I am a little younger, having my First Holy Communion in the late 80's, but one of my clearest childhood memories is my mom going absolutely bananas when our priest tried to do away with white dresses for girls. He didn't want it "to look like a little wedding". My mom lost her mind. And won. White dresses all around lol.
My First Communion is a blurry memory from around May 1967 (I think). I have pictures of it because my father, always bucking authority (interesting trait in a cop), sneaked photos during the ceremony. It was the in-between time of Vatican II, when we still received kneeling, and before they wreckovated our church. Each line of children was led by an older girl dressed as what I think was supposed to be an angels, sans wings. For confirmation in Grade 5, girls wore white robes with red trim, and a red beanie. Boys wore red robes with white trim.
First communion 1976. Big group celebration. Grade 3. Catholic school run by Sisters of St Joseph. Parish priest. Family party at our place afterwards with cousins, uncles, aunts. Not much instruction that I remember but plenty of practicing hymns. Kids mostly dressed in white. I guess we received on the tongue because I became an altar boy afterwards and there were still altar rails and I remember holding the plate under people's chin for communion. First confession - I think it was after first communion but still in Grade 3. Confirmation in Grade 7 in the Parish Hall, not in the church.
I'm another who has very few memories of First Communion except that I was wearing a new white dress that scratched me around the waist. I paid very little attention to anything about Church in my teens (though I loved the Shona hymns and drumming) because there was a war going on and my family moved around a lot; I was reading magazines about make-up and fashion as well as George Eliot's Middlemarch and waiting to see if I would fall in love or not. There was so much in the '70s I just took for granted because the Church was always there in the background: my Latin teacher Miss Linder was Catholic and gave a me a copy of Simone Weil's Waiting On God along with the same book in French (Attente de Dieu) so I could read both, Sr Fabian of the Dominicans gave me a paperback of Therese of Lisieux's Story of a Soul and warned me it was not naive or sentimental if read carefully for the subtext.
I went to Transcendental Meditation sessions with a friend and read Jean Rhys on troubled women alone, discovered Camus and existentialism, went to Mass regularly (boring) and daydreamed about having a mad doomed love affair with an atheist painter in Paris, read Erica Jong's Fear of Flying and Gloria Steinem, listened to Gregorian chant along with British heavy metal rock bands and marimba music. Dambudza Marechera's novel House of Hunger was a wake-up call to the literature of my own country. Reading Julian of Norwich made me feel all mystical and mysterious at 15.
I thought of this as my 'diaspora muddle', faith like a too-tight cocoon I wasn't ready to leave. My family was breaking apart under the strain of war, I would have to go away to university and it seemed very possible I could just leave Catholicism behind me. The part of me that was Scottish and sceptical kept clashing with the part of me that was Zimbabwean and passionately African, edging out the little bit of me that was consciously Catholic. It seemed natural the Church should be both changing and unchanging, both flux and stability, divided over nationalist politics and Cold War issues. Funeral after funeral for priests, nuns, mission workers or lay people killed in the war, our martyrs and saints or heretics. Stony-faced grief and anger everywhere. If the liturgy sounded different or guitars replaced organ music, we didn't notice.
So often what my generation took for granted has been what in hindsight appears so remarkable.
As I was writing this, I was hoping to recall memories of Confirmation and the first time I went to confession (Sacrament of Reconciliation), but it was a time when I was in hormonal turmoil and just a teen, caught up in so much going on all at once. The Sacraments were there but everyday, low-key, taken for granted.
My first Communion followed first Reconciliation. I remember Reconciliation more; my pastor listened and counseled me so gently - probably more than anyone ever had in my mind. He also gave us all a New Testament -- that had pictures! He later became a bishop; I pray he is a saint.
First Communion, we all made a felt banner that hung in the nave/gym and then of course that became a photo opp. I do remember believing it was Jesus I was receiving, but I don't remember the manner of my receiving.
Before Confirmation (teen), I decided to decide for myself if I really wanted to go through with it. I studied Catholicism right when Catholic Answers became a thing -- and behold, here I am. Our prep classes were enormous group sessions with presentations and then table sharing. We had to write a report on the Saint we chose for our new name. I was into spiritual battle at the time, so I was the girl who chose Michael and the bishop didn't bat an eye (as he shouldn't have).
I received my first communion in a one-off, but my younger sister did it the official way: which there and then (Ontario, ca. 1984) meant a "friendship celebration" at the local Catholic school. I remember one of her classmates getting in trouble for hijinks and being told: "You're not here to have fun! You're here to celebrate!".
You must have been attending IC right when the Paulists arrived. That would be an interesting substack post… they just celebrated 50 years in Knoxville. Anyway, you, me, and Cormac McCarthy at IC. Must be something about Summit Hill. Of course it’s presumptuous of me to include myself in that august company. The story of IC includes, of course, the legend that the site was given to the Catholics because it was the location of Knoxville’s gallows - our own Golgotha. Anyway, I feel like I’m digressing from the “story sharing” spirit of this substack, so I’ll stop here and return to watching a Traveling Wilburys documentary...
I am a little younger, having my First Holy Communion in the late 80's, but one of my clearest childhood memories is my mom going absolutely bananas when our priest tried to do away with white dresses for girls. He didn't want it "to look like a little wedding". My mom lost her mind. And won. White dresses all around lol.
My First Communion is a blurry memory from around May 1967 (I think). I have pictures of it because my father, always bucking authority (interesting trait in a cop), sneaked photos during the ceremony. It was the in-between time of Vatican II, when we still received kneeling, and before they wreckovated our church. Each line of children was led by an older girl dressed as what I think was supposed to be an angels, sans wings. For confirmation in Grade 5, girls wore white robes with red trim, and a red beanie. Boys wore red robes with white trim.
First communion 1976. Big group celebration. Grade 3. Catholic school run by Sisters of St Joseph. Parish priest. Family party at our place afterwards with cousins, uncles, aunts. Not much instruction that I remember but plenty of practicing hymns. Kids mostly dressed in white. I guess we received on the tongue because I became an altar boy afterwards and there were still altar rails and I remember holding the plate under people's chin for communion. First confession - I think it was after first communion but still in Grade 3. Confirmation in Grade 7 in the Parish Hall, not in the church.
I'm another who has very few memories of First Communion except that I was wearing a new white dress that scratched me around the waist. I paid very little attention to anything about Church in my teens (though I loved the Shona hymns and drumming) because there was a war going on and my family moved around a lot; I was reading magazines about make-up and fashion as well as George Eliot's Middlemarch and waiting to see if I would fall in love or not. There was so much in the '70s I just took for granted because the Church was always there in the background: my Latin teacher Miss Linder was Catholic and gave a me a copy of Simone Weil's Waiting On God along with the same book in French (Attente de Dieu) so I could read both, Sr Fabian of the Dominicans gave me a paperback of Therese of Lisieux's Story of a Soul and warned me it was not naive or sentimental if read carefully for the subtext.
I went to Transcendental Meditation sessions with a friend and read Jean Rhys on troubled women alone, discovered Camus and existentialism, went to Mass regularly (boring) and daydreamed about having a mad doomed love affair with an atheist painter in Paris, read Erica Jong's Fear of Flying and Gloria Steinem, listened to Gregorian chant along with British heavy metal rock bands and marimba music. Dambudza Marechera's novel House of Hunger was a wake-up call to the literature of my own country. Reading Julian of Norwich made me feel all mystical and mysterious at 15.
I thought of this as my 'diaspora muddle', faith like a too-tight cocoon I wasn't ready to leave. My family was breaking apart under the strain of war, I would have to go away to university and it seemed very possible I could just leave Catholicism behind me. The part of me that was Scottish and sceptical kept clashing with the part of me that was Zimbabwean and passionately African, edging out the little bit of me that was consciously Catholic. It seemed natural the Church should be both changing and unchanging, both flux and stability, divided over nationalist politics and Cold War issues. Funeral after funeral for priests, nuns, mission workers or lay people killed in the war, our martyrs and saints or heretics. Stony-faced grief and anger everywhere. If the liturgy sounded different or guitars replaced organ music, we didn't notice.
So often what my generation took for granted has been what in hindsight appears so remarkable.
As I was writing this, I was hoping to recall memories of Confirmation and the first time I went to confession (Sacrament of Reconciliation), but it was a time when I was in hormonal turmoil and just a teen, caught up in so much going on all at once. The Sacraments were there but everyday, low-key, taken for granted.
My first Communion followed first Reconciliation. I remember Reconciliation more; my pastor listened and counseled me so gently - probably more than anyone ever had in my mind. He also gave us all a New Testament -- that had pictures! He later became a bishop; I pray he is a saint.
First Communion, we all made a felt banner that hung in the nave/gym and then of course that became a photo opp. I do remember believing it was Jesus I was receiving, but I don't remember the manner of my receiving.
Before Confirmation (teen), I decided to decide for myself if I really wanted to go through with it. I studied Catholicism right when Catholic Answers became a thing -- and behold, here I am. Our prep classes were enormous group sessions with presentations and then table sharing. We had to write a report on the Saint we chose for our new name. I was into spiritual battle at the time, so I was the girl who chose Michael and the bishop didn't bat an eye (as he shouldn't have).
I received my first communion in a one-off, but my younger sister did it the official way: which there and then (Ontario, ca. 1984) meant a "friendship celebration" at the local Catholic school. I remember one of her classmates getting in trouble for hijinks and being told: "You're not here to have fun! You're here to celebrate!".
You must have been attending IC right when the Paulists arrived. That would be an interesting substack post… they just celebrated 50 years in Knoxville. Anyway, you, me, and Cormac McCarthy at IC. Must be something about Summit Hill. Of course it’s presumptuous of me to include myself in that august company. The story of IC includes, of course, the legend that the site was given to the Catholics because it was the location of Knoxville’s gallows - our own Golgotha. Anyway, I feel like I’m digressing from the “story sharing” spirit of this substack, so I’ll stop here and return to watching a Traveling Wilburys documentary...
I received all three of those sacraments before the end of Vatican II, so I can't be of any help. Sorry.