When a Church, because of the changed cultural context, needs to rethink the practice of pastoral care, must have clear criteria setting for its renewal. The challenges, read the wrong way, can turn into temptations. Where can we find these criteria? No doubt in an organic vision, where the liturgy, the theology, the spirituality intersect each other, fostering a genuine sense of tradition. This should not be seen as an retrospective ideology, but as a self-consciousness of the Church today about she has received as a inner life’s dynamic and not as an inert treasure.

In this perspective, it also looked at the issue of Christian initiation (= IC). Over the years, CEI has given some criteria to set the location of the IC. They have resulted in the opening official since 2002, of the "cantiere dell’IC “or “the workshop of the IC" which aims to reconstruct the catechetical routes, understood not as a preparation for the sacraments, but as a preparation for the Christian life.

The setting of the CEI requires a real leap, not an upgrade of teaching methods and even new models’ adoption  with the old mentality. The CEI project includes the dual case (specimen or copy) of a boy 7-14 years old, beginning on the catechumenate in view of baptism, which has not yet received, but his peers have received as babies and have to "complete" the initiation to the Eucharist.

     The Christian Initiation for boys

     The Catechumenal itinerary for boys is designed and renewed in the light of the catechumenate model for adult, which acts as a guiding paradigm. Just as was in the catechumenate practice in the early Church, the need for a comprehensive and integral way implies that all common elements to any journey of faith - that is the Word, the rite and the life - are properly valued.

The announcement and the reception of the Word will take the form of the first evangelization for kids and their families, of which we can not take for granted a Christian conscience as basis, then move on to a systematic catechesis on the fundamentals truth of faith, that is necessary to form a "mentality of faith."

In close connection with the catechesis, are part of the celebrations, which mark the stages of the route and of  the model of the Fathers of the traditio / redditio, such as the delivery of the Bible, the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, the Beatitudes, the Christian's New Law... For a comprehensive pedagogy of the faith, we can not restrict to transmit catechetical knowledge and theoretical knowledge on the Word of God. To adhere to the Word means welcome to join and be transformed into symbolic and rituals gestures in which it communicates.
The rite then -the third dimension to which the route you want to start- is open on the Christian life through practical forms of community life, of witness, and of charitable works, carefully proportionate to the level of the boys.

The CEI project shows how to end point of the trail, after about four years of training, the celebration in unitary form of the three sacraments of IC for catechumens boys, and the conferral of the Confirmation and first Eucharist for their peers already baptized.

    Gaps of Baptismal Pastoral

    If the CEI project also includes the catechumenate of the boys, is addressed in most cases to people that have already been baptized as babies. Perhaps the remote causes of the difficulties of approach to confirmation are almost precisely in the absence of a serious baptismal Pastoral.

The statement issued by the Congregation of the Faith in 1980, inspired by the criterion of the early Church, who practiced infant baptism only to the children of baptized believers, emphasizes the need to take “some guarantee so such a gift can be developed through a real education in the faith and in Christian life, so that the sacrament can achieve its reality." The document continues: "They are usually given by parents or relatives, although they may be substituted in different ways in the Christian community. But if these guarantees are not really serious, you may be tempted to defer the sacrament, or even reject it, if they are indeed non-existent "(n. 28).

If it is true that the baptismal epiclesis helps to transcend our mortal condition, and gives rise to real life, because the Spirit puts us into communion with Christ's body;  and if it is true that the baptism is necessary for salvation, it is also true that the sacraments are not a magic. Only in the encounter of two freedoms -our own and that of God- we experience the synergy in which God communicates. It is not time to give all the baptism as if it had a due right, nor to start up and to implement elite restrictions, but to help parents to reach and  grown-up grounds/motivations of faith that often remain implicit in their request of baptism. Here is all the space to unleash a little pastoral creativity.

Today, when a couple seeking the baptism for their child, is often the first and crucial meeting with the Church, which may depend on the outcome of their search for faith. Sometimes, unfortunately, this initial contact, reduces the performance of pure formality (when they celebrate, the canonical fitness of the godfathers) and a couple of meetings to present and explain the rite. It would be important to welcome the parents, paying attention to their life’s situation and the expectations that led them to ask for baptism. You must help them to go apart from the expressed declarations (family tradition, the desire of grandparents, a cultural sense of the sacred, ritualization of birth ...). To prepare the baptism of their son may be the chance to rediscover the value of their baptism. In this way, the parents are called to collaborate in preparing the necessary environment to ensure that their child can be educated in the Catholic faith, either directly by them or by some figure that acts as a guarantor, especially the sponsors, who are chosen not on the basis of friendship or kinship, but the reliability of their practice of faith.

It should then correct the practice of celebrating the baptism "family size" or "Community" baptisms, which are actually a series of individual baptisms, more or less sums up, while the Christian community, which normally meets for Sunday Mass, is absent and is not involved in welcoming those who come to join. Just because there is a vital link between baptism and incorporation into the Church, was once very important the presence of the community of believers, which he prepared, along with the newcomer, to welcome a new member.
In addition, it would be good to establish a "after" baptism, creating opportunities and ways to give continuity to the dialogue initiated between the Christian community and families of the baptized, not to be at having to start from scratch when, under 6 years of the child, the family will recur in the Parish for the catechism. You might think, for example, a memory annual of the baptism, in a celebratory and festive. Or to take other occasions throughout the liturgical year (3 to 5 times) for the blessing of children and their families combined with a moment of catechesis to parents, and suggest how they can start their children in prayer, to the knowledge of Jesus, the practice of some family rituals ...

     The gradual without shortcuts

    After these considerations it becomes clear that not accommodate the jump in quality, that the CEI project envisages, makes dangerous pitfalls all the shortcuts that one is tempted to take. One of these shortcuts is to move below the age of confirmation, to greater awareness of whom have to been confirmed, and so to solve the problems in which we meet today in the pastoral care of preadolescents and adolescents.

This road is a serious mistake. By altering the order of the three sacraments, the liturgy becomes the place where the Church becomes what it is, but a space to manage and adjust according to priorities established on the basis of other criteria.

To understand this, we must consider how the rituals of the IC were anciently celebrated. They had the following acts within a single liturgical celebration presided by the bishop. When the spread of Christianity made it impossible to the bishop to keep of presidency at the celebration, in the West changed this practice and tried to identify the specific gifts of individual sacraments. Nevertheless, even when the three sacraments of Christian initiation were not celebrated together, has continued to keep for a long time their order, considering them as a unique spiritual organism.

The fact that the antiquity used the term baptismus to denote the celebration set of the IC, including the anointing for the outpouring of the Spirit -our Confirmation- confirms that it has its essential reference to baptism, in the consolidation, development of the grace of adoptive filiation. The Baptism creates the new man, the Confirmation consolidates and develops  this new life by turning energy baptismal anointing thanks for the outpouring of the Spirit. The specific of the Confirmation is just to be making liturgical explicitation of the
baptismal event, globally considered as "rebirth by water and the Spirit" (cf Jn 3:5).

To look for a clear and distinct characterization of the Confirmation as a sacrament of Baptism is so different from something abstract. The anointing is an organic part of the mystery of Baptism: it is the Baptism’s fulfillment, just as the next act of this mystery -the participation in the Eucharist- is the fulfillment of the anointing. Nicola Cabasilas says: "[Christ] with the Baptismal water frees us from the mud of the malice and gives us his form, with the saint anointing makes us active with the energies of the Spirit ... but when it leads the initiate to the table and gives him food in their body, and turns it completely and changes in his own nature "(Life in Christ).

For this reason the Eucharist is the summit of the sacramental economy and therefore all the sacraments, especially the baptism and the confirmation, are ordered to it. According to this view, the location of the confirmation after the Baptism and first of the Eucharist is its position theologically correct. Only a lack of theological perspective could help to anticipate the Eucharist in relation to confirmation.

    Between age and maturity

    It is said that the confirmation is the sacrament of maturity, which makes adult Christians, referring to the thought of St. Thomas, but it does not really talk about “maturity”, but "perfect age of the spiritual life" and explicitly rejects the identification of this "age" and the maturity, viewed in physical and psychological terms. By itself, anyone can get baptized, immediately after the confirmation and the Eucharist. In the case of children, how can you be baptized in the faith of the Church, so in  the Church's faith can be confirmed and you can access to the Eucharist: this is the Eastern practice today.

If the relationship between the introduction to the Church and processes of the children’s psychological and social development  is a serious issue, it is not entirely relevant to link this issue to the confirmation. It still says that confirmation is the personal confirmation of baptismal faith decided for the baby to his parents. Now, if the confirmation of a baptized child as a baby can be too the occasion for a personal assumption of the baptismal profession of faith, we can not identify with it and determine the proper element of the sacrament of faith. And if there is need for "great moments" in which teenagers and young people can express in aware of and public way (in front of the community) a faith become a personal “heritage”, one has to ask if the confirmation should serve this purpose and if it be done about it. This interpretation, among other things, suggests the idea by accident that the period between Baptism and Confirmation is a trial period. But the baptism in itself is irrevocable, and expresses the definitive gift of God to fellowship with Him and with each man.

    Restore the right order

    At this point, the legitimate question is: At what age should give the Confirmation? But: up to what age can delay the confirmation? The separation of confirmation from baptism, his deferment in time and its anticipation in relation to the Eucharist, must be justified, not vice versa.
    It is therefore necessary that another criterion prevail: that of restoring the proper order of the three sacraments (logical and chronological order), not only in terms of theological content, but also of celebratory sequence. This is what calls to make the mentioned CEI document written in the opening: "Around the age of eleven, possibly at the Easter Vigil, the catechumens boys celebrate the three sacraments of the IC, while their peers already baptized celebrate the confirmation and first Eucharist" (no. 54).

We can conclude that the question of age of the Confirmation is a false problem. You can not load the confirmation of all the educational significance that today we threw at him. The sacraments are always talking in a particular context and provide perspective and guidance only in that context. If the context is not there, it is useless to ask them what they can not give.
    We can be questioned, however, on the quality of the offer that the Christian community can give to those families who request the sacraments for their children. Not  what minimum conditions to give the sacrament, but such ecclesial conditions we have to offer to better accompany who ask to be brought to faith in Christ.

Maybe we need to reduce the expectations of formal "consistency" of children and families and increase the capacity to exercise, by the Christian community, a sympathy and an interest in the quality of the welcome and the relationships of fraternity that has to offer. This means that, in addition to ensuring that there is a mature community, it is essential to create the "spiritual atmosphere" of the community which allow the meeting, which creates the context in order to build genuine and meaningful relationships, inspired by the new life received in Baptism, that is the only area where you can pass on the faith in the Lord. The bottom line is, therefore, the motherhood of the Church, its ability to generate the experience of the faith. If there is not a lively and vibrant community of believers cannot be a communication of faith.

Don Marco Busca
Maria Campatelli
Aletti Centre 
Via Paolina 25- 00184 Roma