Are Your Traditional Catholic Beliefs a Source of Division Among Your Family and Friends?

[aristotle]

For goodness sakes, even our Bishops differ on issues. Do you really think that Bishop Bruskewitz & Cardinal Roger Mahony agree upon the all-male priesthood, the use of altar BOYS exclusively, the placement of the Tabernacle, the ordination of homosexuals? Do you think that they view instructions from the Vatican in the same way. I wish they did, but I’m not “stupid” enough to believe it is true.

I also wish they would, so long as they’d both come out on the right side of things.

 

[ASimpleSinner]

I can’t imagine what their reaction will be if and when I start adopting some more traditional Catholic beliefs and customs. Anyone else run into this problem?

When I started attending the Divine Liturgy with my Greek Catholic granny it annoyed my mother to no end. “We didn’t raise you that way” was one thing I heard… The fact she and her mother-in-law never got on also played a role. Not content to just quietly “do my thing” I had to make an issue of it, and grew more conservative and traditional in my pieties in a way that I realize now was just provacative.

I got an earful the friday night I was called to the dinner table and announced I would not eat the meat my mother made because I was "practicing the traditions of the Catholic faith.) When I was forced to go to Mass with them for holidays or family events, the car ride home was usually my “recap of what was wrong” from the altar girls, Eucharistic ministers, “Padre Paraphrase”, vapid hymns, illicit altar apointments…

And what was I going to accomplish in doing that? By the time we got home from Mass we were either yelling, or not talking, my mom would be screaming or in tears, we would not talk for the rest of the day… What moral victory was had there?

In a word, I was obnoxious. Their house, their rules. Stay out of their way and don’t provoke them. Any “moral high ground” you gain in your piety you can ruin or level back down by being proud and boastful about it. There was a 3 year period between my mother and I that I lost as we just could not talk to or understand each other. It wasn’t that I was all wrong… but I sure as heck was not all right on everything. I handled it very poorly.

How much does the matter have to be brought up? What came to a head where you felt compelled to “come out” to your parents as being a TLM fan? (“I recently admitted to my folks I have been attending the Traditional Latin Mass”) Are you trying to get a rise or reaction out of them? What is to admit? You went to Mass. Period. End of story.

Don’t go looking for a fight or division. I wasted 3 good years - formative years when having a better relationship to my parents (who turned out to be not “as stupid” as I thought they were!) would have saved me a lot of angst and drifting. At one point I vascilated between being a Latin trad, or an Eastern Orthodox, or maybe just have no faith… Any clever argument could convince me for at least a week. It eventually lead to a period of total indifference.

In the end it will not be your traditional Catholic beliefs that will be a source of division - it will be you who is the source. If you don’t want to eat meat of Fridays, make plans to make dinner for your family, plans to eat elsewhere, etc. If you want to attend a TLM, just don so. Don’t come home and discuss how much better it is than the Mass they go to.

There is nothing your Catholic parents are doing that you have to reject or confront them about on account of your “traditionalism”. Even if they are selling crack in their spare time or earn a living as hitmen, your traditionalism wouldn’t be coming to the fore to say “Mom dad I am not going to sell crack cocaine with you and kill people because I am a traditional Catholic now.”

If entering more deeply into the Catholic faith via adopting older forms of prayer and piety is causing division, it is not the older forms of prayer and piety that are doing it.

 

[nannygirl]

When I started attending the Divine Liturgy with my Greek Catholic granny it annoyed my mother to no end. “We didn’t raise you that way” was one thing I heard… The fact she and her mother-in-law never got on also played a role. Not content to just quietly “do my thing” I had to make an issue of it, and grew more conservative and traditional in my pieties in a way that I realize now was just provacative.

I got an earful the friday night I was called to the dinner table and announced I would not eat the meat my mother made because I was "practicing the traditions of the Catholic faith.) When I was forced to go to Mass with them for holidays or family events, the car ride home was usually my “recap of what was wrong” from the altar girls, Eucharistic ministers, “Padre Paraphrase”, vapid hymns, illicit altar apointments…

And what was I going to accomplish in doing that? By the time we got home from Mass we were either yelling, or not talking, my mom would be screaming or in tears, we would not talk for the rest of the day… What moral victory was had there?

In a word, I was obnoxious. Their house, their rules. Stay out of their way and don’t provoke them. Any “moral high ground” you gain in your piety you can ruin or level back down by being proud and boastful about it. There was a 3 year period between my mother and I that I lost as we just could not talk to or understand each other. It wasn’t that I was all wrong… but I sure as heck was not all right on everything. I handled it very poorly.

How much does the matter have to be brought up? What came to a head where you felt compelled to “come out” to your parents as being a TLM fan? (“I recently admitted to my folks I have been attending the Traditional Latin Mass”) Are you trying to get a rise or reaction out of them? What is to admit? You went to Mass. Period. End of story.

Don’t go looking for a fight or division. I wasted 3 good years - formative years when having a better relationship to my parents (who turned out to be not “as stupid” as I thought they were!) would have saved me a lot of angst and drifting. At one point I vascilated between being a Latin trad, or an Eastern Orthodox, or maybe just have no faith… Any clever argument could convince me for at least a week. It eventually lead to a period of total indifference.

In the end it will not be your traditional Catholic beliefs that will be a source of division - it will be you who is the source. If you don’t want to eat meat of Fridays, make plans to make dinner for your family, plans to eat elsewhere, etc. If you want to attend a TLM, just don so. Don’t come home and discuss how much better it is than the Mass they go to.

There is nothing your Catholic parents are doing that you have to reject or confront them about on account of your “traditionalism”. Even if they are selling crack in their spare time or earn a living as hitmen, your traditionalism wouldn’t be coming to the fore to say “Mom dad I am not going to sell crack cocaine with you and kill people because I am a traditional Catholic now.”

If entering more deeply into the Catholic faith via adopting older forms of prayer and piety is causing division, it is not the older forms of prayer and piety that are doing it.

In all fairness to the original poster, we don’t know why she was compelled to tell her family of her embracing traditional beliefs/practices. Perhaps they wondered why she hadn’t been at Mass at such-and-such church. Maybe someone saw her walking out of church with a veil on. It is not for us to assume we know what her motives are.

It is not always the case that it is only one person’s fault that there is division. Some people just love to be divisive no matter what.

 

[EasterJoy]

…When I was forced to go to Mass with them for holidays or family events, the car ride home was usually my “recap of what was wrong” from the altar girls, Eucharistic ministers, “Padre Paraphrase”, vapid hymns, illicit altar apointments…

In a word, I was obnoxious. Their house, their rules. Stay out of their way and don’t provoke them. Any “moral high ground” you gain in your piety you can ruin or level back down by being proud and boastful about it…

If entering more deeply into the Catholic faith via adopting older forms of prayer and piety is causing division, it is not the older forms of prayer and piety that are doing it.

I can hear where you’re coming from.

All the same, people who pull stunts like you did should not be allowed to be an excuse for holding a prejudice against everybody else who follows traditional practices. As you point out, it isn’t being traditional that makes a person obnoxious. Yet those prejudices and many other prejudices about traditional Catholics and why they hold to the traditional practices do exist, and do pose a problem to contend with.

I think it worthwhile to give the poor people contending with these problems a chance to talk about them. “Be careful that you’re not being obnoxious, but rather be humble” is only one part of a very big equation. At any rate, it is best that we hear suggestions that humility may be an issue from those who practice exactly as we do. That gives the temptation to be defensive one less place to hide.

 

[CradleCath]

I converted 2 years ago and am really surprised at how little some Catholics know their faith. Our priest offers classes for childen and adults to correct this sad situation. So many Catholics act, in my opinion, much more like Protestants in their lack of obedience to the teachings of the Magesterium (Confession, birth control, abortion, Holy Mass attendance, attending on Holy days of obligation, etc). It’s shocking to me that many Catholics mock the distinctiveness of the Catholic Church because they want her to fit in with and be like the rest of the world.

Fitting in is not their problem, they literally don’t know much about the about Church history before Vatican II. It makes me so sad, as I really believed that they were being taught not only the truths of Catholicism, which they **do know **thank God, but the “Why” behind those truths. I now realize that they know very little about the reformation, the council of Trent, Fatima, novenas, etc. & have never even read Humana Vitae. I blame this on myself & my husband, who both attended Catholic schools when our wonderful nuns were teaching. However, our four children attended them when every single teacher there was a member of the laity. Whether this is part of the problem, or whether it was the more liberal thinking of the 70’s, I don’t know. We should have checked out what exactly they were learning more thoroughly

 

[CradleCath]

I also wish they would, so long as they’d both come out on the right side of things.

Isn’t that the truth. I have great respect for Bishop Bruskewitz, for he not only fights evil…but many of his “colleagues”…

 

[margretto]

When I started attending the Divine Liturgy with my Greek Catholic granny it annoyed my mother to no end. “We didn’t raise you that way” was one thing I heard… The fact she and her mother-in-law never got on also played a role. Not content to just quietly “do my thing” I had to make an issue of it, and grew more conservative and traditional in my pieties in a way that I realize now was just provacative.

I got an earful the friday night I was called to the dinner table and announced I would not eat the meat my mother made because I was "practicing the traditions of the Catholic faith.) When I was forced to go to Mass with them for holidays or family events, the car ride home was usually my “recap of what was wrong” from the altar girls, Eucharistic ministers, “Padre Paraphrase”, vapid hymns, illicit altar apointments…

And what was I going to accomplish in doing that? By the time we got home from Mass we were either yelling, or not talking, my mom would be screaming or in tears, we would not talk for the rest of the day… What moral victory was had there?

In a word, I was obnoxious. Their house, their rules. Stay out of their way and don’t provoke them. Any “moral high ground” you gain in your piety you can ruin or level back down by being proud and boastful about it. There was a 3 year period between my mother and I that I lost as we just could not talk to or understand each other. It wasn’t that I was all wrong… but I sure as heck was not all right on everything. I handled it very poorly.

How much does the matter have to be brought up? What came to a head where you felt compelled to “come out” to your parents as being a TLM fan? (“I recently admitted to my folks I have been attending the Traditional Latin Mass”) Are you trying to get a rise or reaction out of them? What is to admit? You went to Mass. Period. End of story.

Don’t go looking for a fight or division. I wasted 3 good years - formative years when having a better relationship to my parents (who turned out to be not “as stupid” as I thought they were!) would have saved me a lot of angst and drifting. At one point I vascilated between being a Latin trad, or an Eastern Orthodox, or maybe just have no faith… Any clever argument could convince me for at least a week. It eventually lead to a period of total indifference.

In the end it will not be your traditional Catholic beliefs that will be a source of division - it will be you who is the source. If you don’t want to eat meat of Fridays, make plans to make dinner for your family, plans to eat elsewhere, etc. If you want to attend a TLM, just don so. Don’t come home and discuss how much better it is than the Mass they go to.

There is nothing your Catholic parents are doing that you have to reject or confront them about on account of your “traditionalism”. Even if they are selling crack in their spare time or earn a living as hitmen, your traditionalism wouldn’t be coming to the fore to say “Mom dad I am not going to sell crack cocaine with you and kill people because I am a traditional Catholic now.”

If entering more deeply into the Catholic faith via adopting older forms of prayer and piety is causing division, it is not the older forms of prayer and piety that are doing it.

Well Said!!!

 

[EasterJoy]

Fitting in is not their problem, they literally don’t know much about the about Church history before Vatican II. It makes me so sad, as I really believed that they were being taught not only the truths of Catholicism, which they **do know **thank God, but the “Why” behind those truths. I now realize that they know very little about the reformation, the council of Trent, Fatima, novenas, etc. & have never even read Humana Vitae. I blame this on myself & my husband, who both attended Catholic schools when our wonderful nuns were teaching. However, our four children attended them when every single teacher there was a member of the laity. Whether this is part of the problem, or whether it was the more liberal thinking of the 70’s, I don’t know. We should have checked out what exactly they were learning more thoroughly

Based on what I see students know about grammar, math, and so on by the time they reach college, I’d say it is very largely do to a change in expectations concerning education…as in, they memorize essentially nothing, they aren’t “bored” with dates, if they are taught history at all, and personal opinion is put before consideration of the opinions of those with actual credentials to *have *opinions.

If what you want is innovators, education does favor that more now. That educational model doesn’t translate well to catechesis.