A 17 year old Catholic kid in Minnesota was banned from receiving the sacrament of Confirmation by his parish priest because of a Facebook photo he put up against the marriage amendment, according to The Minneapolis Star Tribune.
“The Facebook post in question was a photo of Lennon in front of an altered political sign. Originally reading “Vote Yes” on the Minnesota Marriage Amendment, which would have changed the state’s constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman, Lennon scribbled out the “yes” and replaced it with “NO!”
The teen’s mother says she was “called into a private conversation with the priest soon after the photo was discovered and was told her son wouldn’t be allowed to complete confirmation.”
The newspaper also reports that the family is being denied communion. Church officials made no comment for the story.
Wow. That’s a pretty big deal. Dollars to donuts this priest gets reprimanded in some way.
HT Culture War Notes
November 16, 2012 at 2:32 am
If the teenager is not in full communion with the Church and will not profess Catholic faith in its entirety, then the priest is correct to consider the teen unfit for Confirmation. How or why would someone who does not give evidence of having Catholic Faith be fully initiated into the Church? The pastor will have to vouch in the presence of the bishop that all of the candidates for Confirmation are worthy recipients of the sacrament.
November 16, 2012 at 2:56 am
There is so much more to this…
November 16, 2012 at 3:01 am
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November 16, 2012 at 3:02 am
I think Matthew Roth is right. There must be so much more if the family is being denied Holy Communion. It'd be great to read more about this.
November 16, 2012 at 3:25 am
An article in the Park Rapids, MN newspaper says more about it here
I noticed that the reported referred to confirmation as a rite of passage. I wondered to myself how many Catholics mistakenly agree with that understanding?
November 16, 2012 at 4:37 am
Did this teenager steal the sign?
Does the teenager accept the Church's infallible teaching on sexual morality? Someone who willfully rejects it is well advised to repent and make a confession before receiving Holy Communion.
November 16, 2012 at 4:38 am
Did this teenager steal the sign?
Does the teenager accept the Church's infallible teaching on sexual morality? Someone who willfully rejects it is well advised to repent and make a confession before receiving Holy Communion.
November 16, 2012 at 5:25 am
Wow. It took all of an hour from the first comment for someone to bring up the homo-priest scandal. Of course it is completely and utterly irrelevant to the subject at hand but lets throw it in there anyway.
November 16, 2012 at 6:41 am
I have to agree with the previous posters here; there is much more to this story. This should be a personal and spiritual matter between the teen in question and his church, yet for some reason individual(s) have escalated and publicized this story, most likely to further some specific agenda.
Incidentally, since when is a teen not going to confirmation a subject worthy of an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune? Maybe the team covering the Goldstein bar mitzvah missed their deadline?
November 16, 2012 at 11:28 am
If an individual does not accept the teaching of the Church, he cannot be confirmed in the Faith. That would be to make a mockery of the Catholic Faith and its sacraments. Obviously, a priest who permitted such open derision for the Church and the sacrament would be grievously at fault – not only for imperilling the soul of the individual concerned but all of those Catholics that are aware of the situation, who would be seriously scandalised.
November 16, 2012 at 2:35 pm
Well put, Lynda! There may be more to the story, but looking at the bare bones of it–kid publicly flouts Church teaching on marriage and is denied Confirmation by a parish priest who obviously takes Church teaching more seriously–I'm grateful the priest had the moral courage to do what he did. I hope more do the same. It's far better for the souls of those denied the sacraments than just being "nice" and sending the message that the sacrament is really no big deal.
November 16, 2012 at 2:48 pm
It may be a "rite" of passage in some sense, but confirmation is not a "right" of passage. You do not have a "right" to be confirmed unless you meet all qualifications. At least on the info available, looks like the priest did the correct thing.
Denying confirmation under these circumstances seems about as controversial as denying citizenship to someone who refuses to take the oath of citizenship. I agree, why is this public news?
November 16, 2012 at 3:08 pm
Come to think of it, maybe this is news – a priest actually denying someone a sacrament based upon the person's failure to adhere to Catholic teaching.
November 16, 2012 at 3:35 pm
A quote from the mother, from the news article linked in a previous comment above:
“You kind of know the Catholic beliefs, but I never thought they would deny somebody confirmation because you weren’t 100 percent. I guess that’s what shocks me."
Someone being confirmed, or someone trying to raise a child in the Catholic faith, ideally should more than "kind of" know the Catholic beliefs.
November 16, 2012 at 4:51 pm
Paul H. quoted the mother of the story:
“You kind of reject the Catholic beliefs, but I never thought they would deny somebody confirmation because you weren’t 100 percent. I guess that’s what shocks me."
There… fixed it for you! 🙂
Does this lady (and those of like mind) seriously not know the difference between "not knowing the Memorare" (i.e. "not knowing everything, 100%") and "publicly repudiating what you're claiming to accept and uphold with your life at Confirmation"?
November 16, 2012 at 4:52 pm
Why was a 17-year-old not already confirmed? That is probably an ingredient in the back-story here. However, even the now-standard 8th-grade Confirmation is really a bit late. It has become a "rite of passage" (in the bar mitzvah sense — a rite of adulthood) in people's minds because the age has been raised to mid-adolescence. Confirmation is supposed to be the third and last step in the rites of "Initiation", along with Baptism and Eucharist. In the Eastern Churches they do all three at once on the occasion of the infant's Baptism, which does have something to recommend it. I had First Communion at the usual age in 1960 (the "age of reason") which was younger than my father did (although that may have been related to the fact that he couldn't afford to attend Catholic schools, and perhaps CCD students had to wait — I don't know how it went in the 1920's). But I also had Confirmation at the age of 9, which had been the custom for quite some time. It was a natural step, entered into just as Baptism was, basically by parental consent on behalf of the child. When it is pushed up to adolescence it takes on the notion of the candidate being old enough to make a decision for him/herself to take a certain path towards adulthood in the Church, a fairly ridiculous idea when our adolescents are considerably less mature than were those of past times, when a lot of kids were lucky to get through high school before they had to go out and work to help support their families, and may have had families of their own by the time they were 18 or 19 — THOSE kids may have been able to make informed decisions about adulthood when they were 12 or 13 — it's hard to imagine many kids today who are in any way prepared for that. Kids are cheated of the sacramental benefits of a complete initiation into the Church by this phony (and absurdly flattering) "rite of passage – make an adult choice" approach to the Sacrament, which is not our tradition, and for which youth of today are more manifestly unfit than any who have ever preceded them.
November 16, 2012 at 5:27 pm
If you protest in favor of a non-negotiable against the Church, it is a charitable thing for the Church to deny communion. It is charity, not punishment. This allows the boy to discern what he believes and if it is in line with the Church, then he can be in communion. Same goes for his family. His family, if not receiving communion either, must be for good reason. Just some thoughts! God bless.
November 16, 2012 at 9:15 pm
American Papist has more of the story.
That said, I should hope that someone who flat out tells a priest "I disagree with a basic, binding teaching of the church" wouldn't be confirmed.
November 16, 2012 at 10:29 pm
News stories out today report that the priest says it is not true. http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/380562/
November 16, 2012 at 10:59 pm
LifeSiteNews.com has more coverage too:
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/parents-claim-minnesota-priest-denied-son-confirmation-over-gay-marriage-vi