Confirmation in the Catholic Church

God the Father has marked you with his sign; Christ the Lord has confirmed you and has placed his pledge, the Spirit, in your hearts.

Thus, in the mid-20th century, Confirmation began to be seen as an occasion for professing personal commitment to the faith on the part of someone approaching adulthood.

[14] Since the Second Vatican Council, the setting of a later age, e.g. mid-teens in the United States, early teens in Ireland and Britain, has been abandoned in some places in favour of restoring the traditional order of the three sacraments of Christian initiation.

Contrarily to the situation in the Latin Church, in Eastern Catholicism the sacrament does not require the anointing to be made by the imposition of the hand.

[19] The "soldier of Christ" imagery, which remains valid[20] but is downplayed if seen as part of the once common idea of Confirmation as a "sacrament of maturity",[21] was used as far back as 350, by Cyril of Jerusalem.

[22] In this connection, the touch on the cheek that the bishop gave while saying "Pax tecum" (Peace be with you) to the person he had just confirmed was interpreted in the Roman Pontifical as a slap, a reminder to be brave in spreading and defending the faith: "Deinde leviter eum in maxilla caedit, dicens: Pax tecum" (Then he strikes him lightly on the cheek, saying: Peace be with you) (cf.

When, in application of the Second Vatican Council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy,[23] the Confirmation rite was revised in 1971, mention of this gesture was omitted.