| Building on the search for a theology of childhood initiated by Karl Rahner, Nathan Mitchell, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Mark Searle, this dissertation investigates theological conceptions of the pre-rational child as subject of sacramental action. Utilizing the methodologies of theological anthropology and liturgical theology this dissertation analyzes the Roman Catholic Church's theological approach to the pre-rational child as part of the human family, as a canonical member of the church and as a valid recipient of the sacrament of baptism.; A review of post-conciliar Vatican documents on marriage, conception, contraception and abortion clarifies the church's moral stance on the “personhood” of the human being from the moment of conception forward. A liturgical analysis of the Rite of Baptism for Children and the canon laws defining sacramental eligibility for children uncovers the church's current theological and ritual approach to the pre-rational child, and highlights the incongruous circumstances of the pre-rational child in the church. Notions of infant baptism as a “benign abnormality” in comparison with the theologically normative RCIA are challenged, and the ritual exclusion and “excommunication” of the pre-rational child on the basis of the “cognitive criterion” are contested. The problems stemming from the church's equation and confusion of the “presence of faith” and the “demonstration of belief” are investigated, and the church's bias toward the functionally-typical rational adult as theologically normative for the whole of humanity is questioned.; This dissertation proposes a new theological understanding of the pre-rational child based on a Rahnerian philosophical-theological anthropology of human beingness that functions at the level of the a priori, and is not based on the operation of cognition. This results in certain implications for theological anthropology, liturgical praxis and canon law. In its conclusions this dissertation suggests that if a theological anthropology is incapable of including the pre-rational child, it cannot claim to be representative of the whole of humanity. It proposes further that if eligibility for full sacramental initiation in the Catholic Church is no longer judged solely according to the “cognitive criterion” then there is no reason to prevent infants from being fully initiated into the church. |
