Folia Theologica et Canonica 3. 25/17 (2014)
IUS CANONICUM - Michael Carragher, O.P., The sacrament of confirmation and personal development
THE SACRAMENT OF CONFIRMATION AND PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT 183 has available to it none of the bodily organs required for anything new. But the human intellect’s capacity for reflection upon its already acquired mental contents is not, Thomas thinks, disabled by its separation from the body. In effect, the human souls separated from the body is a functioning store of memories that it can continue to tell but can no longer edit, add to, or revise; it is a life frozen into shape it possessed at the moment of death. But the entire process could go awry if the particular sense organ were diseased (by colds, influenza, sickness), disabled (through injuries sustained), missing (surgical amputation) or became weakened or decrepit through advancing old age. However, because of indifference, distraction or worry one doesn’t notice everything in one’s range of vision. Focussing on something to the neglect of other objects, instanced in the experience of looking for someone in a crowd one doesn’t see other well-known acquaintances or objects. Conditions such as senility and autism provoke other issues which require medical intervention. But the sacraments are addressed to all human beings if Christian or Catholics wish to use them in their spiritual life. St. Thomas confronts a problem that arises when someone asserts that they are in communion with the divine essence through nature, quoting the letter of St. Paul to the Romans 1.20 in support of his assertion. “Ever since God created the world his everlasting power and deity - however invisible - have been there for the mind to see in the things he has made”. Natural phenomena manifest the divine wisdom and power in themselves, but sacraments are signs that make people holy. By participating in the sacraments the faithful can experience the grace of God in a palpable manner using ordinary mundane material elements. Superstition and delving in the occult then become less of a problem. Furthermore religion becomes a public activity. Is confirmation a sacrament? What are its purposes? Canon 879 replies to those questions. The purposes are at least fourfold. The baptized person when confirmed is strengthened and thus obliged to defend the faith in word and deed. As a consequence he or she is to spread and defend the faith. These tasks require further elaboration. Sacraments are ordained to special effects in ordinary human life. The spiritual life takes its cue from the physical, mundane reality of bodily life and resembles the various phases that human beings undergo in their natural development unimpeded by sickness, disability, or accident (fatal or otherwise). Obviously baptism or spiritual birth mirrors physical generation. Confirmation reflects the psychological change that infants experience when they begin to assert themselves and engage in the task of reasoning for themselves. The Latin Code of Canon Law acknowledges this development when it states that minors are bound by merely ecclesiastical laws or more positively treats them as adults regarding the reception of the sacraments of initiation (canon 852§1). It is a
