“I’m sorry you are having this time of difficulty in your faith, however, in our family we go to Mass on Sundays. You will attend with us out of respect.”
I would be really careful about wording it that way. You don’t want to teach your child that to respect people you have to practice their faith with them even if it’s something you don’t believe in. That could backfire. If one of the child’s siblings one day converted to Islam, Mormonism, etc you wouldn’t want your child to feel as though they had to practice one of those religions when visiting their sibling out of “respect”, would you?
In general, I think these threads get a little melodramatic on both sides. When a teenager, particularly an adult or one bordering so close to adulthood loses their faith, I really don’t think that whether or not you force them to go to mass is going to have a huge effect in the long run. Sure, they may spend a few years in anger and resentment at their parents, but it won’t keep them from returning to church if they really believe. Likewise, not forcing them to attend is not going to wash away the first 17 years of religious practice and education, and I don’t think that a few extra months of mass attendance is going to make them believe again. The choice of whether or not you make them go is probably of little consequence.
However, I would not force a child to pray, say the rosary, go to confession, etc if they did not believe. It’s cruel to push someone into actively practicing a religion that they feel is incorrect, immoral, or that they just don’t believe in. Have them sit there quietly? Sure, they’ll be fine. But mandating active participation? That’s going a bit far.
I attended church through my early teens even though I didn’t believe because my elderly grandmother, who I loved dearly, was very devoted to her faith and church, so I went with her because I knew she wouldn’t be around much longer and I didn’t want to break her heart. Once she died, I stopped attending. However, going for her was a choice that I made on my own, though I did talk it out with my mom and had her support. (At this point, I didn’t admit to my mom, or to myself really, that I didn’t believe, I just knew that I didn’t like going to church and that it made me uncomfortable.) My husband, also an atheist, stopped believing when he was 16 or 17, but didn’t want to upset his family so he just told them that he was more comfortable attending mass on his own. He usually just left for an hour, hit a drive through, read in the parking lot, and then went home. Growing up, we both experienced a lot of discomfort paying lip service to a religion that we didn’t believe in. It just isn’t a good feeling to be surrounded by people who believe that something that transcends time and space is happening right at that very moment when you believe nothing of the sort.
), but at least that opens the door for her to consider that she may not have every answer 100% and that the Church has reasons for why it teaches what it does - on any subject.