The Age of Reason

The age of reason, also called the age of discretion, is the moment when the child acquires the use of reason: the capacity to discern good from evil and to act knowingly. As long as he has not reached it, he does not measure the import of his acts. Scripture knows this threshold: it speaks of the little ones “who today know neither good nor evil,” Deuteronomy 1:39 and describes the child growing “until he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good.” Isaiah 7:15

The mark of seven years

The Church places this threshold around seven years. It is a flexible presumption: some children reach the use of reason a little earlier, others a little later. This mark serves as a common rule, from which the child is held responsible for his acts.

Knowledge and freedom make the act

An act engages its author only if it is posed in knowledge and willingly: one must know what one does and will it to answer for it. This is why the child who does not yet have the use of reason commits no personal sin, being able neither to measure nor truly to choose what he does. Responsibility is born with discernment, and it holds in both directions: having become able to recognize the good, man also answers for the evil he commits knowingly: “Whoever knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.” James 4:17

A threshold in the Christian life

From the age of reason, the child enters a moral life responsible before God: now capable of fault, but also of merit, of freely good acts that make him grow in grace. He becomes able to receive forgiveness in confession and to be admitted to communion. This threshold also distinguishes the effects of baptism: received in the little child, it erases original sin alone; received after the age of reason, it erases besides all personal sins.