Siblings Who Do not Seem to Follow the Church

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Any ideas on what the approach to the relationship with siblings should be when they are supposedly Catholic but do not seem to espouse Catholic values?

Suppose you are adults in 40s and your sibling’s child lives together out of wedlock. Suppose their children were also unkind to your children and also suppose that your sibling did not seem to promote Catholic values with their children regarding music movies, sexual morality etc.

Jesus said that only those who do the will of His Father are really His brothers and sisters. What do you do in a situation where on one hand you really don’t want to be involved but consider that the person is your sibling. Suppose you are asked to events, etc.? What if you are invited to a wedding when the people have been living together out of wedlock?

I know we are not to be judgemental but St. Paul says that we are to judge those who claim to be Catholics.
 
That is hard.I have been praying for my husbands conversion for years and he started working for a Catholic lady that he said was really nice.To my dismay she is living with her boyfriend who is married:mad: So anyway,if I come down to hard on that with my husband he’s going to think I am judgemental,if I don’t say anything I am going to explode:banghead: So I understand your delimma.God Bless
 
My way trying to bring healing of modern marriages comes from my experience.

There is only one great way to save our families, by standing up for our children. I would die to see my son follow The Magisterium of the Catholic Church. Why, because that is the minimum to achieve heaven (from the web site Chastity in San Francisco). Stay with me and I’ll explain exactly why. First my son’s greatest hope for his marriage is the teaching of the Catholic Church. What follows is what happened to me without the guidance of the Catholic Church.

Maybe I’m super sensitive as I have only one son. But, I have only one because I didn’t have the teachings of the church to guide my marriage. My marriage may still fail as we were forced, trapped and fooled into not having children, I now know how important children are to marriage strength and how wrong not having children is. I was forced by homosexual abuse as a child as I was left unprotected in a divorced marriage because my parents started practicing birth control. The other thing that stopped me from having children like being fooled is what I know you also have experienced. You also are now being feed the Culture of Chemical’s rhetoric as it tries to enslave us to sexual freedom (slavery by its proper name, double speak is here).

Knowing what I know now in my marriage, I should have started Standing up for my wife. Indoctrinated by the culture of chemicals and the lustful training from sexual abuse, I didn’t stop them from giving her Birth Control pills. I traded free sex for my wife health. Now I know that was a terrible trade. What I would do now is if they tried to give my wife birth control pills, I would drive my car into the nearest vacant pharmacy. Double if they did this to my daughter.

Who is a modern man who can battle the Lord of the Culture of Chemicals who has enslaved our wives and daughters. Why are few of our women following the teaching of the Catholic Church against the deadly chemicals and having children? Because they are blinded, Blinded by our example, forgive us. By our weakness, we have said nothing and also by our deadness we have been too busy to see our daughters being slowly enslaved by the culture of chemical death. Who will be a real husband protecting his wife’s health and life and then his daughters?

Now I don’t advocate violent overthrow, I say that to get your attention. What we may soon need is civil disobedience. They must understand that any organization that will allow long term health of our women to be jeopardized for profit, we will stop. We will stop buying from them and if they don’t withdraw from our families we will stop them with non violent protest.

So you ask me what am I doing about all these mistakes I made. First I joined the Catholic Church who has the true safe teaching on protecting marriage, for us and our children. Ninety percent of non contracepting Catholic marriages stay together vs 50 percent of others. I have confessed to a priest my contraception. I continue to lobby for having children and against contraception and abortion, whenever I can. I tell everyone I can, that I was healed of sex without true Love from the Eucharist and try now to practice true Christian Love.

That is my testimony

John Buttrey

814-43rd Street

Edson, Alberta

T7E 1A9

780-723-62223

jbuttrey@telusplanet.net
 
You are clean out of your mind to post your name, address, and phone number on the internet. I don’t know how to get this removed but someone needs to notify someone in charge to get this taken down.

To the original poster: you aren’t responsible for them. Mind your own business.
 
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SweetPea:
To the original poster: you aren’t responsible for them. Mind your own business.
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Now that is both sensitive and constructive advice. :nope:
 
Coder,

I understand your issues. My sister is one who has fallen away from the church. I think what did her in, aside from trying to overcome some severe emotional problems, was the abuse scandal from 2 years ago.
With the help of my wife, God bless her, she reminds me we should keep including her family at family gatherings and to be a constant witness for the faith by the way we live our lives. Asking Mary to pray for her is huge help, too. Her kids don’t behave the same way toward our kids as you described above, but it is still hard when we get snubbed. We hear her excuses, and they don’t seem genuine, but we keep trying and praying.
So…keep going to Mass, praying and partaking of the Sacraments.

Christ’s Peace to you and your family.

Todd
 
There are things that you can do to set a good example and still maintain the relationship. For instance, invite your siblings to your house for social events. That way your way of life prevails during interactions. Also, If you are concerned about them being a bad influence on your children you can make a rule that you do not leave your own children alone with them.

I personally have the type of relationship with my siblings where I tell them straight out if I disagree with something they are doing, but that was the way that we were raised. Once I have told them a couple times, I drop it. Sometimes, I might give them reading materials or tapes on a particular subject. They are usually receptive.

In regards to the co-habitating people, you have to make your own rules. I have one friend that simply will not go to any wedding where it is well know that the marrying couple is co-habitating. Also, they do not ever attend a wedding of a Catholic who marries outside the Church. Their policy is so well known among their family that they do not even receive invitations to such weddings. Also, there are times when they do not know if the marrying couple is cohabitating but they suspect that they are. They might attend such a wedding as long as it is in a Catholic Church but they will not bring their children. They also never take their children to the home of co-habitating people.

I have really tried to decide for myself what my policy ought to be. If I look back at all the weddings I have attended in my adult life including ones where I was a bridesmaid, there is probably only six wedding I should have attended. I recently had a co-habitating cousin get married and I really worried about whether I should attend the wedding. It was a Catholic wedding and I resolved that it was the priest’s responsibility to tell the couple to separate or live as brother and sister prior to the wedding. I decided to send a Catholic marriage book as a gift and I attended the wedding out of respect for my Aunt and Uncle who had been very kind to me in the past.

I think my current policy is that I will evaluate each weddding independently. For instance, if it is a Catholic getting married outside the Church, I will not attend. If they are co-habitating, I may or may not attend.

A friend of mine ask multiple priests what he ought to do about his brother who was marrying outside the Church. Each priest told him to go to the wedding to maintain the relationship for possible evangelization opportunities in the future. They also pointed out that at least they were getting married.

Hope this helps.
 
Thank you for the responses.

I think there may be Canon laws restricting actual participation (e.g. best man) in a non-Catholic wedding of a Catholic. I am not sure about attendance.

I think my view is that if a co-habitating couple is getting married by a priest in the Catholic rite, then I would attend. Although I am not sure why the Church marries such couples to begin with, How can you enter a Catholic marriage when you are not even following Jesus in your relationships to begin with?

However, if a person who claims to be Catholic, is co-habitating, and marries outside the Church, I thinks that’s too much and we must sometimes take a stand.

In the case of a non-Catholic couple who claims to still be Christian and co-habitates, I probably would not attend.

For a non-Christian co-habitating couple, I would not have too many reservations about attending since they are not scandalizing the Christian faith. At the same time, I would sense some responsibility to guide them to the light of Jesus.

One comment above said I should mind my own business. When I am invited to something it can put me in a dilemna.

St. Paul gives us good guidance in 1 Corinthians 5:9-13:

I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people,
not at all referring to the immoral of this world or the greedy and robbers or idolaters; for you would then have to leave the world. But I now write to you not to associate with anyone named a brother, if he is immoral, greedy, an idolater, a slanderer, a drunkard, or a robber, not even to eat with such a person. For why should I be judging outsiders? Is it not your business to judge those within? God will judge those outside. "Purge the evil person from your midst."
 
recommend Search and Rescue by Patrick Madrid on how to approach your non-CAtholic or non=practicing relatives–and most important what not to say and do
 
The only way I have dealt with this and it gives me peace of mind is to gently say that what they are doing is wrong, that you hate what they are doing but you love them to death. I believe I have done my Christian duty and I leave the rest to God. I have left the salvation job to Him as I easily botch anything I touch…

I have many instances of adultery, co-habitating, abortion in my family. The only one that is not doing any of the above is my brother and myself (I am the oldest). And this is the brother I have a very hard time stomaching as he WAS Catholic/turned Anglican/turned Calvary Gospel/turned Faith Tabernacle. We do not see eye to eye. He hates catholcism and is very arrogant subtly. He would never come to me and dicuss religion…he knows better.

I have two sisters who are scandalizing (between both of them there are 9 children) their offspring. One left her husband/5 children to co-habitate with a divorced man with a family of his own. They still claim their catholcism and go to communion.

My other sister (who has 4 children) left her very abusive husband to find her first love who was married and spend week-ends with her children present. Both go to church and go to communion.

My own children are co-habitating and most of my nephews and nieces (old enough) are having sex. They all know how I feel and call me Reverend Mother. It is a standing joke now but they also know my faith is very important. I do not take responsibility for them as they belong to God. I will let Him take care of them in His own good time. I can only pray…and hope that one day they will make themselves right with God as He is full of mercy!

Blessings,
Shoshana
 
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St.Catherine:
There are things that you can do to set a good example and still maintain the relationship. For instance, invite your siblings to your house for social events. That way your way of life prevails during interactions. Also, If you are concerned about them being a bad influence on your children you can make a rule that you do not leave your own children alone with them.
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Yes but still even if you are with your children they are setting a bad example and being a negative influence. We don’t want to lead our children the wrong way.

I would say when it comes to children, we should avoid exposing them to that. Even if we think we are hiding it from them, at a certain age they usually know what is going on.
 
YES!

Live a Catholic/Christian life to the best of your ability… be the shinning example of Catholocism that you are supposed to be… Pray for them at every opportunity… That will do more to convincing them of their error than anything i know… i feel if you go at it with the “i’m going to change their mind with a pithy debate” i feel you will do more harm than good… should be easy to love them to death, they are your siblings… 👍
 
Mark 3:32-35:

A crowd seated around him told him, “Your mother and your brothers (and your sisters) are outside asking for you.” But he said to them in reply, “Who are my mother and (my) brothers?” And looking around at those seated in the circle he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. (For) whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”
 
I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people,
not at all referring to the immoral of this world or the greedy and robbers or idolaters; for you would then have to leave the world. But I now write to you not to associate with anyone named a brother, if he is immoral, greedy, an idolater, a slanderer, a drunkard, or a robber, not even to eat with such a person. For why should I be judging outsiders? Is it not your business to judge those within? God will judge those outside. "Purge the evil person from your midst."

Apparently, (according to the Word of God) if someone claims to be Catholic or Christian and is immoral and infers that behaving in ways that offend God is acceptable or Catholic then we are not associate with them, family members or not.
 
Looking at the context of 1 Corinthians 5, I do see that St. Paul refers to a serious case of immorality to begin with. Perhaps he would not be quite as restrictive about co-habitation or matters of similar seriousness although we should not take things too lightly either.
 
When a person tells someone they accept Church teachings regarding such topics as contraception and marriage, are they sometimes told in response that “they need help” ?
 
I have six siblings. I made a decision. We were all raised by wonderful parents that practice their faith, passed this on to us, and are approaching 50 years of marriage.

I will not be attending my sisters third wedding, (first in Catholic Church, never annulled) She is marrying a guy that was seperated but his wife wanted to reconcile. My sister busted that up.:banghead: BUT, I love her, she is my sister.:rolleyes: She knows I don’t approve and we will see if I get an invitation. I will continue to be polite and there for her, if she needs guidance in the faith. There are good examples in our family that she could look at. I pray for her and her daughter. That is the best I can do.🙂

Blessings,
Helen
 
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puzzleannie:
recommend Search and Rescue by Patrick Madrid on how to approach your non-CAtholic or non=practicing relatives–and most important what not to say and do
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Thanks, Annie.

I’ve got a brother who attends Mass only on Christmas and Easter. This has been going on for 20 years. He has me tell him the time, etc., and then drags his family (who are Lutheran) with us. (He likes to sit up front, with the Pharisees, as I call it, so the 2 kids can see what’s going on).

I haven’t raised the issue, but this last Christmas it was different. I left the pew to go to Communion and as I returned to the pew, I didn’t see my brother and his family. Then I glanced behind me and saw that all four of them were right behind me. I didn’'t witness it, but assume that they decided to go to Communion, also). The daughter is a Freshman at a liberal Catholic college, so she might have been the instigation for this turn of affairs.

I recently heard a lay theology professor from that school, when questioned about “what he likes best about his job” he replied that “the Church doesn’t tell me what to do.” Honest, if nothing else.

I didn’t say anything to my brother yet, but I will do so by Easter, the next time we’ll be together at Mass.

Is there a liberal school of thought that believes that Communion is ok for all Christians?

Madrid’s book should be a big help in coaching me as to how to make my point that the reception of Communion is only permitted to Catholics in good standing with the Church and who are in the state of grace.
 
space ghost:
Live a Catholic/Christian life to the best of your ability… be the shinning example of Catholocism that you are supposed to be… Pray for them at every opportunity…
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Prayer and sacrifice are the way to go. Also, be a joyful Catholic. I think that’s really important. Love them and love your faith. I have 4 brothers. Two are divorced and now have girlfriends, 1 is a widower and 1 is unhapplily married. The best our family can do is pray and be a good witness to the joy of Catholic family life. —KCT
 
Ray Marshall:
Is there a liberal school of thought that believes that Communion is ok for all Christians?
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God forbid, but every missal bears instructions on Communion, typically on the last page or on the 3rd cover.

My father regretfully is such a Christmas/Easter Catholic, but when he was over along with my mother this past Christmas, he didn’t go to Communion, perhaps because I didn’t either. I have to wonder if you not going wouldn’t prompt them to go.

A huge sacrifice for you, but you’d been protecting His Body and Blood. Can anybody chip in whether this would be a worthy sacrifice in God’s eyes?

God bless you.
 
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