ABSTRACT
The fieldwork results suggest, that the post-Vatican II initiatory understanding has not penetrated to ground level in the locations studied. At the same time, however, there was ample evidence that an older discourse associated with the event continues to exercise considerable importance. Catholic Church in England and Wales is committed to providing a primary school place to all Catholic children, as far as is possible, and most Catholic parishes have a primary school whose catchment area corresponds to the parish boundaries. A pedagogy of first communion as a rite of Christian initiation was thus absent from each of the settings studied- not least because the catechetical materials encountered there did not forge a link between baptism and the eucharist within an initiatory framework. Concern that the re-patterning of first communion was a breach in generational continuity was expressed during one of the parents' meetings in the first parish.
