Why can children be confirmed? even though her parents reject the church?
This was not intended for our children
?I am at a very chilled church?, tells Fritz (9), who grows up in a trendy district of Hamburg. He really enjoyed his first communion and the preparation for it. As well as the feast, at which the whole family from the Münsterland came together to celebrate with him. Going to communion was his own free choice.
Many of us parents only remember with horror: Family celebrations in childhood like chewing gum, felt stuffy and tight. Confirmation and Confirmation were a prescribed ritual in most families, which was not allowed to be questioned and reluctantly completed in unloved clothes. Only the often abundant gifts consoled over compulsion and boredom.
Many of us have since turned our backs on the Church. Now we are surprised by our own offspring: Why does our child just want to be confirmed - or go to First Communion?
It's not about the gifts - not only
Alina (14) from the North Rhine-Westphalian Beverungen wanted to belong above all. Many children in their circle of acquaintances have been confirmed. Her mother, she is a single parent, has nothing to do with the church. Her own confirmation was terrible, she never made a secret of that. But even though Alina had to go to a foreign confirmation group all by herself for a move, she absolutely wanted to. Also because of the gifts.
"The kids know: you get presents, attention and the family meets. These are all positive things?
The Munich family therapist Klaus Neumann knows which reasons play an important role in the decision of young people for or against church. "The kids know: you get presents, attention and the family meets. These are all positive things.
For in addition to the progressiveness, which is the youth of their own, she also has something very conservative: adolescents longed for a healthy world with father, mother, child. Hence the turn to rituals and old stories.
Our children are looking for answers
But it is also about central issues of life. "Children," says Neumann, "are on the high seas, they do not know where they are going." Nothing is clear, everything is questioned - whether you become rich and famous or not, whether you find a partner, what your life will look like. And the parents always just want the best? ? but that does not necessarily coincide with the wishes of the children. The questions, where do I come from, where is it going, and what is the whole thing good for? drive teenagers over. Solid structures and rituals help.
Josy was baptized at the age of 14 so she could go to the Confirmation. The student from the wealthy Hamburg suburb of Blankenese is the first in her family to say yes to the church. Her mother believes that many things came together for her daughter: the beautiful confirmation ceremony a few years ago in the cousin's garden; the rumor in the riding stable that a girl received 13,000 euros for her confirmation; the fact that many classmates can be confirmed. One day Josy said at breakfast: "Mom, I want to be confirmed." The mother had a suspicion: "If you're worried about money, you can get it without confirmation," she told her. But no, Josy was longing for a special day, with a pretty dress and high heels. And even if she does not go to church, she finds it nice to be part of the church.
Neumann also refers to adolescents as "stray fish in the great sea", who are searching for affiliation and identity. "There is an archaically-based yearning for affiliation that was long negatively occupied after the experiences of the Third Reich and has taken a back seat. She will wake up again, he says.
A little bit like Christmas
Little Fritz also remembers that his communion had a certain magic, like Christmas. "It was almost magical when I received the communion," he says reverently, "I somehow felt God was inside me." Even magic and magic find little room in our enlightened society.
Perhaps the lack of coercion in the modern family also plays a role in turning children into a church. At least Fritz says: "I am glad that I had the choice. I do not know if I would have done otherwise.?
