As found here. I don’t use the term antipaedocommunionist because the reasoning is actually opposed to infant baptism as well.
As opposed to imaginative and inaccurate reconstructions meant to serve the interests of the status quo, we can look at real medieval sacramentalism translated from the original Latin. Thus, Thomas Aquinas. (Italicized boldface are my additions)
Article 9. Whether those who have not the use of reason ought to receive this sacrament?
Objection 1. It seems that those who have not the use of reason ought not to receive this sacrament. For it is required that man should approach this sacrament with devotion and previous self-examination, according to 1 Corinthians 11:28: “Let a man prove himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of the chalice.” But this is not possible for those who are devoid of reason. Therefore this sacrament should not be given to them.
Objection 2. Further, among those who have not the use of reason are the possessed, who are called energumens. But such persons are kept from even beholding this sacrament, according to Dionysius (Eccl. Hier. iii). Therefore this sacrament ought not to be given to those who have not the use of reason.
Objection 3. Further, among those that lack the use of reason are children, the most innocent of all. But this sacrament is not given to children. Therefore much less should it be given to others deprived of the use of reason.
On the contrary, We read in the First Council of Orange, (Canon 13); and the same is to be found in the Decretals (xxvi, 6): “All things that pertain to piety are to be given to the insane”: and consequently, since this is the “sacrament of piety,” it must be given to them.
I answer that, Men are said to be devoid of reason in two ways. First, when they are feeble-minded, as a man who sees dimly is said not to see: and since such persons can conceive some devotion towards this sacrament, it is not to be denied them.
In another way men are said not to possess fully the use of reason. Either, then, they never had the use of reason, and have remained so from birth; and in that case this sacrament is not to be given to them, because in no way has there been any preceding devotion towards the sacrament: or else, they were not always devoid of reason, and then, if when they formerly had their wits they showed devotion towards this sacrament, it ought to be given to them in the hour of death; unless danger be feared of vomiting or spitting it out. Hence we read in the acts of the Fourth Council of Carthage (Canon 76). and the same is to be found in the Decretals (xxvi, 6): “If a sick man ask to receive the sacrament of Penance; and if, when the priest who has been sent for comes to him, he be so weak as to be unable to speak, or becomes delirious, let them, who heard him ask, bear witness, and let him receive the sacrament of Penance. then if it be thought that he is going to die shortly, let him be reconciled by imposition of hands, and let the Eucharist be placed in his mouth.”
Reply to Objection 1. Those lacking the use of reason can have devotion towards the sacrament; actual devotion in some cases, and past in others.
Reply to Objection 2.Dionysius is speaking there of energumens who are not yet baptized, in whom the devil’s power is not yet extinct, since it thrives in them through the presence of original sin. But as to baptizedpersons who are vexed in body by unclean spirits, the same reason holds good of them as of others who are demented. Hence Cassian says (Collat. vii): “We do not remember the most Holy Communion to have ever been denied by our elders to them who are vexed by unclean spirits.”
Reply to Objection 3. The same reason holds good of newly born children as of the insane who never have had the use of reason: consequently, the sacred mysteries are not to be given to them. Although certain Greeks do the contrary, because Dionysius says (Eccl. Hier. ii) that Holy Communion is to be given to them who are baptized; not understanding that Dionysius is speaking there of the Baptism of adults. Nor do they suffer any loss of life from the fact of our Lord saying (John 6:54), “Except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, you shall not have life in you”; because, as Augustine writes to Boniface (Pseudo-Beda, Comment. in 1 Corinthians 10:17), “then every one of the faithful becomes a partaker,” i.e. spiritually, “of the body and blood of the Lord, when he is made a member of Christ’s body in Baptism.” But when children once begin to have some use of reason so as to be able to conceive some devotion for the sacrament, then it can be given to them.
So you can see how completely misleading it is to entitle a blog post “the medievalism of paedocommunion.” In actual fact, opposition to paedocommunion was a Roman Catholic medieval innovation that was passed uncritically into the Protestant churches. I’ll give Aquinas credit though. He at least tries to come up with a reason not to bar those who have become senile from the Lord’s Table. PCA churches articulate an ideology that means Cornelius Van Til and many others should have been excommunicated in their dotage, but mindlessly do better in actual practice (thankfully). My understanding from reading Assembly of the Lord: Politics and Religion in the Westminster Assembly by Robert S. Paul is that the Westminster Assembly rejected Aquinas’ exception and tried to enforce the much more horrible consistency.
Notice that Aquinas never argues against children but simply presupposes they are banned from the Lord’s Supper. His only reason for even discussing the issue is that a piece of inconsistent evidence from the Council of Orange needs to be explained away.
Where did this tradition come from? Pastor Tommy Lee’s excellent paper tells us: The false teaching of transubstantiation not only reduced lay participation in the Lord’s Supper due to superstition fear, but resulted in the barring of children altogether. Not exactly a high-water mark in Reformed sacramental theology. Here is an excerpt:
If paedocommunion was the common practice of the church in ancient days, then why do we not practice it today? Keidel asserts that infants and children were forbidden from the Lord’s Supper because of “the doctrine of transubstantiation and the doctrine of concomitance (i.e., that Christ is present entirely under either kind)… The fear that infants and children might spill the wine and thereby profane the actual body and blood of the Lord appears to have been the primary reason for this discontinuance.“49 Actually, it was not only the infants and children who ceased drinking the “transubstantiated” wine. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries all of the laity (in the West), adults included, began to back away from the cup. 50
The Fourth Lateran Council (in 1215) gave the doctrine of transubstantiation “full dogmatic authority.”51 But even before the Fourth Lateran Council, it had long been common belief that when the priest spoke the words of consecration over the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper “the ‘accidents’ (shape, taste, and the like) [would] remain unaltered, [but] the ‘substance’ … [would be] transformed into the very body and blood of Christ.”52 It was the fear of mishandling the very blood of Jesus that caused the laity to want to partake of the bread only. In the words of the historian Williston Walker:
“A withdrawal of the cup instigated by the clergy did not take place. The abandonment of the cup was rather a layman’s practice due to fear of dishonoring the sacrament by misuse of the wine. Such anxiety had manifested itself as early as the seventh century in the adoption of the Greek custom of dipping the bread in the wine-a practice repeatedly disapproved by ecclesiastical authority, but supported by lay sentiment. By the twelfth century the laity were avoiding the use of the wine altogether, apparently first in England. By the time of Aquinas lay communion in the bread alone had become prevalent.”53
When the laity denied themselves the cup, they continued to believe that they were still receiving both the body and the blood of Christ while only eating the bread because of the doctrine of concomitance (defined above). In fact, “although … [concomitance] is a logical extension of the theory of transubstantiation, the practical pressure for this doctrine of concomitance was provided by the withdrawal of the cup from the laity within the Roman Church.”54
The infants of the church had long only communicated in wine (or bread dipped in wine) because of the difficulty they would have in swallowing bread.56 The commonality of this practice is evidenced for us in a letter that Pope Paschalis the Second (in the 12th century) wrote to Pontius, the abbot of Cluny. He says (my italics), “As Christ communicated bread and wine, each by itself, and it ever had been so observed in the church, it ever should be so done in the future, save in the case of infants and of the sick, who as a general thing, could not eat bread.”57 In order to justify the withdrawing of all infant participation in the Lord’s Supper, the church began to teach (in the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, the Council of Bordeaux in 1255, and the Council of Trent in 1545-1563)58 that “infants received all that was necessary for salvation in baptism, and that little children, therefore, were not in danger of losing their salvation if they waited until the age of discretion before partaking of the eucharist, at which time they would eat with more respect and understanding.”59 In a further attempt to justify the termination of paedocommunion, the Fourth Lateran Council also came to “the landmark decision that confession must precede communion and that first communion should occur at the ‘age of discretion.'”60 Therefore, communion becomes associated with confession instead of baptism. “Infants who had enjoyed full membership in the church in times past were
49: Christian L. Keidel, “Is the Lord’s Supper for Children?,” Westminster Theological Journal XXXVII (1975): 302. In his fifteenth footnote, Keidel cites the following works as support for this assertion. “Adolph Harnack, History of Dogma, vol. vi, tr. by William McGilchrist, William and Norgue, Covent Garden, London 1899, p. 240; Augustus Neander, General History of the Christian Religion and Church, vol. 4, Boston 1871, pp. 341ff.” Keidel then goes on to say, “Other reasons for withdrawing the cup were hygienic and out of fear of disease. It should also be remembered that removal of the cup from the laity enhanced the dignity of the priest at a time in which the Roman Catholic Church was seeking an individuality of its own after the split with the Orthodox Church in 1054.” Charles Crawford agrees that there were various reasons for the abandonment of infant communion. He categorizes the factors as hygienic (fear of disease), practical (doctrine of concomitance), and dogmatic (demand for intelligent reception). Crawford, 533-534; Other contributing factors may include the separation of confirmation from the time of baptism (made necessary because Christianity grew rapidly while the number of bishops did not) which encouraged a break down in the three part rite of initiation into the church (baptism, confirmation, eucharist) and the development of the idea of childhood. See Hamilton, 22-25.
50: Walker, 274; McLarty, 66; It is not surprising that so many sacramental changes were happening at this time when we realize the fear that the people had of the transubstantiated elements. “A Christian society that has degenerated to such a state that it becomes necessary to legislate that Christians need receive the eucharist once a year is fertile for most anything to take place in the context of baptism and the eucharist. The whole vision of what the eucharist was, and what its relationship was to the community had so changed that the process could take place unresisted, except in those places where tradition was being asserted for political rather than theological reasons…it is this degeneration… of the sacraments during the middle ages that provided the theological and cultural milieu in which infants and the young could stop receiving the eucharist… We should not be surprised then to find a North German synod, on the eve of the Reformation, declaring that it is unseemly for the laity ever to receive the eucharist.” Muller-Fahrenholz, 63-64.
51 Walker, 274.
52 Ibid., 274.
53 Ibid., 274.
54 Douglas, s.v. “concomitance” by Carl S. Meyer.
55 “When the chalice was finally withheld from the laity, it meant that infants no longer could receive communion at all, since the church had become accustomed to communing infants only under the form of wine. The conclusion was simple: no wine, no, communion for infants. Infant communion, at least as a common practice, disappeared in the Western church during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.” David L. Pearcy, “Infant Communion Part I: The Historical Practice,” Currents in Theology and Mission 7:1 (1980): 45; Mark D. Tranvik, “Should Infants be Communed? A Lutheran Perspective,” Word & World 15:1 (1995): 84; Crawford, 529-530; Muller-Fahrenholz, 62; Roger Kent Peters, “A Theological Rationale for the Administration of Communion to Persons who are Profoundly Mentally Retarded” (D.Min. diss., Lancaster Theological Seminary, 1986), 21-89.
56 McLarty, 66; The Catholic Encyclopedia, 170; Pearcy, 45; Crawford, 527-528.
57 Keidel, 302.
58 Ibid., 303.
59 Ibid., 303.
60 McLarty, 66; “After the Lateran Council decree of 1215, the Catholic Church prescribed the following sequence for the reception of the seven sacraments: Baptism, Confirmation, Penance, the Eucharist, Matrimony or Orders, and Extreme Unction… Since 1215 both boys and girls who had reached the age of discretion were required to confess their sins and to receive the Eucharist annually… Thus the Western Church in the High Middle Ages viewed young children under the age of discretion as catechumens, individuals who were intermediate between infants and adults.” Richard L. Demolen, “Childhood and the Sacraments in the Sixteenth Century,” Archiv fur Reformationsgeschichte, 66 (1975): 52-55.