Case XLI: The Age for Confirmation

Every baptized person, not yet confirmed, may receive Confirmation. For this reason Confirmation may be administered even to young children who have not yet arrived at the years of discretion. As a fact this Sacrament was formerly administered immediately after Baptism. According to present discipline, however, the Church does not allow it to be administered to children before the completion of the seventh year, and not until the attained use of reason. Man is to receive the fulness of Christian life, through the imparting of the Holy Spirit, at an age when capable of leading a Christian life. Confirmation may, however, even now, be administered earlier: 1. When there is a lawful custom of earlier reception, as is the case in Greece and Spain (where children are confirmed at the age of two or three years); 2. When the bishop by reason of great extent of his diocese, or for other important reasons, can but seldom confirm; 3. Where danger exists that a child might die before Confirmation and the bishop wishes to go and confirm him.

In many parts it has become customary that children are confirmed only after making their first Holy Communion. What Leo XIII thought about this custom is plain from his letter to the Bishop of Marseilles, who had abandoned the former custom and confirmed children before their first Holy Communion. In his letter Leo XIII expressly approves of the bishop’s procedure and says of the existing custom: It agreed neither with the ancient and constant institution of the Church nor with the welfare of the faithful.

There lie dormant in the heart of the child the germs of most varied desires, which may bring about man’s undoing, if not early weeded out. From earliest youth the grace and assistance of the Holy Spirit are required to this end. The Holy Father sees a twofold advantage in early Confirmation: The childish mind is made more receptive for acquiring the Christian rules of life, it will be better prepared for the Holy Communion later to be received, and will obtain therefrom greater fruits: Moreover, youths confirmed in this way become more receptive to accepting precepts, and better fitted afterward to receive the Eucharist, and from receiving it they obtain more abundant benefits. The matter is one for the bishops to regulate for their respective dioceses. Fr. Goepfert, D.D.