Religious traditions and legal systems throughout the world agree that young children can’t be held guilty of sins or crimes because they don’t understand the moral consequences of their actions.

The age of accountability varies among religions and cultures. The Catholic Church puts the age at eight, when a child can participate in the sacrament of confession. In Judaism, boys at 13 and girls at 12 can become a bar or bat mitzvah and be held morally responsible for their actions.

In the Anglo-American legal system, a person must normally be 14 to be held criminally liable. In some traditional Latin-American cultures, a girl becomes an adult at 15.

In America, most children look at various age benchmarks in terms or rights or privileges -- they can drive at 16, smoke, vote, and serve in the military at 18, and drink alcohol at 21.

Religious “coming of age” traditions are more concerned with obligations and responsibilities.

Last week, my 12-year-old daughter Abrielle, in a solemn but joyous ceremony, formally left her childhood to accept the responsibilities of an adult. The essence of the bat mitzvah process, involving reading from the Torah, is accepting the moral duties prescribed by Jewish law. The Hebrew bat mitzvah means “one to whom the Commandments apply.”

Of course, moral duties are distinct from legal ones. As a former Justice of the Supreme Court said, “There’s a big difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do.”

At a conference for lawyers, an attorney declared, “My job is to keep our clients out of jail.” When my turn came, I said, “My job is to keep them out of hell.”

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.