That seems to me not to be a problem the homeschoolers created—they didn’t. They just asked for and were granted their right under cannon law as agreed to by the competent authority vested in the person of their bishop. It does seem to me to be an opportunity to discuss sacrament prep with a given bishop and perhaps build a very good cas…
That seems to me not to be a problem the homeschoolers created—they didn’t. They just asked for and were granted their right under cannon law as agreed to by the competent authority vested in the person of their bishop. It does seem to me to be an opportunity to discuss sacrament prep with a given bishop and perhaps build a very good case for restored order of the sacraments because I believe you are correct: there isn’t a good reason parochial school students should have to wait and there is instead, if we believe the sacrament to do what we say it does, every good reason to confer it at an earlier age than is customary these days.
In my casual observation, preparation for confirmation seems vulnerable to slip into placing reception of the sacrament at the terminus of a parish’s youth program, either in or outside of a catholic school classroom, lending the sacrament almost the air of being a prize of completion or cultural right of passage.
Instead, we should consider that it is possible and good to have vibrant youth and teen programs not tied to the reception of a sacrament at the end then so long after that. Protestants seem to do very well with such a model.
That seems to me not to be a problem the homeschoolers created—they didn’t. They just asked for and were granted their right under cannon law as agreed to by the competent authority vested in the person of their bishop. It does seem to me to be an opportunity to discuss sacrament prep with a given bishop and perhaps build a very good case for restored order of the sacraments because I believe you are correct: there isn’t a good reason parochial school students should have to wait and there is instead, if we believe the sacrament to do what we say it does, every good reason to confer it at an earlier age than is customary these days.
In my casual observation, preparation for confirmation seems vulnerable to slip into placing reception of the sacrament at the terminus of a parish’s youth program, either in or outside of a catholic school classroom, lending the sacrament almost the air of being a prize of completion or cultural right of passage.
Instead, we should consider that it is possible and good to have vibrant youth and teen programs not tied to the reception of a sacrament at the end then so long after that. Protestants seem to do very well with such a model.
Thank you all for the insights.