Imagine you are a hockey player. You love hockey and feel like you could compete well in the NHL. You even have a favorite team, the Minnesota Wild. Draft day rolls around, and before you know it, you get drafted! They give you a jersey, you sign a contract, there's a big press conference, you meet your teammates... You've been initiated!
But oddly, before entering the draft you had come to realize you really didn't like hockey that much anymore. You suspected it could be a great life and that you could be very successful, but you didn't really intend to play hockey. You had other plans. So after getting drafted and signing your contract, you decide to not show up.
You skip practices.
You don't show up to meetings.
You don't show up to games.
The owner, general manager, coach, players, and fans are all left wondering: if you didn't want to play, why did you enter the draft? You hurt the team and the fans, and yourself, by entering yourself into a draft for a league you never really wanted to play in.
This is what it's like when someone receives Confirmation in 8th grade with no intention to live out the Catholic faith in its fullness. Confirmation is an initiation into the Catholic religion. Why would someone get initiated if they don't intend to live out the Catholic faith?
Our 8th graders at Saint John's don't need to know for sure they want Confirmation now. They just need to be willing to enter the process. Our hope is that by spring, each 8th grader has a personal desire and intention to fully live out the Catholic faith (described below) including going through ongoing formation and following the precepts of the Church.
Confirmation is one of three Sacraments of Initiation into the Catholic Church, along with Baptism and Holy Communion. Confirmation is closely related to Baptism and is given with Baptism and Holy Communion for adult converts entering the Church. For historical and very practical reasons, Confirmation is now separated from Baptism and Holy Communion. At Saint John's Confirmation is given to Baptized Catholics in the 8th grade.
Confirmation is a deeper initiation into the life of the Church and is a very special Sacrament in which we receive very powerful graces from God for the building up of His Body, the Church. For this reason, 8th graders spend a school year specially preparing for this Sacrament so that the graces might take deeper root in the soul and bring about a larger transformation in the young person. Saint John's parish, on behalf of Archbishop Hebda and Father Tom, guides this preparation process for our young people so that, by the end of 8th grade, the young person is prepared for, and desires, the Sacrament of Confirmation, and to live the Catholic faith for the rest of his or her life.
After receiving Confirmation, it is important that each person commits to ongoing formation. An 8th grader receiving Confirmation at Saint John's should have the intention to keep growing in the Catholic faith through the highly-formative years of high school. High school is a time of learning and development, and is a time to really BEGIN Catholic Formation in an adult manner, not END. Here are the ways we recommend young people be formed in their faith in high school. If someone does not intend to keep growing in their faith, they should sincerely think and pray about receiving Confirmation.
(These quotations are from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, in its section about the Precepts of the Catholic Church (#2041-3).)
Note that these precepts of the Catholic Church are required, unless you have a legitimate reason for not meeting them. For example: