Help with Explaining Catholic Confirmation to my Year 7 Child

[Lovestosing]

The title says it all really. DS is due to make his confirmation at the end of April and he needs to write a letter to our priest to explain why he would like to receive confirmation.
The trouble is that I'm finding it difficult to explain what it's all about; I was confirmed in Year 6 at my catholic primary alongside all my friend's and we just kind of accepted it and I haven't thought about it since!
DS has recently started at catholic secondary school but attended a non catholic primary, and although I have been taking him to church for the last three years or so we don't often discuss our faith, particularly as my husband isn't catholic or religious in any way.
I have told him it's optional and I don't expect him to but he is keen to do it, I just feel uncomfortable with him doing it without really knowing what it's about. Could anyone help me explain it to him? Are there any websites or books which could help?

Are you in the UK? Year 7 is very young for confirmation because it's actually quite complicated (cradle to grave though a la carte Catholic here). Here it's done when the child is about 14.

There is also tuition provided by the church where we live. I'd ask your son to be honest - he doesn't know much about the sacrament but is looking forward to learning more as a committed Catholic. They can't expect a boy to know more before the lessons.

Sorry I haven't answered what you asked!

Confirmation is one of the seven sacraments. It is the one of the three sacraments of initiation into Catholicism.(baptism and first holy communion being the first two)

Your son has faith and believes in God. I think if he writes from his heart the letter will be fine.
If he is a bit stuck, you may be able to get ideas of what to write from google

Are you sure it's confirmation. This doesn't usually happen till a child is a lot older say 14. Just say it's a blessing by a bishop. But check it out and make sure it's confirmation you're talking about and not first holy communion.

Sorry I thought you said 7 year old child.

Confirmation here is between 10 and 12. Basically it is like renewing your baptismal promises for yourself rather than parents doing it for you. You also choose your own name, again, rather than parents.

We did a lot of work around the sacraments before confirmation (aged 12, Irish school.) I have vague memories of the scrapbooks, but as as CrazyCatMamma says, it's about being old enough, in theory, to make your own commitment to the church.
Maybe read the promises made on his behalf from his christening, discuss what they might mean in real life (e.g. rejecting Satan's empty promises sounds a lot more dramatic and glamorous than actually just choosing not to go along with friends if they are doing something that he thinks is wrong. Maybe it also means telling someone if someone they see as being in a position of power might be doing something wrong.)
I wasn't able to make my goddaughter's confirmation so that last one I went to was my own, so I'm a bit hazy on the details, but it might be a great opportunity to discuss what being a good catholic and a good person means to him?

Thank you, we are in the UK and he is 11, the standard confirmation age has just been lowered this year, although I was still in primary when I made mine! Thank you for your help, I will talk to him about it and will go over baptismal promises.

It's up to you but it would be quite easy to postpone this I think if he doesn't feel ready. It's quite a serious thing for a child to make these promises. Don't know why they have lowered the age. Maybe to make sure more people are confirmed and get them young. Don't really agree with this. Still who am I to argue with the Catholic Church.

Well somebody should argue with them - how on earth does a 11 year old understand such things? They've probably lowered it to catch them before they develop more rational thought. Obscene.

Personally I'd prefer confirmation to be an adult decision but two of mine decided to be confirmed at 13. If your son wants to do this then you might find this book helpful 'Living Your Confirmation; Putting Promises into Action' by Peter Maidment and Paul Butler. It isn't RC so it won't be looking at the RC practices but what it will do is talk about what it means to live a faith rather than just get faith out of the box for an hour on Sunday.

We use two preparation programmes: Chosen and YouCat.

Chosen is very American, but has some excellent material. A lot of the videos are available on YouTube. This is the first one in the series and you can get to others from there.

YouCat is a much shorter course more directly linked to Confirmation itself. The stuff online isn't much use on its own but if you wanted to you can get the book for around £10.

If I were you I'd look first at the (standard/ adult) Catechism section on Confirmation and maybe go through that together with him. You can get it from the Vatican website.

1302-1303 on the effects of Confirmation would be particularly useful in writing the letter:
'1302 It is evident from its celebration that the effect of the sacrament of Confirmation is the full outpouring of the Holy Spirit as once granted to the apostles on the day of Pentecost.

1303 From this fact, Confirmation brings an increase and deepening of baptismal grace:

• it roots us more deeply in the divine filiation which makes us cry, "Abba! Father!";
• it unites us more firmly to Christ;
• it increases the gifts of the Holy Spirit in us;
• it renders our bond with the Church more perfect;
• it gives us a special strength of the Holy Spirit to spread and defend the faith by word and action as true witnesses of Christ, to confess the name of Christ boldly, and never to be ashamed of the Cross.'

You could work on those with him. What the priest is looking for is probably some basic commitment to choose the faith for himself, renew the decision his parents made in baptism etc. It would be fine, IMO, to say 'I don't fully understand what Confirmation is about yet but I would like to know more about my faith and deepen my relationship with Jesus.'

Reassure your son that the letter is not binding, he's free to decide he doesn't want to be confirmed yet at any moment. I always remind pupils of that on the day of Confirmation itself as well as at the beginning of the course.

In the COfE, Y10 is more typical.

It’s not up to the parent to explain. It has to come from the confirmation candidate. Confirmation is about making their own decisions.

Saying that, the RCC tends to look at numbers alone.

I don't think it's a fair characterisation to say the R.C. Church looks at numbers alone, it's more a case that the sacramentology is slightly different (also, Year 9/10 or older is much more common in RC too, but a minority of dioceses, like the It's, do it younger): the RC understanding of Confirmation is that the young person 'confirming' the faith chosen for them at baptism is only a minor part of the sacrament. More importantly, God confirms the choice he made in baptism and strengthens the person as a witness to the faith. This, coupled with the focus on the sacraments as mysteries with which we cooperate but can never fully understand, may mean that there is less insistence on the young person's independence from his/ her parents. It's important that the confirmand isn't being pressured into it, but s/he is not expected to have understood everything there is to know about Confirmation (since it is an unfathomable mystery) or to have made the decision without parental guidance.

Fink thank you for your posts, very helpful.