In an otherwise decent piece from last year about Christ and the Beatitudes, making use of the works of Fr. Jacques Philippe, Jared Staudt writes in
The goal of Lent: Conformity to Christ:
We are called to become Christ, embracing the adopted sonship bestowed on us at Baptism and entering into the love of the Father. Jesus offers us his own grace and virtues and calls us to live and love like him in the world.
"Traditional" Latin praxis forces him to write this, because of the separation of Baptism from Confirmation, so that Latin infants are not "baptized by water and Spirit" on the one same occasion, but at different points in their life, if at all. This despite the clear testimony of St. Paul that it is the by the Spirit, whom we have received [through the laying on of hands by the Apostles or their successors or by the ministering of blessed oil], that we are able to cry, 'Abba! Father!'" (
Romans 8:15; cf.
Galatians 4:4-7). Even if we say our adoption as sons of God begins with water Baptism, can we say it is completed without Confirmation? No. Does anyone wish to ponder what the [spiritual] consequences are for incomplete Christian initiation?
When do Protestants receive the Spirit of God, if they do not have the sacrament of "Confirmation"? And how do they know they have received the Spirit by the laying of hands if the one who is laying on hands simply claims he has received this power from God or from someone else? How do we know that they have the authority and power to pass the gift of the Holy Spirit, if they cannot show that they have received this authority from the Apostles?
Latins should not be seeking this dubious gift from Pentecostals or those imitating Pentecostals -- they should be receiving the sacrament of Confirmation. (And if they have doubts about the efficacy of the first time they received it because they were not properly subjectively prepared for it, should they ask for a conditional administering of the sacrament?)
