A New Chapter in Confirmation: Strengthening Our Faith Together

by Fr. John Granato  |  09/14/2025  |  Words from Fr. John

My Dear Friends,

The Sacrament of Confirmation is a wonderful and important sacrament of the Catholic Church. It is an outpouring of the Holy Spirit and follows upon the Sacrament of Baptism. In the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox churches, it is given to the newly baptized immediately after baptism. This happens in the Western church when an adult is baptized and confirmed at the Easter Vigil. Otherwise, the Western church, exemplified by the Roman Catholic Church has a history of separating these two sacraments.

The reason is that in the Roman Church, the bishop is the minister of the sacrament as a way of underscoring the importance of the role of the bishop in the life of a diocese and of his parishioners as the bishop. Other than at the Easter Vigil or in times of someone dying, the priest needs special permission to confirm. Because of this and because of the long distances of a diocese, confirmation was given at a variety of ages, whenever the bishop could get to the region of his diocese. Eventually especially with smaller dioceses and easier transportation, the Catholic Church was able to streamline the sacrament regulations. But a bishop has the right to determine in his own diocese the age in which to confirm.

Some bishops have lowered the age of confirmation to the age of seven so that a child receiving First Holy Communion will be confirmed before receiving the Eucharist. (This is the proper order of the sacraments of initiation). Other bishops have confirmation in the middle school years and others still have confirmation in high school years. In our Archdiocese, confirmations have been during sophomore year in high school. It has been this way for quite a many years now. Archbishop Coyne, though, has decided that he wants confirmation to be administered during the eight grade year. We are in the process at Our Lady of Hope in moving the age so that in two years we will be reach the desired result.

This year coming up (2025-2026), we will have our freshman and sophomores getting confirmed together in the Spring. Then by the Spring of 2027, the eighth graders and freshman will be combined to receive confirmation. Since many of our youth do not attend a Catholic high school, those in high school will not have faith formation anymore in preparation for the sacrament. But it is our hope that your high school age child will still attend events for catechesis in a youth ministry setting and maybe even help with the younger children during their faith formation classes.

The Archdiocese is also promoting adult catechesis and family catechesis as a way for all of us in the parish to learn about our faith besides only attending Sunday Mass. Again, we are in the process of figuring all of this out so that you have an opportunity to continue to grow in your faith.

God bless!