I grew up in a Methodist church until I was around 11 and while it did practice infant baptism, communion was a no-no until you were 10 for the whole 'age of reason' thing. Well, not-yet-10 me (I was at most 8 years old) might not have known theology, but I *did* know that I was a Christian and that Christians took communion and yet I wasn't allowed. So I did a work-around: at Sunday School before Church you got candy if you answered a question correctly. Smarty-pants me decided to always answer a question and so I would get to chose my candy and I always chose Sweet-tarts if I could. Then, during communion at Church, I would save a blue candy and a purple candy and take each one while the adults around me took communion.
I love seeing babies commune at my parish. Yes there are sometimes spitups, but there are practical fixes for that just like there are fixes for accidental spills that can happen even to adults. And even if they don't know the meaning, those little kids know that communion is important.
That is to say, thank you for the defense of infant communion and the explanation as to why I wasn't allowed it until I was 10.
Caitlin, thank you for the personal story and the kind words. For me this was a theological story that I wrestled with for a long time as a young adult—today, it takes on a practical layer. This probably will not be the last that I write on this subject either—the "spoon-fed gospel" is an image we should all have in our minds!
Well, to be fair, they got the idea from you guys. From our perspective, many, many Protestant errors were inherited from Roman Catholicism.
While I aim not to be offensive on this site, the baseline Orthodox perspective since at least the Council of Florence is that Catholicism is fundamentally flawed.
I grew up in a Methodist church until I was around 11 and while it did practice infant baptism, communion was a no-no until you were 10 for the whole 'age of reason' thing. Well, not-yet-10 me (I was at most 8 years old) might not have known theology, but I *did* know that I was a Christian and that Christians took communion and yet I wasn't allowed. So I did a work-around: at Sunday School before Church you got candy if you answered a question correctly. Smarty-pants me decided to always answer a question and so I would get to chose my candy and I always chose Sweet-tarts if I could. Then, during communion at Church, I would save a blue candy and a purple candy and take each one while the adults around me took communion.
I love seeing babies commune at my parish. Yes there are sometimes spitups, but there are practical fixes for that just like there are fixes for accidental spills that can happen even to adults. And even if they don't know the meaning, those little kids know that communion is important.
That is to say, thank you for the defense of infant communion and the explanation as to why I wasn't allowed it until I was 10.
Caitlin, thank you for the personal story and the kind words. For me this was a theological story that I wrestled with for a long time as a young adult—today, it takes on a practical layer. This probably will not be the last that I write on this subject either—the "spoon-fed gospel" is an image we should all have in our minds!
Lumping us Catholics in with the prots is just low.
Well, to be fair, they got the idea from you guys. From our perspective, many, many Protestant errors were inherited from Roman Catholicism.
While I aim not to be offensive on this site, the baseline Orthodox perspective since at least the Council of Florence is that Catholicism is fundamentally flawed.