My Parents want me to be a Cafeteria Catholic

[Truegrit]

You know what…it is absolutely none of your business or affair of what your parents do or do not do in the bedroom. This between them God and their confessor. How dare you challenge them, humiliate them or condemn them for what is or should be private between them and their intimate affairs. Remove the log from your eye.

 

[St_Francis]

Scrupulous Monk,
Your parents did not follow the laws of God, but they did do one thing which was to try their best to raise you in the Faith.

Be grateful for that. Be gratteful for the teaching and discipline in the Faith they gave you, as well as all the love they seem to have for you.

Love them and pray for them and leave their relationship with God up to them–it is not your responsibility, and they are not accountable to you but to God.

All parents make mistakes, except maybe the saints. I am a parent–I mess up all the time. I look back and see a path of mistakes!

So I think you need to work a bit on letting your parents be God’s responsibility, and help them through prayer.

 

[kozlosap]

You know what…it is absolutely none of your business or affair of what your parents do or do not do in the bedroom. This between them God and their confessor. How dare you challenge them, humiliate them or condemn them for what is or should be private between them and their intimate affairs. Remove the log from your eye.

I agree with TrueGrit. As a very young person, I think you need to read more and listen to what our dear Holy Father, Francis, is talking about when he speaks about embracing those who are not inline with dogma instead of shunning them. My dear Daughter is 29 and has finished undergrad and law school, but, if she dared question my choice of family planning,there might be a huge explosion heard for miles around! Some subjects are personal and better left to the loving couple, their priest, and most importantly their well formed consciences.

 

[ScrupulousMonk]

Forgive me. I just regained online connection.

Thank you all so much for comforting me and consoling me in my time of need. Indeed, I may have been out of line for confronting my parents on this issue. I found that, as I argued with them, I saw in their eyes despair and shame. It appears that we all have vices that we know we should not have, but keep anyway (myself included).

Its just that, I was worried about them. I did not want them to linger in sin and lose salvation if I could have helped to prevent it. I also thought God would be ashamed of me if I did not try to at least admonish them.

Please forgive me for my arrogance. I will be sure to follow all of your advices.

To JRKH
They were heavily implying that I should be a Cafeteria Catholic. I was not able to get everything word-for-word and you would have to be there in person to see just how they talked and the expressions on their face. If you were there, you would come to the same conclusion as well.

 

[3DOCTORS]

I don’t know if it was a birds and bees sit down or not. The OP didn’t state how the conversation got started…or who started it. Either way, I don’t see how that makes any significant distinction. Our children’s consciences are formed every day, this should be something that is discussed even outside the sit-down-birds-bees-convo. The OP’s own heart is now at odds with what his parents have taught him. I don’t see how this is inappropriate for him to have discussed with them. They have clearly exposed this harmful message to him, now he has questions. He did not pull their cafeteria approach out of thin air – they told him. Now he must try to reconcile this from the ones who are supposed to be shaping his conscience. I should hope that a conversation would be in order given these facts.

I had conversations with my parents over faith issues that got heated - it wasn’t contraception but I was trying to do what I was taught in CCD and sometimes they would be more laid back on things such as missing Mass (or church service for my Protestant mom - I figured Sunday observance was binding on any Christian!) while traveling and we’d get into it and it wasn’t pretty. That’s all I’m going to say about that; I pray they just didn’t understand what the implications truly were and that God had mercy on them.

To the OP - your parents seem driven by a lot of fears - even mistrust of one another - which probably go back to messages they received from their own growing up experiences somehow. Whether by events or conversations in their own family, observing what happened to a friend’s or neighbor’s family, who knows. If they can’t trust one another they’re going to have a hard time trusting and surrendering to God. I concur that you should pray for them, keep your own faith strong, and confide to God your feelings of sadness and discouragement and ask Him to give you some consolation.

You know what…it is absolutely none of your business or affair of what your parents do or do not do in the bedroom. This between them God and their confessor. How dare you challenge them, humiliate them or condemn them for what is or should be private between them and their intimate affairs. Remove the log from your eye.

I don’t see where it’s your business or affair to call out the OP, either, who was merely asking for spiritual help in a time of need. It sounds like you have some issues and resentments to pray about yourself and I don’t know what those are but I urge you to seek some spiritual counsel and try to have humility instead of just in essence parroting the secular culture’s refrain “The Church should stay out of the bedroom” . . . I hope someday things will be more positive in your life and you’ll understand why I felt the need to point this out; may God give you insight and mercy.

 

[johnnyc176]

I think you need to read more and listen to what our dear Holy Father, Francis, is talking about when he speaks about embracing those who are not inline with dogma instead of shunning them.

Yes…read the Bible…

And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you (compassion). Go your way, and from now on do not sin again (conversion).”

We can not judge people’s hearts but we can judge actions. That too is a pastoral approach. Jesus spoke much about sin, the devil and hell. Out of love.

 

[Xantippe]

I personally doubt that this conversation ever happened. What kind of parents have a joint sit down with their son where they talk about dad’s huge sexual needs? Yuck. Either:

1. It didn’t happen.

or

1. These people are so messed up that it’s not even worth thinking very hard about their opinions on anything.

 

[1ke]

What kind of parents have a joint sit down with their son where they talk about dad’s huge sexual needs? Yuck. Either:

I agree.

However, when I have occasion to turn on the television mid-day (or just about any time on cable, actually) I am reminded that there are definitely people who will not only talk about something like that with their kid, they will do it for a national audience, and they will definitely do it for money. So, not so far fetched. People today have no decorum at all, they have learned the wrong lessons from voyeuristic TV shows.

 

[ScrupulousMonk]

To Xantippe and 1ke

I know this all seems too ridiculous to be true, but I assure you that this really happened. If you knew the exact pretext to this argument (which I will not share because I might risk even more detraction), then you would know why it suddenly came up.

Xantippe, I understand that you are disgusted at what my parents said (as am I), but I very respectfully ask that you please do not use that tone towards them. They are still my parents after all.

And I am not exactly a kid. I am in college you know.

 

[Xantippe]

Scrupulous Monk said:

“And I am not exactly a kid. I am in college you know.”

It doesn’t matter–it’s still wildly inappropriate no matter what age you are. I’m a 30-something woman, and if my parents were talking at that level of detail, I’d be so gone. It’s just so inappropriate.

 

[3DOCTORS]

Scrupulous Monk said:

“And I am not exactly a kid. I am in college you know.”

It doesn’t matter–it’s still wildly inappropriate no matter what age you are. I’m a 30-something woman, and if my parents were talking at that level of detail, I’d be so gone. It’s just so inappropriate.

Sometimes conversations that might be a little “TMI” happen in the course of life. Whether it was right or wrong, I think the OP is trying to see how to bring good out of it, since life can’t be rewound as if the discussion never occurred. Especially when there are close relationships and intense emotions and something sparks a discussion.

It would be great if the OP’s parents could sit down with a priest and perhaps a marriage counselor to address their fears and try to let go and let God lead them - it could be a fresh start for their marriage.

Yes, it’s difficult to be the child (even if you’re grown) and know some of these things, but it happens. The other alternative is that troublesome issues are kept secret but somehow sensed, which isn’t a whole lot better. For instance, I helped a friend of mine who was in Project Rachel and did some volunteering for them and learned that sometimes the children of a mother who had an abortion somehow could sense there was something amiss but not know exactly what.

If nothing else, the OP knows that praying for the parents is the thing to do now, and praying for peace about the parents’ situation while God works in their hearts, and for the strength to resist pressure to compromise his/her own faith. To be able to “speak the truth in love” when that’s the thing to do, or give the parents space to work it out if that doesn’t seem to be the thing to do.