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“One sure way to change a group of peace-loving, God-fearing, church-loving professional Catholics into brawling Jerry-Springerites,” writes Frank Karl, “is to ask innocently, ‘At what age should we confirm?’” (see pages 13–15). Karl’s article is subtitled with the often-used description of confirmation — “A Sacrament in Search of a Theology.” However, a more accurate, albeit unwieldy, descriptor would be: “A sacrament with a nearly 2,000-year-old theology that some would ignore because it does little to support youth ministry.”

The teaching authority of the church could not be more clear. The theology of confirmation is rooted in initiation. Fudging the word “initiation” to talk of a mature acceptance of one’s initiation or to talk of an initiation into adult faith does not work. The “initiation” that the sacrament of confirmation effects is one and the same “initiation” effected by baptism. “The conjunction of the two celebrations signifies the unity of the paschal mystery, the close link between the mission of the Son and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and the connection between the two sacraments through which the Son and the Holy Spirit come with the Father to those who are baptized” (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults 215).

Speaking of some other kind of initiation beyond baptismal initiation also fails to take into account what the candidate is being initiated into. They are initiated into the full fellowship of the eucharistic assembly, the place where we are most clearly and really the Body of Christ. They are initiated so that they may participate with the rest of us in the heavenly banquet with all the privileges and responsibilities that banquet confers. The candidates, by their full, conscious and active participation in the Eucharist, are “raised to the ranks of the royal priesthood” (217). Any “initiation” language applied to Christians who, through their communion at the Lord’s table, have already reached “the culminating point of their Christian initiation” has an inauthentic, even tortured feel to it.
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