We Running we Children

By Shanice Padmore

This is bothering me.

And if I were to be honest, it has been bothering me for over 20 years. I have never written about it for fear of offending people whom I love, people who have spent decades teaching Confirmation, just like I have.  But here is the cold truth.  I do not know of a single parish in Trinidad and Tobago where the Confirmation programme is providing the results we want.

Let me paint a picture for you…… Confirmation starts in your parish, and the parish which was dead and boring (and happily so) becomes awash with young people. They chewing gum; they on they phone; they are poorly dressed; and they watching you hard! In some parishes, as much as 200 of them at the same time rush through the doors and take our seats on a Sunday morning. They annoy us; they make us laugh and they make us reminisce on the good old days when we were young.  Then Confirmation day comes around and the young people who have become a part of your parish existence for the last two years disappear the very next week.

The Catechists, take a break and start afresh six months later and again,  we the oldies (and I am not that old) go through that experience again, and again, and again!  I feel like I want to ask to get off this roller coaster ride but everybody else is ok with it.

Here is what really bothers me. We all know these people; the last time we saw them in church, it was when their daughter got First Communion, but they calling you every week (because you does go to church) to find out when the Confirmaton programme starting. (Why don’t you come to church and find out, Susan?)

Why?

Not because they had a deep theology of the sacraments. Not because they wanted their child to be sealed with the gifts of the Holy Spirit and go out and change the world. Nope!  It was because she mother asking she!  Because it is what Trinidadian Catholic families do, the same way we do a good funeral and a good wedding with plenty food, a nice outfit, and no real conversation about what any of it means.

Confirmation dress: $900.

Confirmation shoes or sneakers $800

Confirmation reception: $3,000 (cause the price of Shandy gone up)

Actually explaining to your child what they just received: it never came up.

And then we wonder why they are gone. We wonder why by 22 they telling us they are “spiritual but not religious.”

Here is the confession nobody wants to make. Most of us parents do not actually understand Confirmation either. We received it. We were there. But did anyone ever truly explain to us that we were being anointed as warrior-disciples? That the same Holy Spirit who came at Pentecost and turned frightened fishermen into people who turned the world upside down that same Spirit was being poured into us?  And if every Catechist reading this is saying  “of course we did “ then I ask you, did they understand it?

Did anyone tell us that Confirmation is not the end of something but the beginning of a life radically oriented toward God? If they did, many of us weren’t listening. And now we are sending our children to receive what we ourselves never unwrapped.

You cannot pass on a flame you never caught.

The Catholics flooding into the Church in America right now are doing something we forgot how to do. They are asking why. They are not assuming. They are not going through motions. They want to understand the Mass, the sacraments, the history, the mysticism, the saints. They are approaching the faith with the hunger of someone who has been starving.

The Church in Africa is vibrant because faith is woven into community, into identity, into daily life. It is not compartmentalised into one hour on Sunday and a Saturday class you endure.

We Trinidadians know community. We know culture. We know how to make something come alive. We do it every Carnival season without even trying. Imagine, just imagine, if we brought that same energy, that same creativity, that same deep cultural pride to the passing on of our faith.

I believe that as an Archdiocese we must make a shift. We have to empower the domestic Church more.  When last did you say ‘Grace before meals’ with your family? Or have conversations about Sunday’s Gospel on the drive home. Saints’ stories at the dinner table. Faith should not live only in the church building—it should live in our homes.

I also think it is time that we demand better formation structures. The older I get, the less I can appreciate a two-year formation programme.  Kids are learning to build websites in a day.  The things I learn from five year olds leave me spell bound and yet I will hear their teachers say, “them chirren eh ready”…… Are we ready? We as an Archdiocese (although this applies to many archdioceses throughout the world) should advocate for better-trained catechists, and programmes that actually meet young people where they are, including their questions, their technology, their doubts, and their very Trinidadian sense of humour and belonging.

The Church is not dying. In fact, globally, she is very much alive. The fire of Pentecost is still burning in places we never expected. The question for us, as Trinidadian Catholic parents, grandparents, godparents, and community members is simply this: Are we going to keep sending our children to sit in a room for an hour, collect their certificate, and disappear?

Or are we finally going to give them the real thing?