CONFIRMING OR CONFORMING

In the previous blog I mentioned the terror awaiting those who were of age to be confirmed. There are seven sacrament in the Catholic Church.

1st Sacrament
We we were baptised at birth (no choice here).

2nd Sacrament
Confession. This one is a classic chapter and will need to be explored later on its own.

3rd Sacrament
We were then allowed to go to Holy Communion at age 7 - we had no choice here either except we were pretty excited to be wearing a white dress and veil and were treated to a beautiful breakfast afterward.

4th Sacrament
At the age of around 10 the next episode to be endured was Confirmation. Well, there was no choice here either as it was a mandatory 'privilege' to become a soldier of the church and an honour to die, if we had to, for the good of the church. The brainwashing established here stayed with us for many years and I am sure this contributed to my continued nightmares, which persisted long past my school days.

Confirmation, we were told, strengthened our faith and the ceremonious slap by the visiting bishop was just a reminder of the suffering we may be asked to make for the love of our church and, through that, for the love of God. Hence the expression "Why, for the love of God are you doing that?" or similar sayings.  I think this was an expression linked to unreasonable behaviour. So the slap was discussed and feared by our group for the months prior to this demonstration of our commitment to the good of the cause.

I don't remember anyone falling from the altar after 'the slap' but I do remember it being unnecessarily hard and I feel the bishop would have got quite a 'kick' out of the whole procedure and would have looked on Confirmation as one of the perks of being a bishop. 

So we conformed. It was a necessary event to be endured. Not one of us asked why. Ever! Hard to understand?

5th-7th Sacraments are Marriage, Holy Orders and Extreme Unction and I will deal with these later.

OLD BAG revisited

The last entry was 7 August 2010 (Annie's 44th birthday, in fact) and I thought that maybe this mode of communication was outdated by social media but two things got me interested in continuing:

Yesterday we went to the Premier's Concert in Sydney (free concert for seniors) with some friends from Newcastle and we were discussing the Catholic Church, Cardinal Pell and his 'get over it' attitude and 'it doesn't help the victims to keep dragging it up' response

 and the second happened on the train coming home when I was reading Mario Puzo's book "Amerta" and there was a piece on Confirmation. This reminded me of the fearful time when we were being prepared by the nuns for our Confirmation - the confirming of our being soldiers for life for the Catholic Church symbolised by the ceremonious slapping of our face by the bishop. Stories were rife re the intensity of that slap.

So the blog continues .....