In the early church the answer was simple: Confirmation was part of the initiating rites of Christianity along with Baptism and Eucharist. All three were administered together on the same occasion as one embraced the faith. With the rise of infant baptism, however, the anointing that confirmed faith was separated from the water rite that signaled reception into the church. The reluctance to give Eucharist to infants led to the disintegration of a unified initiating rite.

CELEBRATION of Confirmation in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. ©Zvonimir Ćorić, Catholic News Agency, Bishops' Conf. of Bosnia and Herzegovina

The term “sacraments of initiation” was introduced at the end of the 19th century, mostly by liturgists and theologians. The term made it into the Code of Canon Law in 1983 when these three sacramental moments were declared “so interrelated that they are required for full Christian initiation” (Canon 842.2). To understand Confirmation, then, is to appreciate how it stands together with these sacraments as much as how it stands apart—if in fact it can be said to do so at all.

From its earliest practice, the imposition of hands and the anointing with oil signified the imparting of the Holy Spirit to the newly baptized. Around 416 Pope Innocent I allowed a priest to use chrism (blessed oil) at Baptism but insisted that signing the brow with the oil be reserved to the bishop. That created problems because bishops were not omnipresent in the church then or now. Once Confirmation was delayed, the second oil anointing required justification. Perhaps it was seen to provide spiritual strength for the battles of life; as this idea became popular, the bishop’s welcoming kiss was replaced with a slap to signify the entrance into spiritual conflict.

Over the centuries both parents and bishops got lazy about administering this additional sacrament—which, frankly, is not a little problem even today. To ensure its practice, church councils established age requirements, anywhere from one to seven, with the maximum permitted being seven, the age of reason. Human nature being what it is, the maximum became the standard, except in danger of death.

Efforts to close the gap between the first and last initiating sacraments went on for centuries, but a clause in the Confirmation rite itself, which gave bishops’ conferences the right to “set an age that seems more suitable” after proper formation “when the recipients are more mature,” invited the practice of adolescent Confirmation into the mix. Confirmation is now popularly understood as a rite of passage into Christian adulthood, and remains, as many theologians call it, “a practice in search of a theory.”

Scripture
• 2 Corinthians 1:21-22; Ephesians 1:13-14

Online
• Podcast: The Sacrament of Confirmation - Wendy M. Wright interviews John O’Keefe about the Sacrament of Confirmation in historical context, from the Center for Catholic Thought, Creigton University

Books
• The Confirmed Catholic’s Companion: A Guide to Abundant Living by Sister Mary Kathleen Glavich, S.N.D. (ACTA Publications, 2013)
• I Have Chosen You - Candidates's Journal and I Have Chosen You - Leader’s Guide byJoseph Moore (Paulist Press, 2004)

Until recently, cult was a respectable word describing religious practices; Catholicism has plenty of them. Around the 1960s the word was derailed to describe unfamiliar religious groups that recruit vulnerable people (young, old, marginalized) and use mind-control on them for nefarious purposes. Popular depictions include Jim Jones’ People’s Temple, which ended in mass suicide in 1978; David Koresh’s Branch Davidians, which fell to a hail of federal bullets in 1993; and Marshall Applewhite’s Heaven’s Gate UFO believers, also resulting in suicides in 1997. These groups became the poster children for the horrors of losing your family members to a cult.

Not all new religious movements (NRMS)—the technical designation for such groups—are dangerous and manipulative however. What we might ask is: Why do these groups arise at all? Several social factors have been identified that make NRMs probable: the breakdown of social constants, which leads to a crisis of meaning; the East-meets-West phenomenon on a shrinking globe; the rise of religious secularization, in which the lines between religion and ideology become fuzzy. Other reasons people join NRMs are because of inadequacies in mainstream religion, the depersonalized modern world, and honest curiosity.

NRMs aren’t the problem. That they reveal a 21st-century hunger for meaning, truth, wholeness, and values is a very hopeful thing. Successful NRMs supply charismatic leadership and an attractive counter-worldly critique and emphasize the need for a deep personal experience of the transcendent. Mainstream religions that can offer all that have nothing to fear. Consider the U.S. religious scene in the 1800s. In the same era that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) was galvanized by Joseph Smith and Brigham Young to offer Americans a new religious covenant, Christian Science headed by the personally persuasive Mary Baker Eddy was harvesting from the same barrel of citizens discontented with their congregations. In turn Catholicism was set on fire by evangelically minded priests like Isaac Hecker, the founder of the Paulist order—yet all three movements were viewed as “cult-like” by mainstream American Protestantism.

Also consider this: The same 1960s that ignited the NRMs inaugurated the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. Is every new enthusiasm assigned “cult” status? The real difficulty with NRMs is that, absent time-honored structures and hidden from the public eye, they lack the checks and balances that work to keep mainstream religion honest—or force it to pay the piper when it’s not.

Scripture
• 1 Corinthians 14; 1 Thessalonians 5:19-21; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-15; 2 Peter 3; 1 John 4:1-6

Books
• Introduction to the Study of Religion by Nancy C. Ring, Mary N. MacDonald, Kathleen S. Nash, and Fred Glennon (Orbis Books, 2012)
• Comprehending Cults: The Sociology of New Religious Movements, 2nd ed., by Lorne L. Dawson (Oxford University Press, 2006)

A FRIEND wrote me an email during those fateful hours last March as we all watched for smoke to come from a certain Vatican chimney. “Do these cardinals all go into the conclave with a papal name up their sleeves, just in case they’re elected?” she asked. “You don’t want to be unprepared, and then blurt out a name like “Bluto!”

THE FIRST Pope Francis.

Having few cardinals in my acquaintance, I can’t say for sure. I imagine those deemed largely non-papabile among the cardinalcy don’t lose much sleep over the name. But contenders surely give it a great deal of thought. Papal names send signals, as the surprising choice of “Francis” recently verified. Everyone now expects a pontifical swerve away from power and structure and toward the poor and disenfranchised, perhaps with attention paid to the beasts and the natural world, too. That’s why the most popular papal names—John (23), Benedict (16), Clement (14), Leo and Innocent (both 13), and Pius (12)—have had so many takers. The originators of these names, as well as many of their successors, have legacies deemed attractive and imitable to their spiritual protege. (Being the first "Francis," the pope doesn't have a number after his name.)

The one-off papal names, by contrast, didn’t have that sort of appeal. Lando, Sisinnius, Hormisdas, Simplicius, Hilarus, or Hyginus, anyone? So far, 46 one-and-done popes have reigned, and if we never see another Pope Fabian or Valentine, that will probably be OK—which doesn’t imply that the one-offs were failed leaders by any means. Peter, for example, was the original of the breed. His name has been retired apparently out of respect. Linus, Clement, and Cornelius, while never repeated, were significant enough to garner everlasting note in Eucharistic Prayer I used at Mass. A few names were certainly sullied by the dubious reigns of anti-popes (illicit rival contenders), nasty or corrupt fellows, or slackers who accomplished little and were never considered for the titular suffix “the Great.”

In fact, one way to deal with a bad papacy is to take up the name, dust it off, and reuse it. That happened with two antipopes, John VIII and John XXIII, whose names were reappropriated by better men. On the other hand, John XVI’s anti-papacy was deemed illegitimate but the number not reused. John XX never existed at all; that number was deliberately skipped when John XXI determined to straighten out the John numbering once and for all. He died, however, from injuries sustained when his study collapsed on him. Perhaps one really can overthink the name.

Scripture
• On the significance of names: Genesis 17:5, 15; 32:28-31; Judges 13:17-18; 1 Samuel 1:20; Isaiah 7:14; 8:3-4; Hosea 1:6-2:1; Matthew 1:21-23; 16:18-19; Luke 1:13, 31-32

Online
• List of popes and antipopes

Books
• 101 Questions & Answers on Popes and the Papacy by Christopher M. Bellitto (Paulist Press, 2008)
• The Papacy by Paul Johnson (The Orion Publishing Group, 2005)