Rethinking Confirmation Prep

At table this afternoon, I shared with one of the Dominican friars that the long-awaited McCarrick Report was finally out, to which he shrugged his shoulders and continued eating his lunch.

My friend remembers well the "silly season" as though it were last week when, both during and after the Council, all goofiness broke loose.  Not only does he remember the nearly-impetuous changes to the liturgy, the near-wholesale abandonment of religious life (and the sore abuse that faithful religious had to endure), and the dumbing-down of doctrinal formation in many places--not only in theological academies but also in catechism classes, and "lifestyle changes."  He had been in the Church of Hard Knocks long enough to recognise the McCarrick imbroglio for what it was--another day in the life of Catholic, Inc.

It would be a gross simplification indeed to blame this "silly season" on the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council.  What happened, rather, was that many people used the Council--without delving much into its sixteen documents--as an excuse for the seismic changes in the Church; it didn't happen suddenly in 1965 (or even in 1962) but had been pressure-cooking for some time.  Since when is another matter, but the fact remains that something went wrong well before the Council and St John XXIII was wrongfully used as a poster boy for various pet causes.  (His autobiographical Journal of a Soul inoculated me against many progressivist hagiographies--and traditionalist slanders--about him.)

"Pet causes," I said.  We'll come back to that.

My friar-confrere and I spoke about the "system failure" that the McCarrick Report described throughout its four-hundred-some pages, and our conversation turned over to how the ecclesiastical bureaucracy could be repaired.  Please, God, not another Motu proprio.  Nor, I hope against hope, "clergy meetings" (which inevitably give rise to more committees).  Certainly the American bishops are dreading the necessary conversations they will have to endure during their annual fall assembly.  Dr Edward Peters, I am sure, will have a blog post or two about how canon law already has a system in place to prevent the kinds of procedural irregularities that were circumvented in the election of such malfeasant prelates.

We'll come back to that, too.

As I told the friar, "I know I sound like a musician who can sing only one note, but my research on the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit suggests to me that this is precisely what's missing in Christian formation--the role of the Holy Spirit's guidance in discipleship."  In other words, the "system failure" is precisely in being unspiritual, unpentecostal.

In hindsight, I told him, most--if not all--Confirmation preparation classes I've encountered amount to little more than "Baptism Prep, 2.0," as it we're having a do-over of everything we should've learned the first time around but didn't, a re-catechesis, as it were.  "Yet, if you look at the Confirmation prep books out there, there is next to nothing about the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit besides a queue--'These are the Seven Gifts, moving on...'"  How many Confirmandi could repeat Isaiah 11:1-3 from heart, let alone explain what each of the Seven Gifts do and how to use them?  If the answer is "very few," the question then becomes "What's the point of having the indwelling Holy Spirit if we keep him on a leash?"

As the friar and I agreed, most Catholic believers assume that cooperation with the Holy Spirit is something "automatic" that comes to us like breathing.  One trusted brother-priest sought my advice about lay preaching (within the boundaries of canon law, of course) and indicated that he wanted to allow the laity to exercise their "baptismal right."  "Right and good," replied I, "but what comes though by way of preaching does not come by automatically; one must be shaped by the Seven Gifts which, in turn, train us for sensitivity to the Holy Spirit's nudges."  We cannot invoke "baptismal rights" with simply an open mouth and call it "preaching."

It seems to me, therefore, that the massive "system failure" in clerical careerism--as well as in being ordinary Christians--is that we expect grace to just "happen" when, in fact, grace must be cooperated with.  So why are we not teaching that in Confirmation prep?

Going back to my point about 'more bureaucracy to fix a bureaucratic failure,' it is interesting to note that St Thomas Aquinas, in the Second Part of the Second Part of his Summa theologiae, discusses each of the theological virtues and cardinal virtues in turn, along with their corresponding gifts of the Holy Spirit and Beatitude, and 'wraps up' his discussion of each by mentioning this or that aspect of the Ten Commandments.  In other words, the Ten Commandments were never meant to be kept by our own gumption and gall, but by the indwelling Holy Spirit which the Seven Gifts trains us in being sensitive to.

If we made Confirmation about--can you imagine it?--the Holy Spirit rather than just an adolescent milestone, I think the face of the Catholic Church would be vastly different, more beautiful, in fact.  Instead, we often teach young believers about God's love that will "forgive you no matter what," forgetting that "God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us" (Rom 5:5), as if 'sin, forgiven' is something more to be desired than 'Love, indwelling us.'  If we made Confirmation prep about learning how to befriend the Holy Spirit, about giving the Holy Spirit sovereignty in our lives making us ever freer, if we took the time to practice using the Seven Gifts, I would wager every last book of mine that we would have glowing young Christians ready to win the world for Christ.

"Be aglow with the Spirit" (Rom 12:11);

"Do not quench the Holy Spirit" (1 Thess 5:19);

"Be filled with the Spirit" (Eph 5:18).

When I spoke earlier about "pet causes," I was not necessarily referring to pet causes in themselves, but the driving force whereby Christians pursue them:  Social activism initiatives, community service, various parish ministries, and so on.  Are we driven by the Holy Spirit, or by our personal enthusiasm?  Very often, I think, we Christians mistake excitement about a project for Pentecostal inspiration when, in fact, it is not, because agere sequitur esse, "action follows being," as we Thomists say, meaning that our personal, existential condition gives rise to the things we do and how we do them.  You know what I mean--how often do such "pet projects" begin with prayer, or just a scripted one?  What accounts for the uncomfortable squirming when some in the group speak about "The Lord working through me" as if he  or she were making a major social faux pas?  This, I would suggest to you, indicates that excitement, not Pentecostal inspiration, is the driving force.  Fuelling the Church with something other than Pentecostal inspiration degrades the Church from an organism to an organisation.

And the Holy Spirit is too courteous a friend to barge in uninvited.  As St Bonaventure of Bagnoregio famously said, "The Holy Spirit comes where He is loved, where He is invited, where He is expected.”

Besides the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, there is yet another glaring omission in most--if not all Confirmation preps I've encountered, even by the loudest self-appointed vanguards of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, who conveniently ignore this:

The Church, which the Spirit guides in way of all truth and which He unified in communion and in works of ministry, He both equips and directs with hierarchical and charismatic gifts and adorns with His fruits.  By the power of the Gospel He makes the Church keep the freshness of youth. Uninterruptedly He renews it and leads it to perfect union with its Spouse.  The Spirit and the Bride both say to Jesus, the Lord, "Come!"

...These charisms, whether they be the more outstanding or the more simple and widely diffused, are to be received with thanksgiving and consolation for they are perfectly suited to and useful for the needs of the Church. Extraordinary gifts are not to be sought after, nor are the fruits of apostolic labor to be presumptuously expected from their use; but judgment as to their authenticity and proper use belongs to those who are appointed leaders in the Church, to whose special competence it belongs, not indeed to extinguish the Spirit, but to test all things and hold fast to that which is good.

...On the contrary [the laity] understand that it is their noble duty to shepherd the faithful and to recognize their ministries and charisms, so that all according to their proper roles may cooperate in this common undertaking with one mind. For we must all "practice the truth in love, and so grow up in all things in Him who is head, Christ. For from Him the whole body, being closely joined and knit together through every joint of the system, according to the functioning in due measure of each single part, derives its increase to the building up of itself in love" (Dogmatic Constitution Lumen gentium, nn. 7, 12, 30).

Yet, when was the last time you heard "charisms" or "charismatic gifts" mentioned in Confirmation prep?  In their landmark study Christian Initiation and Baptism in the Holy Spirit, Fr Killian McDonnell OSB and Fr George Montague SM demonstrated that, well into the early Middle Ages, preparing catechumens for receiving the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit included an element of receptivity to charisms.  If the Second Vatican Council wanted to see the charisms used, where else can we start, besides Confirmation preparation?  And why not receive them at Confirmation--unless we continue to fall prey to the urban legend that this sacrament is only a "rite of passage into adulthood" (which it's not)? 

As I have been discovering lately--thanks to Metropolitan John Zizioulas--there is a cosmic difference between "theological epistemology" and "theological gnosiology":  Whereas the former has to do with dogmatic facts, the latter has to do with living dogma.  It's the difference between 'being on the outside, looking in' and 'being on the inside, looking up.'  The whole Trinity isn't something we "know about" but someOne whom we "know"--personally, experientially, as a friend.  What's the point of singing on every Pentecost Sunday (where the parish priest has the wherewithal to even have it sung!) the Golden Sequence when we chant of the Holy Spirit who is Dulcis hospes animae, "the soul's delightsome Guest"?  After all, isn't it rude, at the end of the day we're Confirmed, to effectively say to the Holy Spirit, "Come on in, sit over there and don't make a mess of me"?  Rather, Confirmation prep ought to teach candidates for the sacrament how to befriend the Holy Spirit.  Again, St Thomas Aquinas was revolutionary to speak of the theological virtue of charity as "friendship with God."  Yet we're scarcely a friend of God when our relationship to him is limited to scripted prayers buzzed off occasionally and the Bible left unread and, therefore, God unlistened to.

My overall point is this:  I'm not entirely sure we've given the Holy Spirit his hour to renew the Church.  Renewal must be just that--by renewal, not "reorganisation."  And renewal happens in no other way than by the Holy Spirit; if we're looking for ways to renew the Church without something so inconvenient and troublemaking as "walking in the Spirit," it's a sure sign that we're taking the exact reverse course to "renewal."  We have got to stop being de facto Pelagians and surrender, rather, to the workings of grace and personal transformation that comes about by intimacy with the Holy Spirit, and intentionally looking for holiness before we reach the confessional doors instead of just after.  And Confirmation is exactly the place undo this veritable Pneumatomachianism.

Hence did Good Pope John begin the Second Vatican Council with that oft-repeated but seldom-reflected prayer which, upon closer inspection, is wonderfully dangerous:

"O Holy Spirit, renew your wonders in this our day, as by a new Pentecost!"

His immediate predecessor, Pope Pius XII, spoke of the Holy Spirit as the "soul of the Church."  À la Metropolitan Zizioulas, maybe it's high time we turn this dogmatic fact to living dogma.