Anna Nussbaum Keating wrote an article, Why Can't My Son Receive the Eucharist, for First Things. In it she briefly rehearses the history of the practice of the Sacrament, and questions why her two-year-old son can't take the Eucharist until he is 7.
She raises a question I raised in my posts on Children and Communion, some of the first posts in this blog. Why do we, churches that require the one who receives the Eucharist, require the recipients to understand the sacrament of Communion, when we do not require the same of baptism?
Is infant communion so different from infant baptism? We already teach children who have previously been baptized what their baptism means, and yet, baptism is a gift freely given. It is not dependent on one's intelligence or comprehension. Formal instruction occurs after the sacrament has been experienced.
It does seem a double standard, doesn't it.
This entry was posted in Tidbits to Share and tagged Children and Church, Lord's Supper, Roman Catholic Church on April 25, 2014 by revkamcclain.