Baptisms
Please contact the office on 7036 9393 or parkville@cam.org.au for reservations and a brief meeting with Fr Tony.
Confessions
Confession bookings are welcome and can be offered on Saturdays prior to the Vigil Mass. This sacrament is also offered as part of the sacramental program for First Communion and Confirmation candidates. Please inform the office if you have the intention to attend, to ensure Fr Tony is available.
Sacramental Program for Reconciliation, First Communion & Confirmation
All future registrations can proceed with the presentation of baptism certificates, and for confirmation students also a first communion certificate.
For families outside the Parish zone of St Carthage’s, we ask that you produce a letter of consent by your local Parish Priest, simply explaining to them the reasons you choose to have the sacrament done outside your own parish. (Once again, regardless of whether or not you have lost touch with them).
Further information will be provided to all families who have asked to be placed on the contact list.
Thank you
Reconciliation / First Holy Communion & Confirmation
Sacramental Program
General Information
Volunteers run the Sacramental program at St Carthage’s, and we are happy to place any interested candidates on our future contact list. This is for Sacraments of First Communion (inclusive of Reconciliation) and/or Confirmation.
Due to 2025 being the Year of Jubilee, Fr Tony and volunteers are involved in pilgrimages and other such events. For this reason it has been decided that the Sacramental program for 2025 will not take place. Future programs are looking to be revised, with the view to extend in order to facilitate the sacramental learning, understanding and community inclusiveness.
Please be aware that each year our program can alter according to the volunteer catechists at the time. This is a process, and as such no certainty can be placed around details until volunteers step forward, review past programs, establish the program for the year and agree on dates that will suit all catechists involved as well as Fr Tony Kerin, our Parish Administrator and Vicar General of Melbourne Archdiocese.
At each step of the process news will be updated on this post. However, if you have added yourself to the contact list by emailing your child’s name, sacrament to be completed and contact number to parkville@cam.org.au you will also be personally notified of all updates as they occur. You will receive a brief reply to confirm you are on the list. In the meantime, it is also up to individual families to remain updated via our website in this section, as well as keep updated with sacramental programs within your parish.
We happily welcome all who are seeking a Christ-centered journey of faith, and understand that St Carthage’s for many is a choice for various sentimental reasons. However, we advise all families to first enquire at their local Parish (regardless of whether or not you have lost touch with them). You may find your local parish to have a well pre-established program, and in which case will serve you better in its close proximity to your family; a church that is easily accessible for the important ongoing and lifelong nourishment of the sacraments, whereby Christ makes known his power and love for every individual.
The importance of the Sacraments
The teaching of sacraments to young children is to be taken seriously and with intention to raise your child in an environment of prayer, practice and observance in the faith. It is not something to be done and over with, but a life journey that teaches us to recognise the presence of God in our lives, in the choices we make and the friendships we keep.
As the central role model of your child(ren), their acquired sacrament will be the added observance towards you; how you practice, or don’t practice, how you perceive the church and it’s necessary sacramental gifts. You are by very definition, the leading teachers of faith in their lives. To attend a sacramental program, followed by what you do or don’t do to help them with their acquired knowledge, speaks mounds to them.
We often hear it said, “My children are free to choose their own faith when they’re ready.” In a world where choices are so vast, laying a foundation for them is even more important. The life of faith is a foundational spring board, where they can reach their highest potential in the calling that is meant for them: providing peace in troubled times, certainty in pressured moments, true identity in the search for meaning, and in this identity, dignity in the knowledge that they are children of God.