Confirmation in the Context of School Catechesis – Together or Apart?

Abstract

The present-day generation of young people will determine the religious face of the Polish society in the 21^st century. As the religious values are not the strongest asset of young Catholics, it is necessary to ask what actions should be taken to make the young live in accordance with the Gospel.

The most important religious event in a teenager’s life is the Sacrament of Confirmation. This paper is an attempt to reflect on preparations for this sacrament as a chance of faith development. We can see a trend in thinking about these preparations, which may be called sacramentalisation, with special emphasis given to the best preparation for Confirmation without further planning. It consequently leads to receiving the sacrament and assuming that a certain stage of Christian formation was completed, and this results in a phenomenon of “parting from the Church”. It is worth looking at the preparation for the Confirmation as a significant element of faith development in which the sacrament is crucial but its purpose is to lead the young to deep faith.

Ministerial quests and activities must go in different directions. One of the basic forms of children and youth ministry remains catechesis carried out in school reality. However, the children and youth ministry cannot be limited to school catechesis. The results of further searching are e.g. proposals of different religious movements, retreat on the way, pilgrimages, prayer meetings, sports associations combining sport with religiousness, cultural centres promoting culture and Christian values and of course liturgy of sacraments, i.e. everything that takes place in a parish.

In this paper, we will point out the opportunities provided by religious education at school and in a parish while preparing the young for the Sacrament of Confirmation. These two realities that meet in the Sacrament of Confirmation and will become the object of reflection in terms of teenagers’ life in accordance with the Gospel. All this will be preceded by a religious and social portrait of a present-day teenager.