage years has not always been beneficial,” he noted.
The bishop added that “An alarming percentage of our Catholic children who were baptized and received First Holy Communion, do not continue their formation for the Sacrament of Confirmation, and in too many cases, never receive the Sacrament. As your shepherd, I believe it is important for our children, before they reach their adolescent years, to receive the strength of this important Sacrament.”
The pastoral change in the Diocese of Gallup follows that of several other local Churches in the US.
Commending such a change in the Diocese of Manchester in 2017 as “a praiseworthy practice”, Rita Ferrone wrote in Commonweal that 11 dioceses were then practicing “restored order”.
Bishop Wall opened his letter reflecting on the relationship among the sacraments of initiation: Baptism, Confirmation, and Communion.
Baptism “immerses us into the Divine Trinity,” while the grace of Confirmation “confirms and strengthens the supernatural life we have received in Baptism and it also enables us with its grace to live in a more mature way our lives as Christians giving witness to Christ in all that we do.”
“At the same time, the Sacrament of Confirmation is ordered toward a deeper communion with the Lord and to His Church through this witness to Him, a communion which receives its greatest expression and grace in this life in the sacrament of Holy Communion.”
The bishop noted that he has chosen to restore the original order of the sacraments of initiation “after consultation with the Presbyteral Council and having prayerfully considered it.”
Wall then discussed the historical background of the temporal order of the sacraments of initiation, noting that in the first 500 years of the Church they “were received together,” and that afterwards Baptism came to be administered in infancy, Confirmation around the age of 7, and Communion around the beginning of adolescence, such that “the order of the sacraments was conserved but they were administered in separate celebrations throughout childhood.”
St. Pius X “decided that it was important for children at a younger age to receive Holy Communion,” and began administering First Communion around the age of 7.
“This positive change had the unintended consequence of moving the Sacrament of Confirmation to an older age, thus inverting the original order of the Sacraments of Initiation,” Wall stated.
He added that today a person baptized after reaching the age of reason normally “receives in the same celebration the three Sacraments of Initiation,” but that “up until now, a child who was baptized as an infant would receive Holy Communion at around the age of 8 and receive the sacrament of Confirmation at a later date, sometimes waiting until they are 15 or 16.”
The bishop also discussed the effects of Confirmation, which “ gives us an outpouring of the Holy Spirit which strengthens us,” and he cited Divinae consortium naturae, St. Paul VI’s 1971 apostolic constitution on the sacrament.
Teaching about the sacraments, he said: “Although grace builds upon nature and much depends upon the disposition in faith, the piety and charity of the one who receives it, the sacraments work in us in a different way. As long as the recipient does not have any impediment, the sacraments will produce in us their grace on their own.”
“This is important when we consider the age of the reception of the sacraments,” Wall said.
While Confirmation is sometimes called “the Sacrament of Christian maturity,” it “does not require the recipient to be physically mature in order to transmit its grace. On the contrary, the Sacrament brings the recipient into Christian maturity and is given the strength through the Sacrament to live one’s Christian life even in a heroic way.”
“Although the recipient of the Sacrament always must seek to remove obstacles to grace in his or her life and cooperate with the strength of the grace that is offered to the individual, the power of the sacraments to transform one’s life has been well established.”
Noting that “countless young children have shown the witness of heroic virtue,” Wall said that “it has become all the more important” for young Christians, given the challenges they face in today’s world, “to receive the strength of the Sacrament of Confirmation as soon as possible to assist them.”
Citing St. Paul VI, Bishop Wall said that Confirmation’s link with the Eucharist “will be emphasized by uniting the Sacrament of Confirmation with the reception of the First Holy Communion in the same celebration of the Sacrifice of the Mass.”
The policy change in the Gallup diocese will be gradually implemented over the next three years, with a “progressive lowering of the age,” until preparation for the reception of Confirmation and First Communion will begin in third grade.
“There will always be the possibility of children older than 3rd grade seeking the Sacrament, especially those who move into our diocese from other areas, as well as adults who seek the reception of Confirmation,” he noted. “For this reason, there will have to be available an intergenerational model of catechesis or catechists prepared to take on classes of different age groups to prepare them for Confirmation.”
The sacraments, the bishop reflected, “are an introduction and aids to living an authentically Christlike life, to prepare ourselves for our passage into our longed-for eternal life.”
He called on parishes to meet the challenge of developing “creative programs to accompany, form and integrate young members of the parish – now fully initiated – into the life of the Church.”
With catechetical formation after third grade no longer tied to sacramental preparation, it will instead “help our young Catholics grow in their faith, discern their vocation and prepare for that Christian vocation as they approach adulthood.”
“As we implement these new policy changes we are attempting to face the great challenges of our time,” Wall concluded.
Thanking the pastors of the diocese for their faithful service, he asked them “to work closely with the families of your communities to help them accomplish their vocation as first catechists and witnesses of their faith.”
“The parish should become a community of communities where the family, the domestic Church, can find guidance in the Word of God, strength in the Sacraments and support in their daily struggles. Your assistance to the families of your parish to provide them with what they need to accompany their children in their pilgrimage of faith is invaluable.”
“May Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of the Diocese of Gallup and our Mother, Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, heroic witness to the faith, intercede for all of us, for you and your families, and may the Lord bring to completion the good work He has begun in us.”
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Kudos to the USCCB!
What took them so long?
Please Edward, for once be thankful for what they did!
Why? Their willful moral weakness over the decades has effectively been criminal.
With many victims.
Good point as the Bishops just trimmed their sails to the prevailing winds…
The fact that they need to do this tells you they have have no authentic Catholic character. Much like “Catholic” colleges and university with pride clubs.
Transgenderism is no biological, medical or psychological anomaly. It is a concoction resulting from a breakdown in the moral and cultural fiber of society. As such, it requires a restoration of moral and cultural values and practices.
Now that the teens have already moved on to the next fad, revenues are down, and there is the possibility of lawsuits…
Please, God.
I’m thankful for the Bishops conference and what they are doing and think that we should support them in any way that we can. It’s time for the whole Church to come together and stand for truth and recognize the different ministries working on different issues. Abortion is just one of many moral and social concerns that we face. Scriptures teach us that the body ( Church) has many members and that each contributes to the good of the whole. While some members may be more important, the lesser should not be neglected or despised- all are equally needed for the health of the whole. The work and mission of the Catholic Worker movement, for instance, is just as necessary as the pro- life movement. Note I DID NOT say “as important “. While the Church allows for one to be pacifist and non-resistant, it does not require these beliefs of all, and they are not to be scorned or belittled. We must not put down those who have been called to minister to the immigrants among us. If God called them to this ministry, who are we to question or judge? It is between them and God and we should keep our nose out of it and do what we are called to do. The same stands for all of the other ministries in the Church. We should thank God for them all. God loves us all and we are all on different levels and stages on our various paths to sanctification. Hopefully, we are ever changing and growing closer to God. We can’t judge anyone, because we don’t know the burdens that they are carrying or effect of their physical and emotional makeup. In short- we can’t walk in their shoes.let’s lay down the hatchet and unite against our common enemy- moral and secular decadence. God bless you all.
I have no trouble with people who minster to migrants and/or immigrants and I doubt very deeply any so-called MAGA person does either; however, I am deeply disgusted with the graft and human trafficking that has occurred, the waste of tax payer dollars, the enrichment of NGOs, circumvention of law, etc.
.
The bishops are receiving criticism, rightly or wrongly, because too many of us no longer have anything left with which to “give them the benefit of the doubt.”
What Church are you talking about? What moral precept allows for not defending innocent life under assault? Absolute pacifism is immoral, evil, a sin. Defensive action is not a prudential option. And the Catholic Worker movement, for which I did volunteer work decades ago, today reflects the disintegration that inevitably occurs from minds convinced that social concerns necessarily calls for revolutionary thought and action. It does not. We are not God’s superior, and God does not abandon us to a capricious inadaquate understanding of how we ought to order our lives. He gave us a moral order innate to our being, for all times and all places.
When we lose sight of unchanging truth, we are more subject to the temptations of assumed enlightenment acquiescent to culture. Many good people have passed through CW, but more recent divisions have occurred among differing voices including support of all manner of the LGBTQ agenda and support for abortion by some. And Catholic witness ought never include a “religious calendar” by any group identifying itself as Catholic that features celebratory days primarily for pioneers of communism and anarchy alternating with selected feast days of a handful of saints whose lives have been coopted in a manner that depicts them as revolutionaries “before their time.”
I challenge anyone to tell me what constitutes calling any “Catholic” hospital CATHOLIC. The staffs are comprised of a minority of practicing Catholics and the healthcare provided is never carried out in the name of Christ nor as an expressuon of the mission of the Church. These “Catholic” hospitals are no different from any secular hospital. And just because you have a chapel and a saint’s name attached to the building doesn’t make it “Catholic”. I know; I worked at a Catholic hospital for 30 years.
For my money and guided by the ecclesial principle of subsidiarity, I would like to see all “Catholic” hospitals sold to the highest bidder and use the proceeds to set up neighborhood CATHOLIC clinics that strictly follow CATHOLIC teachings. Another preference of mine for these neighborhood CATHOLIC clinics would be services for women with crisis pregnancies as an alternative to abortion.
Supposedly, the Catholic Healthcare Initiative is trying to do something like that
https://chi-usa.com/about-catholic-healthcare-international/padre-pio-hospital-is-coming-to-the-usa/
Well said and I totally agree with you .
more are closing, along with others, that cannot keep up after the covid money dried up but the costs haven’t decreased
a friend works in one of the larger chains and the coworkers would talk about taking out Trump after his second election, pro abortion stuff etc… he said it was/is depressing
Wonderful !!
But they don’t “forbid and condemn” vital organ harvesting of comatose patients !
Consensus and ignorance, indeed ! Meet moral relevance and stupidity !
This is why you must push back when Cafeteria Catholics flaunt the dogma of our faith: “nearly 150 Catholic hospitals across the United States provided children with transgender drugs or performed gender-transition surgeries on them between 2019 and 2023.”