• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Catholic Review

Catholic Review

Inspiring the Archdiocese of Baltimore

Menu
  • Home
  • News
        • Local News
        • World News
        • Vatican News
        • Obituaries
        • Featured Video
        • En Español
        • Sports News
        • Official Clergy Assignments
        • Schools News
  • Commentary
        • Contributors
          • Question Corner
          • George Weigel
          • Elizabeth Scalia
          • Michael R. Heinlein
          • Effie Caldarola
          • Guest Commentary
        • CR Columnists
          • Archbishop William E. Lori
          • Rita Buettner
          • Christopher Gunty
          • George Matysek Jr.
          • Mark Viviano
          • Father Joseph Breighner
          • Father Collin Poston
          • Robyn Barberry
          • Hanael Bianchi
          • Amen Columns
  • Entertainment
        • Events
        • Movie & Television Reviews
        • Arts & Culture
        • Books
        • Recipes
  • About Us
        • Contact Us
        • Our History
        • Meet Our Staff
        • Photos to own
        • Books/CDs/Prayer Cards
        • CR Media platforms
        • Electronic Edition
  • Advertising
  • Shop
        • Purchase Photos
        • Books/CDs/Prayer Cards
        • Magazine Subscriptions
        • Archdiocesan Directory
  • CR Radio
        • CR Radio
        • Protagonistas de Fe
  • News Tips
  • Subscribe
An infant is pictured being baptized in an undated photo. As Christians grew more numerous and as more Christian parents brought their children to be baptized, it became impractical for the bishop to baptize and confirm every new Catholic. (OSV News photo/courtesy Jan Fallo)

Question Corner: Infant communion and wandering minds

February 15, 2023
By Jenna Marie Cooper
OSV News
Filed Under: Commentary, Question Corner

Share
Share on Facebook
Share
Share this
Pin
Pin this
Share
Share on LinkedIn

Q: Why do Orthodox Christians confirm their infants at baptism and also permit babies to receive the Eucharist, and why do Catholics wait? (Deer Park, N.Y.)

A: Thank you for your interesting question! First, it’s not only Orthodox Christians who confer all three sacraments of initiation at the time of baptism — Eastern Catholics do this as well.

For some background, the universal Catholic Church includes not only the Latin (a.k.a. “Roman”) Catholic Church to which most of us Catholics in the United States belong, but also a number of smaller Eastern Catholic churches. Eastern Catholics are fully Catholic and fully in union with the pope, but they follow a slightly different form of canon law, and they are organized into their own dioceses led by their own bishops.

Often, individual Eastern Catholic churches are connected to a particular geographical area and culture. (For example, Byzantine Catholics are generally of Slavic descent, and the Syro-Malabar Church has its roots in India.) Because of cultural and historic reasons, Eastern Catholics have their own distinctive liturgical traditions and customs.

The difference in customs regarding the Christian initiation of infants amounts to a difference in emphasis between the broad liturgical traditions of Christian East and West.

In the church’s early days, when most Christians were adult converts, it was standard practice for the local bishop to baptize each new Christian personally, conferring confirmation in the same ceremony as the baptism. As Christians grew more numerous and as more Christian parents brought their children to be baptized, it became impractical for the bishop to baptize and confirm every new Catholic. Eventually, it became clear that other clergy would need to celebrate most baptisms.

In the Christian East, there was a great emphasis on the fundamental theological unity of the sacraments of initiation, which is why Eastern priests confirm and give the Eucharist to the babies they baptize.

In the Latin Catholic West, there was a greater sense of the importance of maintaining a direct connection with the diocesan bishop as the father of the local diocesan church. For Latin Catholics, the sacrament of confirmation came to be celebrated at a separate, later ceremony — the idea being that even if a simple parish priest celebrated an infant’s baptism, the child could still be confirmed by the bishop himself.

For Latin Catholics, the history of our practices surrounding first Communion is long and rather complicated, as customs varied across the centuries. But our modern practice of children receiving their first Communion around the age of seven — the canonical “age of reason” — was established by Pope Pius X in 1910 with his decree “Quam Singulari.”

Q: Sometimes I become distracted at Mass and only really get refocused when I hear the consecration bells. Is that a sin? (Bunnell, Fla.)

A: No. If you are accidentally getting distracted on occasion, this is not a sin. The Catholic faithful have an obligation to attend Mass by being physically present on Sundays and holy days of obligation; but the church’s law doesn’t and can’t require the faithful to have their minds perfectly focused for the entire length of the liturgy.

Of course, the more focused we reasonably can be, the better. Sometimes there are actions we can take to minimize distractions — perhaps turning off gadgets or taking time before Mass to recollect ourselves — and we should do what we can in this regard.

But God understands that we are human and our active minds wander sometimes. The important thing is just that we keep turning our focus back to the Mass whenever we catch our attention straying.

Jenna Marie Cooper, who holds a licentiate in canon law, is a consecrated virgin and a canonist whose column appears weekly at OSV News. Send your questions to CatholicQA@osv.com.

Read More Commentary

Asking for human life and dignity protections in the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act’

Stained glass window depicting a dove and some of the apostles with flames over their heads

Come, Holy Spirit: A Pentecost Reflection

The Acts of the Apostles and ‘The Amazing Race’

A pope for our time

Communicate hope with gentleness

God is real and balanced; he gets us in darkness and light

Copyright © 2023 OSV News

Print Print

Share
Share on Facebook
Share
Share this
Pin
Pin this
Share
Share on LinkedIn

Primary Sidebar

Jenna Marie Cooper

View all posts from this author

| Recent Commentary |

Asking for human life and dignity protections in the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act’

Stained glass window depicting a dove and some of the apostles with flames over their heads

Come, Holy Spirit: A Pentecost Reflection

The Acts of the Apostles and ‘The Amazing Race’

A pope for our time

Communicate hope with gentleness

| Recent Local News |

Franciscan Sister Francis Anita Rizzo, who served in Baltimore for 18 years, dies at 95

Hundreds gather at Rebuilt Conference 2025 to ‘imagine what’s possible’ in parish ministry

Radio Interview: Dominican sister at Mount de Sales shares faith journey from astrophysics to religious life

Mount de Sales Dominican sister shares journey after pursuing science, finding faith 

Words spell success for archdiocesan students

| Catholic Review Radio |

CatholicReview · Catholic Review Radio

Footer

Our Vision

Real Life. Real Faith. 

Catholic Review Media communicates the Gospel and its impact on people’s lives in the Archdiocese of Baltimore and beyond.

Our Mission

Catholic Review Media provides intergenerational communications that inform, teach, inspire and engage Catholics and all of good will in the mission of Christ through diverse forms of media.

Contact

Catholic Review
320 Cathedral Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
443-524-3150
mail@CatholicReview.org

 

Social Media

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Recent

  • Parishes will pay $80 million in Buffalo Diocese’s $150 million bankruptcy settlement
  • Papal diplomats must always defend poor, religious freedom, pope says
  • Franciscan Sister Francis Anita Rizzo, who served in Baltimore for 18 years, dies at 95
  • ‘No tengan miedo de hacer lo que El Señor quiere para nosotros’
  • On a day of ‘national tragedy,’ Austria mourns 9 victims of high school shooting
  • Hundreds gather at Rebuilt Conference 2025 to ‘imagine what’s possible’ in parish ministry
  • Fathers of the Church: The Greek (or Eastern) Fathers
  • In move called a ‘dark day’ for residents, N.Y. Senate passes assisted suicide law
  • Pope Leo’s core identity is Augustinian, say religious

Search

Membership

Catholic Media Assocation

Maryland-Delaware-DC Press Association

The Associated Church Press

© 2025 CATHOLIC REVIEW MEDIA, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

en Englishes Spanish
en en