Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!lll-winken!sun-barr!newstop!sundc!seismo!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: ecmath!tim@uunet.uu.net (Tim McLarnan) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Infant Communion Message-ID: Date: 14 Dec 90 09:20:57 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Earlham College Math Dept, Richmond, IN Lines: 56 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Our recent discussion of infant baptism has set me to thinking about a related issue. In the Orthodox Church, infants are baptized, chrismated, and first receive communion all during the same Liturgy. Subsequently, they continue to receive communion regularly, even in periods of our history when adult communion has been rather infrequent. My understanding is that in the Western Churches, this is not the pattern. (Are there exceptions?) Instead, children are excluded from receiving the Lord's Body and Blood until they reach a certain age. I'm interested in the rationale for what seems to me like baptism followed by instantaneous excommunication. To have two classes of baptized members of the Body of Christ seems odd to me. I'm also interested in exactly what one says to one's children. I can't quite picture how you politely say to a small child, "We're all having something to eat to show that Jesus loves us, but you can't have any." Naturally, this query is directed mostly at people from traditions which baptize but do not commune infants; but I would also be interested in comments from people in denominations that baptize only adults. How do you explain to your kids that fundamentally the church is an adult affair? What do you do with Christ's injunction about allowing the little children to come to him? How do you feel about all this? I hope I've been inoffensive in my phrasing of these questions. Do forgive me if in my misunderstanding I have misspoken. I am not a theologian; I am just an Orthodox dad trying to make sense of a theological question with implications within people's families. Finally, I highly commend our moderator for making possible a forum both astonishingly diverse and remarkably civilized. In Christ, Tim McLarnan ecmath!tim@uunet.uu.net Dept. of Mathematics, Earlham College, Richmond, IN 47374 [Generally the concern is that the communicant must be able to "discern the body", as Paul said. This is normally taken to mean that if they are not able to understand the significance of the act at least at some level, they ought not to participate. (How much understanding is needed is a matter of judgement, but at a bare minimum it seems that they should understand it as bringing them into contact with Jesus, and have a basic idea of who Jesus was.) Different groups have different criteria. The Presbyterian Church (USA) seems in practice to allow parents to decide when the children are ready, but encourages fairly young children to participate. Not infants though. --clh]