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Age of Confirmation Reception to be Phased In Through 2027
In January 2024, Cardinal Sean O’Malley announced that the age for the Sacrament of Confirmation in the Archdiocese of Boston would be changing from around age 16 (or 10th grade) to around age 13, or 8th grade. Many factors led to this decision: to decrease the gaps between the Sacraments of Initiation (Baptism, Eucharist, and Confirmation); to increase and strengthen the role of families in the faith formation of their young teens; and to make the grace of the Sacrament of Confirmation available to more young people at a critical time in their adolescence. Many studies show that teens today are making decisions to associate - or disaffiliate - with a faith tradition in early adolescence.
The Archdiocese of Boston is allowing each parish / collaborative to phase in the Confirmation reception age as they think is best in their community. After much discussion, we have decided in the Concord-Carlisle Catholic Collaborative to take a gradual approach, in order to best ensure that our teens have a good foundation of discipleship as they receive God's grace in the sacrament of Confirmation.
Candidates for Confirmation will be expected to experience Teen Discipleship Essentials (one year) and then complete Teen Discipleship and Confirmation Preparation (a second year).*
Confirmation Reception Age
Phases of Change in the Concord-Carlisle Catholic Collaborative:2024-2025 School Year: teens in Grades 10, 11, and 12, with some 9th graders*
2025-2026 School Year: teens in Grades 9, 10, 11, and 12, with some 8th graders*
2026-2027 School Year: teens in Grades 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
* = Teens who are already experiencing a life of discipleship (regular prayer, Mass, participation in ministry and missions) are invited to complete their preparation to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation. This begins when a Teen completes the “Confirmation Step 1” online form to request to receive the sacrament, and then has a conversation with our Coordinator of Youth Ministry (Tony).
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Additional Historical Information, from the Archdiocese of Boston:
The reception of the sacrament of Confirmation in the Archdiocese of Boston most typically took place in grades 7-9 from at least as far back sometime in the 1950s through the late 1970s. Some historical records seem to indicate the average age for Confirmation to be 12-14 as far back as the 1800's. In the late 1970s and early 1980s reception moved to grades 9-11 where it has (mostly) remained until now (2024).
Leading up to this change, there was broad recognition on both the 2017-2020 and 2023 Confirmation committees - as well as among many of the clergy and faith formation leaders of the archdiocese - of some of the challenges of the current practice and also broad general agreement in favor of a change for a variety of reasons.It is acknowledged that not everyone is in favor of the change.
For many, their experience of Confirmation preparation has not fostered lifelong discipleship, which is perhaps too much to ask of Confirmation preparation alone. This decision hopes to point us towards finding a way to meaningfully address that challenge.
The diversity in the normal age of reception of the sacrament of Confirmation in the United States stands in contradiction to the Holy See's intention in allowing individual conferences of bishops to set a normal age of reception for the entirety of each conference (as opposed to what we have now - variety from diocese to diocese), the Holy See has communicated that to the USCCB and asked them to fix it, the closest thing available to a broad consensus regarding age of Confirmation in both the Archdiocese of Boston and the dioceses of the USCCB is middle school, and this change brings Boston more in line with that consensus, which appears to be closer to the desire of the Holy See on the matter.
Additional Information - the Opportunity that Changing the Age of Confirmation Provides:
While implementing this sort of change may involve some period of uncertainty and disruption to our established ways of doing things, we believe we have an opportunity to offer evangelizing and family-oriented kerygmatic catechesis surrounding our Confirmation preparation efforts, closer to the age at which many young people are disaffiliating from their religious traditions. We hope that young people, in cooperation with their families, will experience the grace of the sacrament of Confirmation and an invitation to lifelong discipleship through our efforts. Many also believe that providing the grace of the sacrament to young people before they face the challenges of high school is worthwhile.
It has been interesting to hear from those who are concerned that Confirmation is a sacrament that should not be received until people can understand it with some degree of maturity. To some extent, the reception of grace in a sacrament will always be a mystery and therefore only partially intelligible.
Also, those with developmental challenges who may never be able to understand and explain a sacrament the way we might desire are not only invited but encouraged to avail themselves of the grace of the sacraments. Each receives a free gift of God's grace and understands it according to his or her capacity. The Church's default age for Confirmation reception - for those who are Baptized as infants - is at age 7, which the Church considers to be "the age of discretion" or "the age of reason," unless another age is specified. That is all not to mention the hundreds of years during which the Church offered Confirmation to infants.
To receive Confirmation is to be sealed with the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We can talk about the gifts and fruits of the Spirit to help anyone discern how the Spirit is moving in their lives - but we should all expect to be surprised by the movement of the Spirit in our lives. We don't know what the Holy Spirit is going to do! We are giving ourselves over to something much greater and more powerful than ourselves.