Salt Lake City’s bishop instructed pastors last month that children baptized above the age of reason should not receive the other sacraments of initiation at the time of their baptism.
While the newly announced policy would seem at odds with canonical norms on the subject, the Salt Lake City diocese has told priests it is enacting only a “temporary” moratorium on observing the Church’s universal law on sacramental initiation, while a “faith formation plan” is developed for the diocese.
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Bishop Oscar Solis notified Utah priests in a Nov. 22 memo that children baptized above the age of reason would now be required in the Salt Lake City diocese to enroll in “the faith formation class appropriate for their age,” after baptism.
“When deemed ready, they will enter a two-year preparation process for First Penance, followed by First Communion. Once the child has received their First Communion and participated in a sustained and comprehensive program of religious education with regular participation in the Sunday Mass, they may join the preparation for Confirmation,” Solis wrote.
“At no point should all three sacraments of initiation be administered together at the Easter Vigil or any other time,” the bishop directed priests.
The Utah policy would seemingly run counter to the Church’s universal law on sacramental initiation, which explains that anyone who has attained the use of reason, legally presumed at the age of seven, should receive all three sacraments of initiation — baptism, confirmation, and Eucharist — at the same time, after undergoing the Church’s prescribed rites and periods of formation.
Canon 866 of the Church’s Code of Canon Law explains that, “unless there is a grave reason to the contrary, an adult who is baptized is to be confirmed immediately after baptism and is to participate in the eucharistic celebration also by receiving communion.”
Canon 852 clarifies that when the law speaks of adults with respect to baptism, it has in mind “all those who, no longer infants, have attained the use of reason.”
That benchmark, canon 97 explains, is presumed “with the completion of the seventh year” — on a child’s seventh birthday.
Indeed, the newly translated ritual book for the Order of Christian Initiation for Adults indicates that confirmation is not to be “separated” from baptism except for some “special reason.”
In his Nov. 22 memo, Solis said that he had initially become concerned about Christian initiation in 2017, when “I observed a considerable number of children being initiated into the Church after only one year of sacramental preparation.”
While he wrote that he had initially separated baptism from other sacraments of initiation at Salt Lake City’s Cathedral of the Madeleine, he had decided to “extend the moratorium across the diocese…until such time as a comprehensive faith formation plan is put into place in our Diocese.”
The Salt Lake City diocese has not responded to several requests for comment from The Pillar. But after The Pillar contacted the diocese this week, Solis distributed to pastors a document entitled “Authority for Moratorium on OCIA Adapted for Children and Separation of the Sacraments of Initiation.”
That text, which was a recitation of several canonical and liturgical norms appended with notes, stressed that “the moratorium is a pause, not a termination of administering all three sacraments together.”
Splitting preparation for the sacraments of initiation conferred on children, the memo suggested, “allows time for greater comprehension and consent.”
While canon law requires that children who are baptized at seven or older receive the sacraments of initiation at the same liturgy, there are parishes in various parts of the U.S. which do not confer Eucharist or confirmation on such children, requiring instead additional sacramental preparation ahead of continued sacramental initiation — although there is no data available to indicate how widespread that practice is.
The Salt Lake City policy would appear to be the first diocesan affirmation of that practice, despite the universal canonical norm on the subject.
