Protestants purposely deny sacraments to children

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Syele

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This was derailing another thread so I moved it here.
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  			Originally Posted by **honeysuckle** 					[forums.catholic-questions.org/images/buttons/viewpost.gif](http://forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?p=3442179#post3442179) 				
  		*Children don't start going to the adult services with their parents until they are middle school age or even older, which is in line with the Protestant philosophy of keeping the sacraments from young children so that they can "choose" Christianity as teenagers or adults.*
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Syele said:
This is incorrect, all the Protestant churches I have ever attended (except Catholic) have the children with parents for all but the sermon. During the sermon, they go and hear a lesson they can actually understand for their age.

Baptist: Children with parents during singing, followed by a short “Children’s sermon” by Pastor before dismissal to Sunday school.

Episcopal: Children with parents for beginning of service, With pastor at front for Children’s sermon, then Children go to “Godly Play” and then return for Holy Communion. Another Episcopal church I went to skipped the children’s Sermon but still left only for the sermon, they also used the name Sunday School.

Assembly of God and my Non-Denominational Church: Children with Parents till after singing and Holy Communion and then dismissal to Sunday School.

Sunday School and Godly Play are NOT an attempt to deprive children of sacraments.

No matter where children are during church, if they know parents are compromising their beliefs over where they are, the kids will not respect God as a result. You may think they are too young to understand… but kids pick up on attitudes and emotions… They know if you are sincere in your beliefs. If the OP believes the Catholic Church is correct but attends a protestant church anyhow, the kids will not respect Christianity as they grow up.
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honeysuckle said:
And you know, your statement that the children usually leave after communion in the service is pretty contradictory.

Baptists and Assembly of God churches DO NOT have communion every service.
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Not contradictory at all. Generally Communion (on Sundays they hold it) is right between Singing and Sermon. Children’s dismissal is at the same time. I specified that Children are not dismissed till afterR the communion so you could see that the purpose of there dismissal is not to deny sacraments.

Yes, some Protestants have Children out for the entire service, but it the purpose of it was to deny sacraments then WHY would all the ones who keep them for part of it make sure they are present for the sacraments?

You have yet to show that denial of sacraments is the purpose of Sunday School.
 
I refuse to derail the other thread with this
honeysuckle said:
I live in the Midwest of the US. Maybe you live somewhere else. I don’t have to “believe what I like”, I have experienced what I have and have mentioned it. Show proof? How childish and stupid.
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Seriously, you made a tall claim that children are purposely denied sacraments. This is a serious claim and I asked you to show proof because you shouldn’t make stuff up about protestants just cause. If I made such a claim about Catholics it wouldn’t be ignored.
I am surprised that someone your age would be so hateful and petty.
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I’m not being hateful or petty, I’m asking you to not say things that are not true, and if they are show me how they are true. I’d be very upset to find my church was purposely denying children Baptism and Communion. I was in that thread trying to convince a Catholic NOT to leave the Catholic Church, and you came with a wild claim. I was only asking you to back what you say, not being hateful or petty.
Why don’t we argue that the sky is blue? What exactly would be proof?
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Whya re you trying to say it’s not blue? don’t be purposely difficult.
Would you likely me to personally call every church in a 25 mile radius of my home and ask me what their child care arrangements are and then post it? Why? If my experience is that I have never seen a Protestant church interrupt their service every service (only on rare occassions when the pastor read) to separate the children isn’t good enough, who cares?
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I guess I care if you are telling people that protestants purposely deny children sacraments. I don’t care how you get your proof, but there is no point in making things up.
And what is this “deny children sacraments” accusation? You are twisting what I said. If it gives you pleasure to sit around and vent your anger at people on message boards, go vent at someone else. I cannot imagine a more ignorant and petty topic of conversation.
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you clearly said:
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  	 				 					Originally Posted by **honeysuckle** 					[forums.catholic-questions.org/images/buttons/viewpost.gif](http://forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?p=3442179#post3442179) 				
  		*Children don't start going to the adult services with their parents until they are middle school age or even older, **which is in line with the Protestant philosophy of keeping the sacraments from young children*** so that they can "choose" Christianity as teenagers or adults.
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it is in fact word for word what you said, not twisting anything.
 
At the Foursquare church I currently attend, the children go out AFTER the Lord’s Supper on Communion Sundays. They go to Children’s Church, which is a type of Sunday school, during the sermon. I’m not sure what age they stop going.

At the Episcopal church I attended for years, there was no children’s church. There was Sunday school between services, which ended after the church service we went to started. However, it ended soon enough that we would have been in church in plenty of time for Communion.

Other churches my family visited had children’s churches. My parents almost never let us go to them, preferring to have us in church with the adults. No one ever stopped them from doing that. They probably had their own communion in the children’s church if the children weren’t released to the “big church” for Communion.

Protestants DO NOT deny sacraments to children. If anything, they are very eager to save children, and in most Protestant churches I think anyone baptized/who has acknowledged Jesus as Lord and Savior can partake in the Lord’s Supper. The only possible exception I can think of would be denominations who want you to be old enough to truly understand what you’re doing before you accept Christ and get baptized. I’m not sure what their Communion practices are though. And those churches will definitely have some kind of preparation for those children and expect them to come to church with everyone else. Also, I don’t think these denominations are very numerous.
 
In the Methodist Church, we deliberately shorten or eliminate children’s church on Communion Sundays, specifically so that children have the opportunity to receive.

I have never heard of any group that did any different…unless it might be one of the Anabaptist groups. I have no experience of their services, can’t speak for them…
But the mainline & the evangelical churches, go out of the way to encourage kids receiving Holy Communion…I grew up in a Holiness church, & have had the pastor stop by after church, when I was sick, to bring my grandmother & me Holy Communion, when we had been unable to be at the services.
 
My Protestant family and most Protestants I know frown on child baptism. They believe baptism is supposed to represent a mature decision to repent of sin and lead a godly life, not intended to be a magical guarantee of salvation.
 
FaithofAbraham said:
My Protestant family and most Protestants I know frown on child baptism. They believe baptism is supposed to represent a mature decision to repent of sin and lead a godly life, not intended to be a magical guarantee of salvation.
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You mean infant Baptism, correct? Cause I was a child when I was baptized at age 9 and no one batted an eye about my age.
 
Syele said:
You mean infant Baptism, correct? Cause I was a child when I was baptized at age 9 and no one batted an eye about my age.
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Well any baptism before an age where you know what sin is and know you don’t want to sin.

Did you already experience sin at 9 and decide you didn’t want to sin anymore? If so maybe you were old enough.
 
At the Presbyterian church where I grew up we had children in service until right before the sermon, at which point they left and went to a “children’s message” of their own and were picked up by their parents after the sermon (which concluded the adult service, save a closing hymn).

Now, to our detriment, we have an entire service constructed for the children so they do not go to service with their parents at all. Parents drop their kids off at a “children’s worship” service, then go to their own service; the two are separate. However even with such a system in place, we always have the kids stay with their parents on those Sundays in which Communion is served, so they can be there for that.

Also, we do not let children take Communion until they have gone through a class to learn what it is about. A person should know what they are doing and be able to do it reverently and respectfully when they take Communion. The class is offered to 6th grade children, if I am not mistaken; their first Communion is on Thursday during Holy Week.
 
FaithofAbraham said:
Well any baptism before an age where you know what sin is and know you don’t want to sin.

Did you already experience sin at 9 and decide you didn’t want to sin anymore? If so maybe you were old enough.
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Yes, I had. I experienced a lot of things before age 9.

My own six year old knows about sin too, we are preparing her for Baptism now.
 
It is impossable to paint Protestant congregations with any broad brush, there is every kind and stripe and variation you can imagine.

From my background (non-Denom, A/G and some CofC), children are dropped off at a Nursrey/Children’s Church before the parents even enter the main “sanctuary”. In the bigger mega-churches, I’ve seen the parents get a number for the kid (kind of like a claim check). If there is a problem with the child during church, the number is shown on a screen and the parent knows to go check on the child.
 
Syele said:
Yes we do, there are two. Many churches, I admit, fail to teach the kids the word, but most Protestants still claim two Sacraments.
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Fundamentalist and post-Reformational Evangelical denominations often eschew the word ‘sacrament’ in favor of the word ‘ordinance’ or some similar word. Most post-Reformational Protestants lack any sort of sacramental theology.

Of course the RCC and Eastern Orthodox usually feel that Lutherans, Anglicans, and so forth have invalid sacraments, but those Protestants at least think of themselves as having sacraments.

So far as the OP is concerned: Some Evangelical churches have a completely-separate Youth Church at the same time that adult worhsip is going on upstairs. In the denomination I was raised in, this would include the passing of communion the youth church services. Remember, though, that most Evangelicals do not baptise infants because they do not believe children need baptism to be saved until they attain an age of culpability for their sins. Sacraments are ‘medicine for the sick’, and Protestants who do not believe their children are culpable for their sins essentially are of the belief that their children are not in need of such ‘medicine’. You may not share that view, but please understand that there is not some sort of spiritual ‘abuse’ occurring if Protestants do not include their children in Holy Communion or other sacraments.
 
To me as Orthodox this seems a very odd line of discussion, because we believe it is Catolics who deny Holy Mysteries or Sacraments to children. Latin Catolic church only is to baptize and does not annoint with Holy Myron or Communicate small children. This is a denial to such Holy Mysteries which help spiritual growth small children

Since Latin church began such separation of sacraments to children, those who broke off from her also feel children not needing such spiritual help - hence probably Protestants also do not ammoint with Myron or Communicate.

http://www.pravoslavie-verbilki.newmail.ru/chronicle/PalmSunday/Worship/IMAG0090.jpg
 
Volodymyr said:
To me as Orthodox this seems a very odd line of discussion, because we believe it is Catolics who deny Holy Mysteries or Sacraments to children. Latin Catolic church only is to baptize and does not annoint with Holy Myron or Communicate small children. This is a denial to such Holy Mysteries which help spiritual growth small children

Since Latin church began such separation of sacraments to children, those who broke off from her also feel children not needing such spiritual help - hence probably Protestants also do not ammoint with Myron or Communicate.

http://www.pravoslavie-verbilki.newmail.ru/chronicle/PalmSunday/Worship/IMAG0090.jpg
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That’s exactly what I was thinking. Strange to complain about Protestants denying sacraments to children when the Catholic Church denies them chrismation and the Eucharist until the “age of reason”. Why should Catholics expect their progeny to behave any differently than they do?

In my mind the whole question is proof of the dangers of abandoning the old Apostolic patterns of faith and worship. As difficult as it is for Catholics to accept Protestantism is the logical conclusion of the direction they took when they broke away from the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

Yours in Christ
Joe
 
flameburns623 said:
So far as the OP is concerned: Some Evangelical churches have a completely-separate Youth Church at the same time that adult worhsip is going on upstairs. In the denomination I was raised in, this would include the passing of communion the youth church services. Remember, though, that most Evangelicals do not baptise infants because they do not believe children need baptism to be saved until they attain an age of culpability for their sins. Sacraments are ‘medicine for the sick’, and Protestants who do not believe their children are culpable for their sins essentially are of the belief that their children are not in need of such ‘medicine’. You may not share that view, but please understand that there is not some sort of spiritual ‘abuse’ occurring if Protestants do not include their children in Holy Communion or other sacraments.
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Giving sacraments (or even calling them something else like “ordinances”) at a different time/place is not denying them, but giving them.
 
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