Parental Duty and Sunday Obligation

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At what age does the parental duty to take your child to Mass take effect? Is it right away? When they are a few months old? When they are a year or two old?

We have a six month old baby. Sometimes we take him to Mass and sometimes my husband and I go to separate masses, leaving the baby at home. Today I felt up to the task of taking our son. My husband was a little less enthusiastic about it. He asked me how I was able to pay any attention in Mass when I am having to wrangle our little one the whole time (he has to leave part way through for RCIA.)

He has a point. I am less focused and our son doesn’t know what is going on. On the other hand, he has been baptized, we are responsible for his soul and he does recieve graces from going. With any future children, I imagine, you end up taking all of them, but with just the one…?

So my questions to you all are not so much, which one of us is right (unless there actually is a right answer.) My question is what did you do when you had just one baby? Did you always take him or her to Mass? Was there a certain age you began taking them with you every Sunday?
 
Hi. I’m 29. We’ve got our first baby (now 17 months old). We started taking him IMMEDIATLEY. A few days after we got home from the hospital we took him to the first sunday mass. I’m VERY happy we did this.

Initially… I felt the same way at mass. I felt I was unable to get as much out of it as I was getting prior. I’ve come to realize that it just felt that way because I had to learn to look at the mass in a different light because I was now at a different level being a parent.

As parents…as you mentioned… it is our obligation to bring our children into the faith. Actually, it’s our primary obligation! Any chance we get to have our babies close to Jesus or in the religious community they were baptized into where the holy spirit dwells, or even …near his priests who can give them blessings…we really should get them there.

I kinda felt a little cheated initially because mass was not the same. But now I’ve come to a new realization that makes mass EVEN MORE powerful than it was before. I understand what it means to be a parent and what we are willing to go through for our children…this made the mass more real for me than I had ever seen it. For instance, when I contemplate the love of a father who was willing to place His son on an alter of sacrifice for us His children…I knew but never KNEW how much God loved us!

As parents who have been given a sacred obligation…it’s no longer about us anymore! It’s all about them!

I promise you…if you embrace your call to be the spiritual parent of your child, you’ll be blessed with a more profound connection with God.

God bless!

Michael
 
Canonically the obligation to attend Mass comes with reaching the age of reason:

Can. 11 Merely ecclesiastical laws bind those who have been baptized in the Catholic Church or received into it, possess the efficient use of reason, and, unless the law expressly provides otherwise, have completed seven years of age.

Of course, children should be brought to Mass as a normal part of family life, not just when it comes to canon law.

The logistics of how and when will be unique to each family and the temperament of the child(ren) involved.
 
In the past (even relatively recently) young children were not regularly brought to Mass. Partly because, as 1ke said, the Church does not require it before the ‘age of reason’ and partly because young children were simply not brought out in public much. With an extended family or domestic help, it was easy enough to leave the baby at home. Now that is not the case at all.

With our first, we brought her with us. She was a happy baby and was very content in her sling (baby wearing). The same with our second. I credit the sling with keeping them quiet as young babies. As toddlers they were more wiggly and needed to be taken out when they acted up. Sitting in the front helped because they could see and so were more “entertained.”
 
I wasn’t allowed to go to church until I could understand what was going on and could behave myself. Personally, I think that was best because it made me want to go to church more.

My sister brought her kids to church from the time they were born, and one of them thinks, “Jesus is boring.” I wonder if that’s because he’s always been bored at church because he went before he knew what was going on. I’d rather raise kids who thought going to Mass was a privilege, than kids who thought it was boring.

The other problem is that at my church hardly anyone takes their screaming children outside to calm down. I often can’t hear the readings or the homily or much else, especially if several children are bawling at once. I don’t object to kids being there. That’s up to their parents, and some parents have to or want to bring their kids to Mass. That’s fine. But if parents do bring their kids, I wish they would take them outside when they become a major disturbance. Kids are cute and all, but I’d like to be able to focus my attention and hear everything.

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I can’t remember exactly when we started bringing our twins to Mass. Probably at about 2 and half years of age (they are 14 now). I wanted to make sure our children grew up never remembering a time that they did not go to Mass. We were not like some parents who give their kids toys and a ziplock of cheerios and let them have free reign of the place, crawling down the pew and interacting with others. They were taught at this age to be respectful and participate in the Mass. They sang the songs, they knew when to sit, kneel and stand. They participated fully (to the best of their ability for their age). They didn’t have a choice. They never knew anything different. We always sat in the second pew (and still do), as our first pew is set aside for those who may have difficulty getting to communion. I often had one sitting on my shoulder so they could see better. I think sitting right up front is important. Of course kids are fidgety, but I don’t think we ever had to take a kid out because they were being disruptive. We were continually complimented by other members of the parish on how well behaved our kids were at Mass. Why were our kids so well behaved? I believe it is because we INVOLVED them. We were constantly pointing things out. Teaching them the proper ways. Quizzing them on their knowledge of the Mass and the faith. Showing them things in the church and telling them the stories of our faith, etc. etc. It’s a lot of work, but isn’t that our calling as parents? My wife protested some at first. Said she didn’t get as much out of Mass with the kids there. But I was firm. Said if she wanted to go again to a later Mass by herself, that was fine. But we are going to Mass as a “family” every sunday. *“Train up a child in the way he should go, Even when he is old he will not depart from it”.*Proverbs 22:6

I believe another component of this is normal appropriate discipline in the home. We never did spank our kids, not that I ever ruled that out. But in our home, bad behaviour is ALWAYS and immediatly dealt with, and good behaviour is always rewarded. Kids that exibit bad behaviour and are not disciplined, will exhibit bad behaviour at home as well as in church. If a kid grows up knowing that he/she NEVER gets away with bad behaviour, and usually gets rewarded or complimented for good behaviour, you will find bad behaviour to be a very rare thing.

Again, I don’t think we took kids to church until they were about 2 1/2. They usually need to be intellectually able to particiate at some level. However, I have seen many babies that grew up going to Mass with few problems. I enjoy having the babies at Mass. And unless it is uncontrollable screaming, crying babies don’t bother me ever since I had my own.
 
And just to clarify, the age of reason is ‘seven years of age or thereabouts’. In other words, children do not have to attend Mass, nor their parents take them, until they are seven. Obviously, most parents take them long before then, but don’t feel guilty if you decide they are not ready. We never took ours until they were two.
 
1ke said:
Canonically the obligation to attend Mass comes with reaching the age of reason:

Can. 11 Merely ecclesiastical laws bind those who have been baptized in the Catholic Church or received into it, possess the efficient use of reason, and, unless the law expressly provides otherwise, have completed seven years of age.

Of course, children should be brought to Mass as a normal part of family life, not just when it comes to canon law.

The logistics of how and when will be unique to each family and the temperament of the child(ren) involved.
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There’s a lot to be said for allowing for unique family situations… especially with young children.

If you’re looking for personal experiences… We have always brought our kids to Mass with us, starting as early as 3 days old. We always attend as a family. Yes, we certainly are distracted by the children at many times. Sometimes we have to walk a noisy infant/toddler to the narthex so as not to disturb others around us. It just comes with the territory. Our motivation is to simply make it a habit. It’s definitely challenging at times, but the habitual act slowly ingrains in the kids…

Prayers! I know it’s a hard transition to parenthood!!!
 
With baby #1, I was a good devout mom who brought her baby to church every Sunday on time. She was a happy, calm baby and well-behaved toddler. She’s always loved going to church.

Enter baby #2. She’s challenging at the best of times, but in church, the running, the screaming, and rolling on the floor reach a whole new level. When we go up for the Eucharist, she howls and pulls me away. I sometimes think she needs to be exorcised. :o

She’s 2.5 now with only the subtlest signs of slowly improving. Sometimes I try to take her along, just to see how she’s doing, but I’ve decided to become more focused on taking my 6-year-old, who can learn and participate better without her screaming baby sister.
 
Litcrit said:
Enter baby #2. She’s challenging at the best of times, but in church, the running, the screaming, and rolling on the floor reach a whole new level. When we go up for the Eucharist, she howls and pulls me away. I sometimes think she needs to be exorcised. :o
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:rotfl:
Yeah… my toddler literally tore my necklace off last weekend! Sigh… :rolleyes:
 
1ke said:
Canonically the obligation to attend Mass comes with reaching the age of reason:

Can. 11 Merely ecclesiastical laws bind those who have been baptized in the Catholic Church or received into it, possess the efficient use of reason, and, unless the law expressly provides otherwise, have completed seven years of age.

Of course, children should be brought to Mass as a normal part of family life, not just when it comes to canon law.

The logistics of how and when will be unique to each family and the temperament of the child(ren) involved.
Click to expand...
This. Our kids did not start regular Mass attendance until they were nearly five, but they now attend daily Mass on their own accord quite frequently and they take their duty to attend Mass on Sundays and Holy Days as a positive part of their identity as Catholics (as young teens). I think the main thing is that you instill a love of the Mass, that you model a positive example of the practice of unfailingly meeting the obligation to worship when it is an obligation, and not only that you put children in the habit of attending. You can’t just plunk them in the pew next to you and hope they pick it up by osmosis. You have to educate them about worship by both experience and by other means of education. That is something to tailor to your own family.
 
Our daughter has been attending weekly mass with us since she was a week old.

It has been a fantastic experience for us, for her and for the parish. She is now 6 yrs old and knows how to behave in church and has done from a very early age as she has grown up in the faith.
 
ajecphotos said:
Our daughter has been attending weekly mass with us since she was a week old.

It has been a fantastic experience for us, for her and for the parish. She is now 6 yrs old and knows how to behave in church and has done from a very early age as she has grown up in the faith.
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I think this is the ideal. We had a reason to keep our own kids home over half of the Sundays until they were five or so, which I wanted to point out does not doom a child to disliking Mass, but I went from the time I was brought home from the hospital, and really loved Mass even as a small child. When they were five, though, it was time to form their habits for preparing for and receiving Holy Communion.

My husband is not Catholic, but he’d get very stressed out about how wiggly our kids were at Mass when they were toddlers. His own father, meanwhile, had quit going to church at his first opportunity because over the years * his* mother (that is, my husband’s grandmother) made the experience so uncomfortable for my husband’s dad.

We waited until our kids had the body control to do well at church. They were twins, and when they were younger, I couldn’t keep them in line by myself and pay attention to Mass myself. My husband and I agreed that we did not want the boys in the “cry room”, because then we’d have to “un-teach” them the lesson that it is OK to run around in church. So they stayed home until they were old enough to succeed. That can work, if it proves necessary. The ideal, though, is to simply go your whole life.

You’re never too young for Mass to give you graces, if you are disposed to receive them.
 
The same as your babies don’t know how to behave at the dinner table or in public or with other people, how on earth do you expect them to learn how to behave in church if you don’t take them and show them?
 
RedSparklyShoes said:
The same as your babies don’t know how to behave at the dinner table or in public or with other people, how on earth do you expect them to learn how to behave in church if you don’t take them and show them?
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Children can learn how to behave at Mass at the age of four or five or six or whenever they start going. I always behaved well at church because I knew my mom would be mad if I didn’t and I loved going. 👍
 
RedSparklyShoes said:
The same as your babies don’t know how to behave at the dinner table or in public or with other people, how on earth do you expect them to learn how to behave in church if you don’t take them and show them?
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True, but you don’t expect a baby or a toddler to be ready to learn how to behave at the dinner table, and many just aren’t while they’re this young.

My #2, the one I rarely take to church now at age 2.5, also can’t quite behave at the dinner table - she climbs the chair, then she climbs down, then climbs up, takes a bite and runs a circle around the kitchen, then stands on the chair. It looks like she’s in physical pain if she needs to hold still for more than a split second. My first was a tiny adult at that age, sitting still and feeding herself.

Now, I suppose we could “train” her, using some painful method I probably wouldn’t care for, to be still in both places. But I really want my children to associate good, pleasant things with both family dinner AND church!
 
I took all of my kids the weekend after they were born, and never stopped. Having said that, none of my kids were particularly difficult at that age. No colic, no autism, no special needs, no disabilities, and no real surprises.

Did they cry? Sure. Did my wife have to go nurse? Sometimes. Did I have to pace the floor in the back of the church? Actually, I still do that one frequently.

My three year old has no clue, but at least he knows it’s quiet time. No toys, no books, and no snacks. I don’t care if he falls asleep. My five year old is reading along, and the one year old just looks around. If anything, my 10 year old needs half a cup of coffee to stay awake no matter what time it is. No issues with the other two. 🤷

Don’t have high expectations. Read the readings before Mass if you can. Each child is different. Don’t worry if they’re all different. That’s normal.
 
I go on two mass. One for me when nobody is there so i can devote myself in prayer. Then we go in family. There is Sunday’s school for children, many time, my daughter just go to the course and it is great.

I have seen babies in mass and little children. This is up to you, i think when your child is capable to carry on a conversation and to give enough attention when you read them the bible or any spiritual book, it should be time to take him/her to church. I never force my daughter, but find all the ways possible to inspire her. Don’t impose, but inspire. When you read the bible ect… and explain to them how mass work, they get very excited.

I think you have to do what feels right to you as the best way to inspire your children and teach them about the lord. I am not an expert but as for obligation, i would say when they receive their first communion but again, i am not sure, i am just guessing.

What is critical in my opinion, is not to impose or turn off your children. You will never bring them to God if they are force. Their heart has to will it.

All the best, i would pray Mother Mary and St-Joseph to guide you. They are the roll model of the perfect family!
 
We took our 3 children to church immediately… a couple of weeks old.
It worked for us…I think because DH and I went together,along with my family, so there were a lot of people to help out…We were blessed to have this situation.

I did not use the “crying room”…it was so loud in there, and I felt like I was not “at Mass”…very removed from the church…

We did, of course, take them in the back, or outside if they were being noisy, crying, etc… When they were toddlers, We’d bring along their Children’s Bible or small ( church oriented) books to look at .( No toys… no snacks, but when they were babies, their bottle or sippy cup was fine)
 
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