Question for Children of Non-Practicing Catholics

[EqualinHim]

Hey all,

So I’m the child of non-practicing Catholics. Both of my parents were brought up Catholic. Mom fell away and became a protestant. Dad is pretty much agnostic/a near atheist. Now that I’ve become more interested in the Catholic church, I feel like I’ve been denied a huge chunk of my heritage and like I’ve been cheated out of something important, something special. Did any of you guys have similar feelings of resentment like this?

 

[Inbetweener]

Don’t feel cheated, my parents were Buddhist and through the generations we had no Christians, I was the first in the family and I feel so blessed to know the Lord and God willing will be received into his church soon. You have everything ahead of you and let it be a blessing for you.

 

[Casilda]

Agreeing with inbetweener, do not hold resentment against your parents. Shortly after my FHC, my parents left the church. I resented them for years. What made it worse for me was that I was brought up in the EF and when I was an adult, that form had disappeared. I did not recognize the OF. It helped me understand why my parents left.

 

[redbetta]

I felt the same way once I realized that twelve years of Catholic schooling didn’t teach me anything about the religion and that I’m pretty much on my own. What’s worse is I that I don’t have time for independent reading during the school year and I need to shut myself in my room and binge-read during my breaks. And, being a broke student, I’m limited to what’s in my local libraries.

 

[Xanthippe_Voorhees]

I understand where you’re coming from. My parents are cafeteria Catholics to the nth degree and none of my brothers are practicing, nor are they raising their children in the faith.

It can be hard when I go to my Catholic mom’s groups and several are sisters who all are raising same-aged children in the faith and they all do things with their cousins together.

I mean, it kinda stings. My children will never have cousins that they share a faith with. It does feel rather unfortunate. I will give them plenty of friends but I know it will never be the same.

 

[ConfusedLucy]

I don’t resent my parents but I do get where you are coming from. I feel almost neither here nor there in that I didn’t have the solid Catholic upbringing but I also didn’t have a conversion experience if that makes sense. I have had to learn a lot.

 

[Diamantina]

I feel almost neither here nor there in that I didn’t have the solid Catholic upbringing but I also didn’t have a conversion experience if that makes sense. I have had to learn a lot.

My late father was a lapsed Catholic: my mother is a non-churchgoing Methodist. I was baptized in the Catholic church in infancy, largely to please my devout paternal grandmother. Neither of my younger brothers were baptized. I began to attend Mass on my own, with my parents’ permission, when I was 10 years old, in 1977. I also did not have a solid Catholic upbringing but no real conversion experience either (although I was in the Orthodox Church for 13 years till I reverted to Catholicism in 2003). I rather regret my lack of upbringing in the faith but I am grateful to God and His Mother that my baptism “took”. It seems to me that many people who had been baptized as babies without being brought up Catholic would probably either have little interest in organized religion or become evangelical Protestants.

I also have had to learn a lot: my two years of CCD classes to prepare me for FHC (which I had at the age of 12) were anodyne, and my preparation for confirmation (as a college freshman) were basically just talking to a priest several times. For example, I did not know that missing Sunday Mass without a good reason was sinful.

 

[BenedicamDominum]

Did any of you guys have similar feelings of resentment like this?

It’s important that we don’t beat our parents up with their shortcomings. We have to live our lives and focus on making the best decisions in any given moment, not constantly look behind and wonder where we could have been should something better have happened.