When I Was a Child.

When I was a child By Susan Ridgely Bales (Chapel Hill, 2005)

After attending my niece's First Communion last year, I tried to remember my own. But all I had was a vague recollection of the party afterwards. I believe we ate hot dogs and my parents gave me a bike, but then my sister says that's what she got for her First Communion, so maybe I'm mixing it up.

I'm living proof of the limitations of researching this important religious rite of passage by asking adults to remember their First Communions. Yet in scholarly circles, adult-centered analysis of religious practice takes precedence over children's experience.

But Susan Ridgely Bales wanted to know what this quintessential Catholic transition meant to actual 7- and 8-year-old First Communicants. So the Protestant grad student spent four years at two parishes in North Carolina--one an urban, African American one, the other rural, white, and Latino. Her findings make up this book.

She discovered that the kids' perceptions of what happens during First Communion clearly differ from those of the parents and catechists. While the grown-ups hoped it signified passage into membership in the universal church, the children told the author the most important part of First Communion was "getting the bread"--which she interpreted as symbolizing their movement from immature to capable members of their parish. "This difference in generational interpretations demonstrates, in part, that First Communion succeeded as a rite of passage more from the children's, than from the adults', point of view," she writes. Still, all saw it as a celebration and an opportunity to experience God's love.

This is not a "kids say the darnedest things" kind of book, although it includes some of the subjects' drawings. It is a scholarly tome, clearly a student's dissertation. Catechists, DREs, and teachers may find it useful, but it's a bit heavy for the rest of us who merely want a reminder of our own First Communions.