In German, one exclaims „Gesundheit!“, wishing them „(Good) Health“.
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My religion does 13, I think it’s an offshoot of the Jewish tradition of having Bar/Bat Mitzvah at 13.
This is an interesting topic to me as a no-longer-Catholic.
The “official” reason for now doing confirmation at such a young age is ‘restored order of the sacraments’. Supposedly, the original sequence was confirm, then eucharist. The young age may have made sense when average lifespans were 40 years. French bishops changed the order in the 1850’s to what we had until very recently. The intent was to allow the recipient to mature before they actively acknowledge their role in the church. That is very logical.
Catholic leadership thinks going back to the original sequence and especially age will somehow keep folks from leaving. That is, by the time they can make an active decision in their early/mid-teens they’ve already signed the contract, figuratively speaking. This is manipulative at best.
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We have a family member who married into an Armenian family and their kids were christened in the Armenian church (not sure which denomination, exactly). They christen infants with baptism, communion and confirmation all at once. We’ve been told by Armenians that it’s because back in the day survival of an infant was in no way guaranteed, between disease, warfare, genocide, etc.
If someone wants to leave, I don’t think “signing the contract” will matter to them. They’re ready to throw out the whole mishegas.
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I agree. It is a fools errand. Getting way off topic from CC subject matter, but the church has much bigger problems on which to focus.
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