Evangelical parents and raising Catholic children, need advice about meddling

[mattp0625]

I’ve been away for awhile, but now I’m going to hazard a reply.
If you were to cover the full scope of all opinions and controversies within the whole of Christianity, that would be confusing. Actually, that would be confusing for almost anyone. These are her grandparents though, and because they are her grandparents, there are some things that she should know about them right away…and as time goes by, her grandparents ought to be able to say for themselves what they are all about.

Some things that she should probably know right now, without being at all confused, are as follows. Her grandparents are Christians, and she can expect that they will probably go to heaven. Her grandparents love Jesus very much, just as she does, but they don’t love the Catholic Church like you do. Her grandparents believe some things that are different than what she believes, but that doesn’t prevent them from loving Jesus or from expecting to be in Heaven with her one day. And of course her grandparents love her very much, and religious differences don’t have any effect on that. If she doesn’t understand all of these things pretty well by now, I’d suggest that she is capable of understanding them and the sooner the better.

The totality of Christian controversy is confusing, but you don’t have to explain all of it at a young age because it’s got nothing to do with your family. The totality of what Calvinism teaches that doesn’t align with Catholicism is confusing for anyone, but at some point you should allow your parents to explain what they believe for themselves. That’s the right thing to do. On the other hand, if you were to try and explain vincible vs. invincible ignorance as it relates to her grandparents, or if you were to try and explain how Calvinists who don’t love the Catholic Church are still saved by and through the Catholic Church no matter what they personally believe in the matter, that would also be terribly confusing. If it were up to me, I’d say you should never instruct her in either of these things as it relates to her grandparents, and if she goes through her whole life without gaining any familiarity with either concept, that would be just fine. But that’s my personal opinion.

Christians do disagree with each other quite a lot, they often have a bad understanding of what other Christians actually believe, and many Christians hardly know the first thing about what they are supposed to believe. All of this is true- and you may be contributing to some of these problems within your own family, specifically the part where Christians don’t understand each other and don’t know anything about the beliefs of other Christians.

If a Catholic child has no exposure to the rest of Christianity and then drifts away from the Catholic Church, they’ll leave Christianity altogether and probably cohabitate with a non-religious person. Wouldn’t it be better for young people to have a fallback option that discourages bad life decisions and then hope they can revert from there at some point?

Making her understand that Catholicism is the only Christian option may be simple, but it’s also fairly deceptive. There are in fact many other options when it comes to Christianity, and that basic fact is not too hard for anyone to understand. Understanding all the details of all the conflict and disagreement is hard, but you don’t have to cover all that- just some of the simple facts that pertain to your actual family.

I’ve never heard of that either, but I have heard of families that have some Catholics and some Protestants within the family, and otherwise-Protestant kids will learn some of the basic facts about why Catholics are sometimes meatless, what the Hail Mary is and why it’s done, just so they have a basic understanding and a basic level of respect for what family members will sometimes do. I wouldn’t- again, I would Not- suggest that inter-denominational education needs to be done comprehensively as a rule, but I would- yes, I Would- suggest that if you have some other type of Christianity in your family, muzzling your own parents and treating them with suspicion and disrespect is not the best way to handle the situation in the medium or long term.

To everyone else- I want you to notice that I made a point of talking about the actual thing that’s happening and the actual situation that’s in play, I didn’t change the story in order to make it about something else. I didn’t arbitrarily replace Catholic teaching with sorcery or witchcraft, and I didn’t decide to replace Catholic parents with amoral hedonists just for the sake of making a bad point seem better than it is. I talked about what’s actually happening, and that is the right way to go about doing this.

This plan of action implies that Christ created an invisible church, that it is OK to have conflicting doctrines in Christ’s church, and that everyone can define essential doctrines versus non essential doctrines for themselves.

Note there is not a nonessential list in the bible.

 

[badnewsbarrett]

This plan of action implies that Christ created an invisible church, that it is OK to have conflicting doctrines in Christ’s church, and that everyone can define essential doctrines versus non essential doctrines for themselves.

Note there is not a nonessential list in the bible.

I must admit that much of what you’ve laid out makes a good amount of sense, and may in fact be the most likely sort of conclusion that anyone would intuitively arrive at. But maybe that’s just me.

Of course, I’m not the one who’s going to be explaining things to a little girl. The little Catholic girl is going to be listening to an informed and practicing Catholic mother, and I’ve suggested that her daughter ought to understand that her grandparents love her So much, they love Jesus, they don’t love the Catholic Church, and that’s a bit of a problem but they expect to go to heaven and probably will wind up there. When this is coming from a Catholic parent, I expect this actually implies there will be much more to learn at a later time about vincible and invincible ignorance, about how the sacraments are the normative means of salvation but it doesn’t quite cover everything that can possibly happen, and about how “no salvation outside the Catholic Church” can also cover many types of Protestants if they are understood to have been saved by and through the Catholic Church even though they don’t formally belong to it or acknowledge that it has any sort of role like that.

All of that is fully compatible with the basic facts geared toward a small-child understanding, and it’s also extremely complicated for anyone to fully understand. So as long as I’m not the one doing the explaining and it’s a Catholic parent who’s doing it, I think this would actually imply that these basic facts will be followed by more complicated ideas that are completely Catholic in nature. That, at least, is what will actually happen.

If you are implying that a more generically Protestant set of conclusions is more intuitive, however, I just may agree with you on that.

 

[mattp0625]

I must admit that much of what you’ve laid out makes a good amount of sense, and may in fact be the most likely sort of conclusion that anyone would intuitively arrive at. But maybe that’s just me.

Of course, I’m not the one who’s going to be explaining things to a little girl. The little Catholic girl is going to be listening to an informed and practicing Catholic mother, and I’ve suggested that her daughter ought to understand that her grandparents love her So much, they love Jesus, they don’t love the Catholic Church, and that’s a bit of a problem but they expect to go to heaven and probably will wind up there. When this is coming from a Catholic parent, I expect this actually implies there will be much more to learn at a later time about vincible and invincible ignorance, about how the sacraments are the normative means of salvation but it doesn’t quite cover everything that can possibly happen, and about how “no salvation outside the Catholic Church” can also cover many types of Protestants if they are understood to have been saved by and through the Catholic Church even though they don’t formally belong to it or acknowledge that it has any sort of role like that.

All of that is fully compatible with the basic facts geared toward a small-child understanding, and it’s also extremely complicated for anyone to fully understand. So as long as I’m not the one doing the explaining and it’s a Catholic parent who’s doing it, I think this would actually imply that these basic facts will be followed by more complicated ideas that are completely Catholic in nature. That, at least, is what will actually happen.

If you are implying that a more generically Protestant set of conclusions is more intuitive, however, I just may agree with you on that.

I am implying that Christ did not create a church with provisions for conflicting doctrine. The invisible church concept was created to enable denominations, as was the concept of agreement on the essentials.

Catholics do not support sola scriptura. Protestants obviously do support it. Yet, this concept of the essentials and non essentials did not come from the bible.

 

[Edmundus1581]

I am implying that Christ did not create a church with provisions for conflicting doctrine. The invisible church concept was created to enable denominations, as was the concept of agreement on the essentials.

Catholics do not support sola scriptura. Protestants obviously do support it. Yet, this concept of the essentials and non essentials did not come from the bible.

If it did, then they would simply agree on the biblical “essentials” and form one “Bible Believing” church.

I quit Protestantism 35 years ago disgusted with the fragmentation - and it seems to have exploded many times over in those 35 years. I doubt whether there’s any trace of the species of Protestantism I knew in 1980.

 

[badnewsbarrett]

I am implying that Christ did not create a church with provisions for conflicting doctrine. The invisible church concept was created to enable denominations, as was the concept of agreement on the essentials.

Catholics do not support sola scriptura. Protestants obviously do support it. Yet, this concept of the essentials and non essentials did not come from the bible.

Okay. I didn’t say anything about essentials and non essentials, I didn’t even say anything about the concept of the invisible church. You said it yourself, I implied it. Or so you think, I’m not sure if that comes from anything I actually said, maybe you just saw that I’m an Evangelical and you decided to bring up the things you enjoy arguing about the most with Evangelicals. I don’t mind if you think I implied it, you can think that if you want, but I certainly didn’t advance or invite an explicit argument on these topics.

If you’re really committed to the idea that I “implied” something, that’s just going to have to stick in your craw. Such implication- whether it’s strictly in your own mind or not- does not constitute an opportunity to identify a wedge issue and start an argument about it.

Now are you going to circle back to specific ideas pertaining to actions that should be taken with non-Catholic family members, and the things that should be told to small Catholic children under such circumstances? Those are some things that I can get behind. But you’re not going to derail the thread and turn it into your personal little safe-space for telling me everything that you think is wrong about me, just because you think I implied it or you generally suspect that I have wrong beliefs. Seriously guy, it’s bad enough when you’re getting on your computer early in the morning because “something on the Internet is Wrong.” If you’re able to have that kind of extra time early in the day, you should be reading the Bible and spending some time in prayer, not doing this. And worst of all, you’re trying to chase down a whole argument over an implication. This is quite possibly the most unfortunate combination of timing and situation in which I’ve ever seen the keyboard-warrior mentality being applied. I know you’re better than this.

And by the way, sola scriptura does not mean everything is rejected except what’s in Scripture. Ask a Lutheran- and when you do, be prepared for citations from the Book of Concord. If you’re looking for the Book of Concord in the pages of the Lutheran Bible, you won’t find it there. You should explore that on a different thread though, or look back at past threads where this topic has been discussed hundreds of other times, and mostly on threads created for that specific purpose.

Please pay attention to what I’m explicitly telling you this time, and don’t get distracted with whatever you decide I’m implying.