able to receive absolution and holy communion to strengthen and protect against the dangers and challenges of the modern world. The decree of the Lateran Council (1215, can. xxi) has never been revoked or modified, and in virtue of it all are obliged, as soon as they arrive at the years of discretion, to receive both the Sacraments of Penance and Holy Communion at Easter time It was decreed that: "The age of discretion, both for Confession and for Holy Communion, is the time when a child begins to reason, that is about the seventh year, more or less." "A full and perfect knowledge of Christian doctrine is not necessary either for First Confession or for First Communion." It was also stressed that those who had charge of the children, both parents and pastors, should see to it both that the children received their first Communion, and that they continued to do this at least once a year afterwards. Implementation At the regular meeting of the bishops of England and Wales in November 1910, the bishops decided that the decree should be publicly read each Easter. The following year, they developed a course for the gradual instruction for first communion to be incorporated in subsequent diocesan syllabuses for religious education. In May 1973, the Sacred Congregation for the Discipline of the Sacraments and the Sacred Congregation for the Clergy, issued a joint declaration, Sanctus Pontifex, discussing first reconciliation prior to first eucharist. After the Second Vatican Council a short period of experimentation allowed for a later age for First Confession. The declaration clarified that after conferring with bishops, such experiments should cease and that the accepted norm was First Confession before First Communion. The decree Quam singulari is memorialized in a stained-glass window of Pope St. Pius X at St. Pius Church in Redwood City, California. References External links Full text in English 20th-century papal bulls Documents of Pope Pius X Eucharist in the Catholic Church Latin texts 1910 documents 1910 in Christianity