Tinkerbell:
My son has been church shopping for 2 years. He shopped around for a while but came back to the Catholic Church. Now he tells me he is going to a Baptist Church Sunday.
This is really upsetting to me and will start taken anti-depressants today (no, I have NEVER taken them before). They know I’m concerned but I don’t want them to know how much. His wife was brought up protestant but later became Catholic after they were married. She really does not take her faith serious and it does’t really matter what church she goes to.
On the inside I screaming YOU IDOTS but on the outside I’m try to calmly discuss and maybe plant some seeds of faith. I must not be very good at it. I have been praying for them and want the best for them. It just kills me that my grandchilden might not be brought up in the Catholic Church and miss out on the Sacrements especially the Euchrist. Please say a little pray for him and his family.
How do you handle a situation like this?
This could have been my brother and his first wife! My brother was raised in the pre-Vatican II Church (He just turned 60.) His first wife converted to Catholicism, and for a while, they were the most devout Catholic couple one could hope to meet! Then, they flirted with Jehovah’s Witnesses, then stopped going to church altogether, and then finally (since they had moved down South!), they checked out the Baptists. They wandered back to Catholicsm when she was dying of liver cancer, and their parish was quite supportive of them. Yet, he has gone back to the Baptists because he felt they had more of a sense of fellowship with Sunday school.
His children were never baptized–I know this bothered my very Catholic mom. She spoke to him about it-- why he was not in the Catholic Church (‘Where you belong–I raised you right!! Don’t you forget that!’), but the more she brought it up, the more it turned him off.
From observing this from afar as a sib, and form dealing with the my own two girls who don’t go to church at all (They are in their early/mid 20’s.), I have come to the conclusion that a parent has control over the
outward expression of religion when children are minors. Once they are adults and move out, it’s not for the parent/s to discuss this with the adult children–only if the adult children want to discuss it. A strong witness to the beauty of my own faith as I see it (along with my prayers for their salvation!) is the best I can do at this time. I do discuss with my daughters my various activities I do through my parish, and I tell them about the wonderful retreats I make at the monastery I go to, and I talk to them about things going on at my parish, and I invite them to the social events at the church–festivals and dinners, etc. If they are having a rough time with something in their lives, I tell them I will pray for them. They are a bit embarrassed to hear that, but I believe in my heart, that they do appreciate this.
When they have dinner at my house, we ALWAYS say the traditional grace before meals–they KNOW better than to ‘skip’ this!! They also know that dinner on Fridays during Lent will be meatless, etc.
At least when you have raised your children in the Catholic faith, you HAVE given them the very best you can–they have something ‘to reject’! I have been told by others that it’s typical for some adult children to reject their religious training while they ‘figure out’ who they are as young adults. Ultimately, most come back to how they were raised.
We often speak of faith as being a gift. We raise our children to have the Catholic faith, but it’s up to them, as adults, to accept or reject this gift of Faith. If they are not ‘ready’ to accept it, our pleading, cajoling, badgering will do no good.
It’s between them and God. All we can do is pray for them.
AlanFromWichita:
. I don’t think only Catholics are going to heaven but I feel he and my grandchildren would be missing out on our beautiful religion, sacraments, history and sacred traditions. That’s just me. So I’ll be praying and praying.
