Folia Theologica et Canonica 3. 25/17 (2014)

IUS CANONICUM - Michael Carragher, O.P., The sacrament of confirmation and personal development

FOLIA THEOLOGICA ET CANONICA (2014) 173-187

Michael Carragher, O.P.

THE SACRAMENT OF CONFIRMATION AND PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

Unwittingly, Johansen and Wright1 in their respective books converge on their conclusion regarding how the ancient Greeks (and the Romans) viewed the afterlife. According to both contemporary authors it was all bad news for the body. The present life was not much better for some people e.g. slaves, as they were liable to the unpredictable behaviour of their owners and employers, exemplified in being subject to torture or maltreatment even death at the whim of their proprietor. Then there was the recurrent problem of sickness and old age sometimes coupled with poverty. However, in comparison with the life after death Johansen makes the following observation.

In Odyssey XI Odysseus travels to the underworld, where he meets with the souls of the dead. They are feeble shadows of their former selves, ‘p°werless heads’. Homer calls them. One of the them, Achilles, complains T should choose, so I might live on earth, to serve as the hireling of another, of some portionless man whose livelihood was but small, rather than to be lord over all the dead that have perished’ (489-91). Even the mightiest of the dead is weaker than the feeblest of the living. Life is a powerful thing, which gives us a range of capacities, all those Achilles missed and others, the power to fight, run, perceive, think, speak, eat and drink, procreate, and many others. All of these capacities set us apart from the dead and the lifeless. As the Greeks saw it, they all relate to the fact that our souls are (still) in our bodies. But just what are these powers, how do they determine our activities, and how do they relate to our souls and to our bodies? These are philosophical questions taken up by the ancient philosophers - sometimes in response to Homer - and often answered with great care and sophistication.2

This paper sets out to situate the role of the sacrament of confirmation in the context of the development of the human person in the formative years of his or her childhood and adolescence.3 Physical maturity and religious awakening go

1 Wright, N. T., The Resurrection of the Son of God, London 2003.

2 Johansen, Th. K., The Powers of Aristotle’s Soul, Oxford 2012. 1.

3 St. Thomas Aquinas, Treatise on Human Nature (The Complete Text Summa Theologiae 1), Questions 75-102 (transi. Freddoso, A. J.), South Bend, IN. 2010. Finnis, J. Reason In Action Collected Essays, I. Oxford 2011.35ff.