Saintly Intercession and Paedocommunion Again

Thank you for your thought-provoking response. I am the first to admit that Saint Thomas is not always the most perspicuous of Church Fathers and theologians! Indeed, I would much rather cling to the musterion than fall prey to the temptation to scholasticise and overcompartmentalise the Faith. I see the Intercession and Invocation of Saints more in the light of received Tradition, of lex orandi, lex credendi, than on any dogmatic and systematic principle: that is, the Communion of Saints, including its concomitant belief in the value of saintly intercessory prayer, lies at the heart of the Church's mystery, her inner doxological life. For the Eastern Churches, for example, the theological belief regarding the Dormition of the Mother of God is not a matter of dogmatic pronouncement or of a salvific article of faith (de fide) to be believed as a matter of saving faith, but is rather considered part of the interior life of prayer and worship to which only orthodox Christians have access by virtue of their inheritance of the Apostolic Tradition - that is, such beliefs do not form part of the Church's kerygmatic proclamation of the Gospel, but remain in the collective memory and experience of the Church, which in turn is expressed liturgically. So Invocation of Saints becomes part of the living Tradition, or consensus fidelium, which is handed down in prayer, liturgy, custom, and devotion from the earliest Church. The Invocation of Saints, I submit, passes the test of the Vincentian Canon quite nicely, as it is clear that the Churches that stem from antiquity, the Latin, Eastern Chalcedonian, Eastern Monophysite, Assyrian, 3/4ths of the world's Christian population, have always so prayed and pray still. Only the reformation bodies formed in the 16th century repudiate the practice.

Regarding paedocommunion - I should be happy if the Western Church would restore paedocommunion, which undoubtedly existed in the West for at least the first seven centuries of the Church, if we would restore with it the practice of paedochrismation, or infant Confirmation. As practiced in the Roman, ECUSA, and RE Churches, paedocommunion admits children to the Blessed Sacrament without the benefit of receiving the perfection and completion of baptismal grace in Confirmation, which thing I believe to be a tremendous loss. Not only could that approach be construed as bad theology, but on a pastoral level it deprives these children of their full participation in the life of sacramental grace which is conveyed in Confirmation. The question raised is a difficult one, as it itself raises many, many more questions about the relationship of Baptism to Confirmation, of the Holy Communion to both, of the proper minister of Confirmation, and of the exact nature of the gift conferred in Confirmation. The Eastern Church retained the ancient form of 'Christian initiation,' maintaining the proper sequence of Baptism, Confirmation, and the Holy Eucharist - extending such full sacramental union with Our Lord and His Church to little children. If novus ordo Churches insist on reintroducing paedocommunion to the Western Church, then I think we have seriously to consider the wisdom of also reintroducing (or perhaps introducing de novo) the Confirmation of infants, as it would be a tragedy to separate Baptism from its completion in Confirmation and first Holy Communion. Would then priests, as opposed to bishops only, be authorised to administer chrismation, as is the practice in the East? It would seem that presbyteral paedochrismation would be the only viable option for us, if the proper sequence of the Sacraments is to be preserved.