The Dominus Project

The Bishop Said What about Confirmation?

Catholics in the Diocese of Baton Rouge went to Mass last weekend and heard a letter from our chief shepherd Bishop Michael Duca on his decision to move Confirmation from 11th to 7th grade, essentially from the age of 16/17 to that of 12/13. Because I’m involved in many conversations in our diocese about faith formation, my phone and social media walls were blown up with thoughts of people surprised, ecstatic, frustrated, and, perhaps, all of them combined. As many pastors will tell you, changing things—music at Mass, Mass times, who can be an altar server, which buildings can be used for which purposes, etc.—can be fraught, so making a shift in something as important and fundamental to our faith as one of the seven sacraments can bring out intense emotions.

For those who are worried about the decision, there are understandable pragmatic concerns: How can we change something we’ve done in a certain way for years? What will we do with our current 8th-11th graders? This seems to have come out of nowhere—could we have been warned about this earlier? Similarly, there are important theoretical concerns: if Confirmation is the sacrament of Christian maturity, shouldn’t those who receive it be more mature? Isn’t Confirmation supposed to be about choosing to be an “adult” in your faith? Perhaps most torturous of all is the worry: if we move Confirmation earlier, how will we keep youth at the parish afterward?

From my perspective, the decision was a difficult but wise one. I know Bishop Duca to be a prayerful, thoughtful man, and this decision follows suit. I know it’s something he has been contemplating for a while and that he consulted with his pastors and the diocese’s Directors of Religious Education. I know it’s spurred by a genuine pastoral concern for the good of the people of this local Church: it is the unavoidable truth that the U.S. Church has been bleeding Catholics (6 lost for every 1 gained) and must harness all her efforts toward evangelization—helping people truly come to know the person and saving message of Jesus Christ. It may not be clear what Confirmation has to do with evangelization, so let me explain…

The past two decades have been years of Catholic atrophy. In 2007, Catholics made up the second largest religious affiliation in the country—comprising nearly 24% of Americans—with Evangelicals leading with 26%. By 2014, Catholics had been bumped to the third spot, replaced by the “unaffiliated,” which is to say, those who would mark that they don’t follow any religion if asked on a survey. Since 2021, the unaffiliated (or the “nones,” as they are sometimes called) are now the largest “religious” affiliation in the country at 29%, followed by Evangelicals at 24%, then by Catholics at 21%. Of those who have changed their religious affiliation, whether they are now nones or Protestants or even non-Christians, the largest number of each group is ”used-to-be-Catholics.”

The main reason people leave the Church has little to do with disagreeing with this or that Church teaching or even being dismayed by the horrendous abuse scandals; it is simply that they “drift” away. They just stop believing and stop practicing at some point, instead of having some defined moment when they renounce their faith. Surprisingly, the median age of those who disaffiliate is only 13 years old! To make all this more concrete, if you taught a first communion class of 20 kids in 2013, those same kids would be 18-year-old-adults right now. Statistically, of those 20 kids-now-turned-adults:

• 7 of them check “Catholic” on a survey but don’t practice.
  

• 7 don’t consider themselves Catholic anymore. 4 are nones. 3 have become Protestant.
  

• 6 go to Mass once a month or more, with only 3 of these 6 going weekly.
  

Sadly, this means, on average, we’ve done a better job forming “nones” than weekly Mass-goers.

So, what gives!? How did we get to this point, and whose fault is it!? Honestly, I don’t think it’s helpful to point fingers or cast aspersions. But, as a scholar of the Church’s catechetical ministry, I know this to be true: The Church has for too long relied upon a “classroom model” of handing on the faith, something that has persisted since at least the late 1700s. Classroom religious teaching had its importance and still does, but we should step back to ask what it has done to our understanding of what it means to learn to be a Catholic. In the 1950s, the famous Catholic apologist Frank Sheed was asked by some Irish religious sisters to address them concerning religious education. In an insightful talk, he told them:

“I do not think the Religion class should be a class at all. It is not simply part of schoolwork. It happens to be in the same building; it happens to be run by the same people; but it is not part of school life, it is something much more profound than that.”

By this Sheed did not imply there should be no theology classes in Catholic schools or parishes, but that the way we have gone about it has created a culture where the faith is just “something to be learned for a grade,” one part of life just as English, history, math, and science are other parts, instead of being the living source of life that permeates all of reality. This is borne out by the fact that only 7% of white Catholics and 9% of Hispanic Catholics in our country say their faith is “very important” in their lives. Sadly, those of us who have worked in the trenches by teaching Confirmation classes have seen it firsthand—after receiving the sacrament, few of the youth stick around. It can even be an important milestone in their lives, but too often it is just one of many, rather than being a mark of complete initiation into the fullness of the Christian life and the fullness of reality.

Is there any hope in this disheartening situation? Yes! There is always hope because God is real, and he continues to be on the move, sometimes in hidden ways. Though the faith in America has been waning statistically, there has been a consistent refrain coming from the Church in her teaching documents, something that can spark a renewal in how we hand on the faith. The refrain is twofold:

• First, instead of youth, the Church has been telling us that we should primarily concentrate on forming adults (General Directory for Catechesis, no 59).
  

• Second, these adults, when they become parents, are to be the primary formators of their children (Lumen Gentium, no 11).
  

I don’t know of any parishes (aside from college campus ones) that do the first. Form adults as a priority? One way to know if this is the case is to ask how much money in a parish’s budget is dedicated to adult formation. As for the second, parents like myself haven been raised in a Catholic culture where we hand over our children to PSR teachers and Catholic school teachers and trust them with our kids’ formation. And yet the Church teaches that families should “overcome the mentality of delegation that is so common, according to which the faith is set aside for specialists in religious education” (Directory for Catechesis, no. 124). It’s parents who are supposed to be the ones who show their children how to live a genuine Catholic life. We are the ones who are supposed to apprentice them in following Jesus. The one statistical spark of hope in the past two decades has been that Catholic teenagers who become faithful Catholic adults typically have one thing in common—parents who created a culture of faith in their home.

Bringing this all back to Confirmation: half of our youth disaffiliate before they reach 13. It makes plenty of sense to move Confirmation earlier to impart the grace they’ll need to be witnesses of the faith at younger years. As for the issue of Confirmation being the sacrament of maturity, it’s important to remember that the Church does not mean physical maturity here, but the spiritual maturity that comes with being fully initiated into the faith. Think, for instance, of all the child saints venerated by the Church (Dominic Savio, Maria Goretti, Tarcisius, etc.). To be holy and live a full Christian life isn’t something only adults can do. In fact, many of our children will likely be eager to receive the sacrament earlier (I know my kids are!). For the Catholic nerds like me out there, Canon Law actually says the sacrament should be given at the “age of discretion” (a.k.a. 7-years-old) unless otherwise determined by bishops!

To conclude, there’s an important line in Bishop Duca’s letter that I don’t think should be missed. In the last paragraph he says, “This transition will be challenging but I also believe it will be a catalyst for foundational changes in how our parishes help our parents to form their children into missionary disciples on fire for Christ.” By this line alone I know that the bishop has been meditating long and hard on our current situation and the Church’s prescribed remedy. We’ve used Confirmation like a carrot to keep our youth in the parishes as long as possible. But this has often served to disguise the real issues we are having in helping people follow Jesus in his Church. It’s time to take away the carrot so we can address the root issues. Changing the age alone will not fix things, and the Bishop’s FAQ addresses that. Even more, the Church needs adults, parents, grandparents, godparents, who are genuine witnesses to what it means to follow Jesus and what it means to live for holiness in this world. If we want kids who stick around, not only in the pews but in the faith altogether, then let’s confirm them earlier and help them by apprenticing them in the real practices of Christian life—prayer, worship, service, evangelization—so that faith is not just a subject to learn for a grade or a milestone, but a communion with the living God who transforms all of our life into himself.

Praying for our community…

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Looking for Help in Rethinking Confirmation and Faith Formation?

We started The Dominus Project to help the cultural shift of moving the primary formation of children from the classroom to the home. If you are a priest, deacon, DRE, catechist, or concerned parent who wants help thinking through how to form children (and adults!) in light of the bishop’s decision, then please reach out to us. Email us at thedominusproject@franu.edu or call us at (225) 802-0561.