Practicing Adult Children?

[EasterJoy]

And now, this poor woman is feeling so hurt by feedback she didn’t even ask for, that she feels like leaving the Catholic Church!

If this is a Christian site, we demonstrate that by not being flippant with responses that may be very near and dear to a person’s heart. We don’t know the people we respond to. We don’t know based on a few characters on a screen, who they are, what they are going through, and how sensitive they might be. Some people love a good debate. Some people feel attacked. Since we don’t know each other, we have to be careful and do no harm.

Remember, Christ said “Love one another as I have loved you.” Many did not agree with the message He preached and He died on the cross because of it. Again He said, “Forgive them for they know not what they do.” All WE can do, is try to love each other in spite of our differences. Love IS the central principle that leads us all home.

It is true that the ways of speaking the truth need to be tempered with kindness. That is a reasonable correction…although not to the point that it ought to be tacitly accepted that the parent of a child who has renounced the faith has no responsibility to evangelize their child where the opportunity arises.

"*St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross was able to understand that the love of Christ and human freedom are intertwined, because love and truth have an intrinsic relationship. The quest for truth and its expression in love did not seem at odds to her; on the contrary she realized that they call for one another.

In our time, truth is often mistaken for the opinion of the majority. In addition, there is a widespread belief that one should use the truth even against love or vice versa. But truth and love need each other. St Teresa Benedicta is a witness to this. The “martyr for love”, who gave her life for her friends, let no one surpass her in love. At the same time, with her whole being she sought the truth, of which she wrote: “No spiritual work comes into the world without great suffering. It always challenges the whole person”.

St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross says to us all: Do not accept anything as the truth if it lacks love. And do not accept anything as love which lacks truth! One without the other becomes a destructive lie.*" Bl. John Paul II, 1998, canonization of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein).

 

[EasterJoy]

She said that she was “happy that her son at least goes to church”. He doesn’t. The difference between Christian and non-Christian is something that every basically catechized Catholic needs to know.

Still, you have to agree that not everything is true has to be said in a blunt fashion, not when a kinder fashion would be more likely to have the truth heard, right? I think that is a fair correction.

 

[EasterJoy]

Here’s the thing…All this woman did was state within the context of a larger post, that her son had become LDS. She was not advocating his choice, just stating what her situation was as a mother who raised her children Catholic. She was not asking for anyone’s opinion and in the context of the post, it could be assumed that her son’s decision may have caused her some pain. This mother did not need a lesson on Mormonism. She is merely coping with a situation.

If you would like to dialogue about the differences between Catholics and Mormons, you should definately do so when the other person wants to know. It becomes bashing when the information you share is unsolicited and off-topic. Just because the words Mormon or LDS come up in a person’s post, it does not mean that the topic has turned to the differences between the LDS and other Christians.

Is this the same thing you would say if he were Muslim?

 

[marimagi]

Is this the same thing you would say if he were Muslim?

Absolutely!

I’ve been blessed to watch the same God I know and love, work with and through people of many different faiths. Believe me, He knows who loves Him.

 

[aemcpa]

Still, you have to agree that not everything is true has to be said in a blunt fashion, not when a kinder fashion would be more likely to have the truth heard, right? I think that is a fair correction.

This isn’t the first time I have had this correction leveled at me, so there’s a good chance that it’s not them, it’s me. I don’t personally see any unkindness (or kindness) in bare facts, and I feel that if I try to temper them to the required emotional tone, I’ll just get it wrong anyway. So I am willing to accept any constructive criticism in that regard.

 

[EasterJoy]

This isn’t the first time I have had this correction leveled at me, so there’s a good chance that it’s not them, it’s me. I don’t personally see any unkindness (or kindness) in bare facts, and I feel that if I try to temper them to the required emotional tone, I’ll just get it wrong anyway. So I am willing to accept any constructive criticism in that regard.

Well, first of all, when you’re dealing with an apostate, it does not hurt to say that you cannot know why he has renounced the faith, and cannot judge whether or not he is culpable. We may judge whether or not someone has their doctrine right, or what category some particular line of doctrinal thinking belongs in, and sometimes we may even have a duty to do so and say so. We may not judge whether or not someone else is right before God, nor imply that we can. The problem with flat statements about a person is that the judgment can be taken to have been made about the person as a whole when that is not what was meant. The clarifying statement is worth making.

So while it is among the spiritual works of mercy to instruct the ignorant, counsel the doubtful, and to admonish sinners, it is also necessary to do so in a way that is kind and patient and learns to anticipate where offense might be taken to an attack that was not even meant…well, you know the list St. Paul gave for the most excellent of gifts, without which no work is worth anything. Sometimes that involves learning how your comments might be taken wrongly, and clarifying in advance what you did not mean by what you say. I have found that being clear about what I am not saying is sometimes just as important as what I am saying.

I guess I mean to say that sometimes there is an article of untruth that comes in when “the facts” are stripped too bare, and certainly a sense of judgment might be gathered, whether or not it is meant. That might be something to consider.

 

[EasterJoy]

Absolutely!

I’ve been blessed to watch the same God I know and love, work with and through people of many different faiths. Believe me, He knows who loves Him.

That is not the point. Would you say a person who left the Church and then became a Muslim is or is not a) an apostate or b) a Christian? The Muslims do have Jesus in the Koran, after all. I mean to say, do you think the word “apostate” should never be used, out of politeness? Do you think it should not be pointed out that some faiths are Christian and some, even though they include Jesus in their doctrines, are not?

Now, I can see where offense can be taken when it is said that some religion that calls itself a church is not a “church” according to the ancient technical definition, because unlike the word “Christian”, the word “church” has a much less narrow definition in current English. It could be said, but it would ruffle feathers. But as for apostasy–and I say this as someone who has been guilty of it–that is a bit different. That is a real sin, and if you have not left the Church and come back, you may not realize how great an offense it is. When I look back on my life, I don’t consider anyone who knew I had left who had never admonished me to come back and explained why I should not have left was doing me any favors! So we all have our stories, and my story tells me that this fellow has suffered a great loss, and a very great loss, indeed, whether he is culpable or not. If anyone believes they might have some chance to bring him back, they really ought to try, and not just leave him where he is.

 

[marimagi]

Easter Joy,

I hear the words apostasy and apostate a lot in my community. Mormons are big on using that word here at least, to describe someone who has left the LDS Church.

When I became Catholic, my Jewish grandmother called me and said that it was a good thing my great grandfather (a rabbi) was dead because “this would kill him.”

When I attended a Russian Orthodox Church, the priests were very clear that the Roman Church was the apostate, heretical church and that they alone had preserved the true Faith as handed down from the apostles.

So, one can certainly use the word apostate, but in the end we all end up calling each other apostates. Everyone who uses that word, believes they are defending the true faith. Too many divisions and too many wars have been started because one group of people believes they are acting in God’s name, while another group believes that they are. I believe that this is what God means when He says, “Do not take my name in vain.” Our egos are a dangerous thing.

 

[EasterJoy]

Easter Joy,

I hear the words apostasy and apostate a lot in my community. Mormons are big on using that word here at least, to describe someone who has left the LDS Church.

When I became Catholic, my Jewish grandmother called me and said that it was a good thing my great grandfather (a rabbi) was dead because “this would kill him.”

When I attended a Russian Orthodox Church, the priests were very clear that the Roman Church was the apostate, heretical church and that they alone had preserved the true Faith as handed down from the apostles.

So, one can certainly use the word apostate, but in the end we all end up calling each other apostates. Everyone who uses that word, believes they are defending the true faith. Too many divisions and too many wars have been started because one group of people believes they are acting in God’s name, while another group believes that they are. I believe that this is what God means when He says, “Do not take my name in vain.” Our egos are a dangerous thing.

No, no, no, we would not all end up calling each other apostates, that is my whole point.

Allow me to clarify: I am not talking about the practice of calling all the religions outside your own a bunch of apostates. I am talking about a far more narrow definition of the word. I mean the definition which refers only to * individual persons *who were fully initiated into a religion, especially if they were accepting it of their own volition instead of purely as an act of their parents, who then renounced the faith later. Apostasy is a conscious act, not an accident of birth or upbringing, and there needs to be a word for that, in contrast to simply belonging to a different religion, even a religion that is an offshoot of Catholicism or Christianity. Again: I’ve been there, I’ve done that, I know whereof I speak.

And yes, it is natural that parents are going to be deeply wounded any time a child renounces a integral part of what their parents hold to be a central truth. Again, been there, done that, don’t understand what else people think their parents are going to feel! When you’re a parent and the truth matters, of course you care about whether or not your child believes the truth. I think it is very self-centered to think that no one who holds a truth dear is ever allowed to say this out loud to you. I had a Jewish friend who used to joke that a Catholic Bible had two sections: Fiction and Non-Fiction. I didn’t take offense at that. He summed up the difference in our positions pretty well!

I often like to say that there is a ditch on both sides of the road. Yes, it is terrible when people use doctrinal error as a pretext to say a child of God has made himself or herself worthy of contempt. Still, it is also terrible to be so anxious about giving offense that it isn’t even allowed to express sadness when someone else embraces an error, but especially when we can’t speak the truth to our own child about what they have thrown away.

I was out there, once. It is not a bad thing to be called back. It is an act of love, and the call can be made without issuing a blanket rejection in the case where the one called chooses not to respond. Rather, you say, “well, I still love you. We still love you. If you decide to come back, we have a light on for you, and until then, know that you are missed.”