What are the OP’s options though? And I’m asking sincerely, not rhetorically. When a parent has done their level best to bring their children up in the Faith, to educate their children on Church teachings, and the adult child rejects those teaching - what is a parent to do? Turn their back on the kid? Insert themselves into their child’s marriage like a third partner? Pray for the child? Remind the child every time they’re together of the child’s sin?
A very wise member of these forums, Cat, wrote something profound on another parenting thread that I think is applicable here:
No matter how “good” and “religious” your children are while they are growing up, their faith is not truly theirs until they have grown up and left the home and are living on their own. Until then, they are basically mirroring their parents’ faith, and doing all the religious things because they bring about a “reward”, mainly parental approval, as well as approval from their extended family and friends.
So I ask again: how far should a parent go to ensure their adult children are living a Catholic life?
Luna
Of course we all agree that you have to both model and teach the facts of the faith when the children are still minors. I think most of us agree that everyone in our home may fairly be expected to behave in a way that doesn’t offend our personal morality in any serious way. No one has the right to ask us to be complicit in immoral acts. So the question is: What about when the child becomes an adult, moves out, and has their own household?
I think at this point, you have a relationship of more of a mentor than you did when the child was directly under your authority. You have to operate under the clear acknowledgement that the child is totally free to accept your guidance or ignore it. Yes, you provide guidance, because everything you say or do will be taken as guidance whether you want it to or not. Having said that, you also have to show respect that you are now dealing with a “graduate”, with someone who has become a full member of the guild, so to speak. You also have to be practical about choosing what you say and when you say it, so that you give the person not the most guidance, but the kind and amount of guidance that is most likely to have the desired affect. Sometimes that is going to include a lot of keeping your mouth shut, praying like crazy, and suffering through their insistence upon making their own mistakes.
You don’t ever have to make the pretense that wrong is right in order to avoid giving offense, and that is as true with relatives as with anyone else. I’m not saying that. I’m saying that the wrong kind of guidance at the wrong time can actually lower your effectiveness as a mentor. You do have to be clear that you respect the child’s status as a fellow adult, too. How to navigate that is something you have to discern as you go along, but you cannot afford to get hysterical. If you do that, you’re hardly likely to be anything but a frustrated Cassandra, and that does no one any good.
While it is totally reasonable to refuse to lend money to immoral uses, never use emotional manipulation, guilt trips, withholding of shows of love, withholding inheritance (excepting when it would be likely to be used directly for immoral dissipation or other bad ends), or other such power plays. A good end is not achieved by bad means.
