Originally published at crisis magazine
The Archdiocese of Baltimore recently announced that children there can now be confirmed at age nine. The change ostensibly is intended to deepen their faith and better engage their parents in their religious formation.
Baltimore’s decision follows a growing trend among American dioceses to lower the average age of Confirmation, which in some places has creeped into the early-to-middle teens. It is a good change but one likely both to cause confusion and have its own perils. Let me explain.
The confusion is likely to come from how we have explained Confirmation, stemming in part from the history of Confirmation in the Roman Rite. In the East, Baptism, Confirmation, and First Communion all occur together in infancy. The unity of the sacraments of initiation is owed in part to the non-collapse of the Eastern Roman Empire. Even though Confirmation was eventually delegated to priests, bishops in the East were in more direct contact with their people than in the West, which succumbed to chaos after the fall of Rome.
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
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In the West, bishops remained the ordinary minister of the sacrament, which meant opportunities to confer it
