Let little kids come to communion.

Children should receive the Eucharist. Not when they are old enough to appreciate fancy white dresses and new blue pants, march dutifully in straight rows, and look dignified while still cute for the video recorders, but rather at the first instant they feel the desire to take the sacred bread and communicate with their God along with the rest of the assembly.

Forcing children to "wait 'til 8" is unfair, unhealthy, and unwise. It is about as sensible as making children wait until they take astronomy before allowing them to gaze at the stars, or making them pass biology before begrudging them a meal. Forbidding younger children to receive the Eucharist douses their natural spiritual fervor; it teaches them that the Eucharist is an exclusive-club ritual rather than an inclusive, unifying fiesta, and it grossly exaggerates the relative understanding of those currently deemed worthy to partake.

My own son, Joey, convinced me of this when he was a mere 2 years old. One Sunday, as I hurried him down the stairs in another dubious attempt to make it to church on time, he stopped cold in his tracks and asked the question I expected 14 years later: "Daddy, why do we go to church?"

I was initially proud of my quick response: "Joey, we go to church to show our love for God and to show our love for each other. Did you know that the people at church hove you a lot?" Being members of a small, intimate Mexican American parish in the central city, I genuinely felt what I suggested about our community. But I didn't get the satisfied response or the early departure for Mass I had hoped for.

Joey responded, "Daddy, that makes me feel very sad."

How could hearing that people loved him make my 2-year-old sad? "Help me understand what you mean," I prodded.

"Daddy, if they love me so much," he questioned, "why won't they let me eat the Jesus Bread?"

At Mass that day something major changed in Joey's relationship to the church and possibly, I fear, to God. Before, he had attended Mass joyfully and playfully. This time he started out that way again. But when the communion procession formed, he moved forward reluctantly to receive his patronizing blessing, and when we returned to the pew, he sat sullen, listless, and alone for the rest of the Mass, at least a yard's stretch on either side from the nearest fellow Christian.

I've told dozens of people this story over the past three years. Many have brushed the incident off as a peculiar experience of an unusual child. Others have laughed, saying, "Isn't that cute! He doesn't understand what it is!"

Some, however, have taken it seriously, either because their own children feel the same way or because the story suddenly helped them see the Eucharist and children's spirituality in a new light. These people get it: the problem isn't that Joey doesn't understand the Eucharist but precisely that he does understand. (Once, during the meditation after Communion, I noticed him staring at the huge depiction of the crucifixion behind the altar. He turned and asked, "Daddy, does the Jesus in the Jesus Bread have blood like that, or is it Jesus after he came back to life?")

Granted, Joey may have had a greater than average ability at age 2 to express his spiritual sentiment, but I am convinced that he was less a prodigy than a spokesperson for thousands of young Catholics who sense the same pain at Eucharist without the vocabulary to express it.

Young believers have not always suffered this exclusion. Until the 13th century, children were admitted to the Eucharist from Baptism on. Then the church began to require sufficient intellectual understanding of Christ's presence in the Host to adore it. Later, in the 17th century, the church chose to promote the Eucharist as a reward for virtue; young children, being incapable of great sin, weren't really capable of great virtue, either, so they could not earn the eucharistic prize.

Perhaps that was good pastoral theology for the 13th and 17th centuries, but already in 1910 Pope Plus X realized its inadequacy for the 20th century. He lowered the threshold age to 7 or 8. Since that time, the only essential requirement for First Eucharist has been the ability to distinguish between eucharistic bread and ordinary bread.

Curiously neither I nor my wife recalls ever using the phrase "Jesus Bread" with Joey. He made that connection himself. Likewise, neither he nor any of his like-aged friends has ever asked why the bread at church isn't served with peanut butter or salami or suggested that the bread they eat at home is Jesus.

Today the church has nearly another century of psychological insight beyond that which Plus X had. It should be plain now that toddlers can distinguish between the meaning of what they do around the altar and what they do around the kitchen table.

For the sake of argument, let's be conservative and apply the 17th-century theology. If the capacity to adore is essential, young children have a corner on the market. A few months before Joey asked his penetrating question, I had taken him to Mass on Ascension Thursday. The crowd was thin and tired that night. During the Gloria, while many waited patiently for Mass to resume and others lip-synched for the musicians, Joey stepped into the aisle and began to dance.

At first I started after him, fearing that his clowning antics would disturb the peace. I restrained myself, in the end, and let him laugh and twirl. Something was wrong either with me or the church if I felt compelled to arrest the only person genuinely expressing joy during that song of praise. He may have been the only one truly adoring God.

It would be silly to make too much of such a moment. Yet when I compare the simple heart of a 2-year-old who loves God to the complexity and ambiguity of my own soul - along with the host of Catholics struggling with sins ranging from greed to pedophilia, who nonetheless freely partake of the Eucharist, even if needfully so - then it strikes me as particularly senseless to deny a dancing toddler the sacrament under the pretext that he is too young to understand. Is it possible that adults exclude the too-young to bolster their own sense of worthiness?

Emphasizing intellectual understanding as a prerequisite for joining in an infinite mystery is risky business in the first place. After all, how much understanding do the people have who currently qualify to receive? Even the most profound theological insights of the late Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner or Saint Thomas Aquinas are mere child's play compared to the infinite meaning of the sacrament. So why punish young children for being just a half step behind?

If little ones don't really understand the sacrament, so what? My father didn't wait until I really understood the game of baseball before he spent more than he could afford and drove me three hours to Chicago for my first White Sox game. (Let's let other publications question how well the Sox understood the game themselves.) Nor did he make me wait until I fully understood the game to throw a ball or try out for a team.

My recollection of that first outing to a major-league ball game is still vivid. Despite having been "too young" to understand church rituals, in my imagination I can still hear the persistent plea of the peanut hawker, the soothing sound of Bob Elson's voice broadcast beneath the grandstand, the pop of the ball in the catcher's glove, and the perhaps rare crack of the bat; I can see the lush, landscaped green field arising out of the runway, and the monstrous, exploding scoreboard, which sat dormant all day. I can still smell the popcorn and feel its empty container in my hands as I raised it to my mouth as a bullhorn.

In contrast, what do Catholic children remember from their early visits to church? A blessing and a pinch on the cheek while the real Catholics ate and drank?

Maybe I didn't understand a thing that happened on the field that day in Chicago, and, like my son at Mass, I didn't watch much of it, either. Yet, while I couldn't have expressed it then, I sensed very deeply what the experience meant. I'll forever be grateful to my dad for taking me before I could really watch the game, let alone explain it.

Curiously the church doesn't require that young children understand or even desire Baptism before welcoming them to that sacrament. Yet Baptism - like Confirmation, Matrimony, and Holy Orders - is essentially a sacrament of commitment, which calls for clear thinking and thorough self-examination. Eucharist and Reconciliation, on the other hand, are sacraments of nourishment, healing, and unity. A church that justifies infant Baptism undoubtedly stands on firm ground for toddler Communion. For moral support, Roman Rite leaders can turn to our Eastern Rite companions, who administer the Eucharist even to infants beginning with Baptism.

Catholic youngsters shouldn't have to go to Communion. Some won't like the taste of the Host. Others will take greater interest in saving their Power Rangers from the death threats of capricious kneelers. Still others will be content to flirt with surrogate grandparents and future prom dates in neighboring pews. All of that may be part of a eucharistic experience, too. But, from the first moment a child yearns to eat the Jesus Bread and begins the lifelong quest to fathom the unreachable depths of the Mystery that lies at the center of Catholic faith, that child should step forward, take the Host, and celebrate full Communion with Jesus and the church.

Young Catholic children will be happier, and their church will be healthier, when they perplex parents with the question "Why do we eat the Jesus Bread?" instead of "Why can't we?"

Matt Scheiber, a teacher and writer living in Toledo, Ohio.