Catholics in northern Colorado soon will follow a different order of the faith’s sacraments of initiation, with confirmation coming in third grade rather than middle or high school.
In a about the change released Sunday, Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila stressed the need to provide children with spiritual strength earlier in life to meet modern challenges.
“In an increasingly secular world, the reality is this: The souls of our children are the battleground,” he wrote. “As the shepherd of the Archdiocese of Denver, I must do everything I can to help those who form children win that battle.”
The archdiocese’s 140 parishes will implement the change by 2020.
Currently, baptized Catholic children receive their first communion in the second grade, with confirmation following in their teens. The so-called “restored order” will have children receiving both confirmation and first Eucharist in third grade at the same Mass.
Confirmation is the completion of baptism, when children are fully initiated into the church with religious training aimed at helping them face spiritual challenges. Classes usually last up to a year.
Aquila and other archbishops are restoring the order of sacraments as they uniformly existed until about the 6th century, when the age of baptism gradually got older because of various delays in the ceremonies for parishes, families and bishops.
In Western civilization, exception became tradition, and the age of first communion was eventually delayed to 12 to 14 years old. In 1910, Pope Pius X urged lowering the age for communion to 7, but the age of confirmation still came later.
In 2002 in Fargo, N.D., Aquila led the first U.S. diocese to restore order. He now becomes the first to restore the order in a U.S. archdiocese and the first to restore order in two places.
Denver becomes the 10th U.S. archdiocese to restore order.
Aquila cited the change as a goal when in May 2012.
Two months earlier during his visit to Rome, Aquila received direct approval from Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.
“I was very surprised in what the Pope said to me, in terms of how happy he was that the sacraments of initiation have been restored to their proper order of baptism, confirmation then first Eucharist,” Aquila .
The pontiff asked if he had “begun to speak to other bishops about this.” He replied he had.
For the last 16 months, Scott Elmer has been working with parishes, including the surge in Catholics older than third grade who will need training for confirmation.
Thousand of Catholics go through confirmation each year in northern Colorado, he said. One concern the archdiocese acknowledges is that completion of religious initiation earlier could curtail formal educational programs as children enter their teens.
“The idea is that if we make this available earlier, it allows children the ability to grow their faith as they grow up,” Elmer said.
Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174, jbunch@denverpost.com or twitter.com/joeybunch
