Bishop’s absence prompts changes in confirmation

By Frank Wilkes Lesnefsky
Citizen Times
June 24, 2019

https://www.citizensvoice.com/news/bishop-s-absence-prompts-changes-in-confirmation-1.2500036

In the span of a day, more than 1,200 children throughout the Diocese of Scranton became fully-initiated Catholics after the bishop called on pastors in every parish to administer confirmations.

For the first time, the Very Rev. Joseph C. Bambera, bishop of the Diocese of Scranton, allowed pastors and sacramental ministers to administer the Sacrament of Confirmation on June 9, Pentecost, to youths throughout the diocese’s 118 parishes in order to acclimate congregations to having their pastors administer the ceremony. So far, 64 parishes reported their confirmations to the diocese, totaling 1,196 children, according to diocese spokesman Eric Deabill. That number is expected to grow as more parishes report their numbers.

“This Pentecost, we allowed all of our pastors to have that opportunity and to familiarize their parish with it, and then come next year, I will do the lion’s share of confirmations and be assisted by the pastors in those places where I can’t be,” Bambera said. “We have to ask ourselves, how can we make this a great opportunity for our kids and also something that I can manage to accomplish?”

Pastors previously had a limited ability to perform confirmations during Easter Vigil Masses for people entering the church either as part of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, which is for those who want to enter the church but were never baptized, or those who were baptized but never confirmed, Bambera said.

For dioceses like Scranton with about 250,000 parishioners, bishops often ask priests to pitch in, Bambera said, noting that the Diocese of Allentown are among those who do the same.

Previously aided by Bishop Emeritus James C. Timlin and Auxiliary Bishop Emeritus John Dougherty, Bambera was shorthanded this year.

Bambera barred Timlin from publicly representing the church in August following a state grand jury report that identified 301 Roman Catholic priests accused of widespread sexual abuse — including 59 from the Diocese of Scranton. Timlin, 91, came under fire for how he handled allegations of clerical sexual abuse during his tenure.

Bambera already depends on Dougherty, 87, to help in parishes throughout the diocese.

“There’s only so much I can ask him to do,” the bishop said.

With two aging bishop emeriti, Bambera anticipated an eventual change in confirmation delegations even before Timlin was barred from representing the diocese and began preparing for the shift several years ago.

“I knew at some point ... that I might not have them there to do that confirmation, so I knew I needed to be ready for it,” Bambera said.

‘Brilliant solution’

The Rev. Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest from Washington, D.C. and an expert on the Catholic church, called it unusual for a bishop to totally step back from performing the confirmations, but given the circumstances, Bambera likely could not logistically visit every church scheduled for confirmations, he said.

He lauded the diocese’s decision to hold every confirmation on Pentecost because of the significance of the day as the church’s birthday and as a celebration of the coming of the Holy Spirit to Jesus’ disciples.

“That’s really a brilliant solution because it takes what would be a challenging situation for the bishop to do all the confirmations and turns it into a teaching moment by having it on Pentecost,” Reese said.

The change in who performs confirmations coincides with a change in what age groups the church confirms.

Previously, bishops would visit each parish once every three or so years to confirm a group of students ranging from 6th to 8th grade, Bambera said. Beginning three or four years ago, the diocese decided to only confirm 8th grade students as a means of ensuring they receive a better religious education, Bambera said. That means confirming children from every parish every year.

“People sometimes erroneously look at confirmation as almost a graduation,” Bambera said. “It’s not. From our perspective, it’s the beginning of a young person living as a fully initiated Christian. … If kids were getting confirmation on the low end of the three-year group … many of them were just stepping away from religion formation and not getting any more.”

In future years, the diocese might cluster smaller parishes together for confirmations, Bambera said.

‘It was energizing’

Monsignor Joseph Quinn, pastor at Our Lady of the Snows, Clarks Summit, confirmed 68 children at the Church of St. Benedict in Newton Twp., a church in the parish.

“It brought Pentecost alive in a whole new way,” Quinn said. “It was energizing — it was a wondrous sense of that particular moment in the life of a young student who has been anticipating the sacrament, preparing for it, reflecting on it.”

There was a sense of familiarity among everyone in attendance, which brought the service to life in a whole different way, Quinn said, describing the smiles and tears he saw on the faces of the students as he confirmed them. As a priest for 34 years, Quinn said he and the other diocesan pastors felt humbled and privileged to stand in that particular role on that particular day and felt a strong sense of unity with the other 117 parishes also confirming children.

For Father Andrew Kurovsky, pastor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish in the Peckville section of Blakely, administering confirmation to 23 children in his church was one of the most thrilling moments in his 34 years as a priest.

“It was just so exciting,” he said. “The kids loved it because they were with their particular classmates in the parish.”

Being confirmed by their pastor helps put kids at ease, said Neve Skapyak, 14, of Archbald. Neve was one of the 23 kids confirmed by Kurovsky.

“He knew you when you went up there, so you were less nervous,” she said. “It was exciting. I knew him very well because I serve Mass with him.”

Kurovsky made sure to emphasize to the children that they were joining students throughout the diocese in being confirmed that day.

“It was something that united them — knowing that everybody on this day was being confirmed at the same time,” Kurovsky said. “I think reminding them of that was something that really helped them to realize that they’re part of something bigger than our parish.”