Swaying the beliefs of misguided Catholic family members

[Gordon_Sims]

This is something I’ve been struggling with for a while. The most pressing matter for me is my wife & son, both of whom are not fully on board with some of the Church’s teachings, despite being lifelong Catholics. My son had 12 years of Catholic schools, but along with less than stellar catechesis, he fell in with a couple horribly misguided, relatavism-minded friends who taught him, basically, that if it feels good, do it. The positives with my son are that he doesn’t have very well-formed arguments against the teachings he’s uncertain about, and he seems eager to receive some actual guidance in this area. Unfortunately, his natural tendency to disagree with each and every thing I say gets in the way a bit.

My wife doesn’t have the benefit of any sort of worthwhile catechesis. Despite being ostensibly highly religious, her parents never saw fit to send her to Catholic schools, never enforced their rule that she go to Mass with them every Sunday, and only sent her to CCD classes on an inconsistent basis. Her dad would talk to her about religion, but he had extremely wrong, eccentric notions which didn’t help her in the slightest. Despite wanting to be on board with me as far as raising the kids in our faith, she has a somewhat Protestant view of the Church and is very stubborn in her views. She thinks a personal relationship with God is all you really need; doesn’t believe that anyone really goes to Hell; that missing Mass on Sundays isn’t a sin; and that anything that comes from the Vatican is suspect since she’s never seen any documented proof that God actually speaks through the popes (some of her beliefs are relatively recent revelations to me). I’ve been trying to get her to read Catholicism for Dummies, but she doesn’t think she’d enjoy it. She’s reluctant to take my word for it and won’t talk to our priest about it. Her friends either aren’t Catholic or aren’t very strong in their faith and tend to be more cafeteria Catholics than anything.

I’m still working on her and have seen some positive changes. One big one is that, until recently, she was extremely pro-choice. Not 100%, but she felt abortion was justified in a lot of circumstances. We had a lot of long talks about it and she’s now fully on board on abortion, but we’re still at odds on many things. She’s also a little uneasy with the idea of me being a lot more vocal about my faith. She’s not fully supportive of us saying the Rosary as a family every night. She doesn’t feel comfortable with me reading religious books & magazines, and really doesn’t like me watching EWTN (she feels I’m being too forceful and imposing too much on her). She was also upset with me the other day when she got in the car and found that I’d been listening to a Christian radio station (not something I normally do, but couldn’t find anything worthwhile on the other stations). She agrees we need to set a good example for the kids, but she’s not quite in line with my priorities.

Another one that’s not just bothering me but absolutely boggling my mind is how off-base my mother is on several things. My mother’s a cradle Catholic, and my grandmother was extremely devout. My mom’s still very active in her parish and never misses Mass (including going to the occasional weekday Mass). However, she’s been shocked and uncomfortable with several things I’ve said lately. A big one was when I told her that I’d never let a teacher friend of ours teach our children due to her being so vocally pro-abortion. When I told her this, she looked at me like I had spiders crawling out of my ears. She also either expressed disbelief or told me I was wrong lately when I told her I couldn’t support the decisions of friends and family members who were either cohabiting, or who had gotten pregnant via invitro fertilization. When I told her it was against our Catholic beliefs, she told me I was wrong.

There’s been a few other issues with my mom (one was her not being able to figure out why I took my girls to Mass on Sunday after I’d gone myself the night before), but while I can be a little more forceful with my opinions when talking to my wife, I’ve found that I have to use a lot more tact when discussing these things with my mom. She’s been set in her ways a lot longer than my wife has, and doesn’t seem to think I could ever know more about Catholicism than her.

If anyone has any advice on how to deal with them more effectively, I’d love to hear it.

 

[horselvr]

Why is this so familiar to me.

I haven’t lived at home with my family in many years but when my aunt died and we needed to settle her estate I found myself having to live with my family for about 3 months and let me tell ya, it was an eye opener.

In that time I found out that while my cousins went to Catholic school they have become protestant in some of their beliefs, as mentioned above in your post.

One biggie was when I was informed that:

the Catholic Church does not believe in Purgatory any longer. Say What???

The Catholic Church does not “feel” that missing Mass is a mortal sin any longer.

The CC “feel” it is ok to receive communion even if you have not been to Mass or confession.

It’s perfectly alright to heve your protestant friends receive communion in a Mass especially if you are attending a funeral.

My sister informed me that since her new husband is a Lutheran, she is too and that it is just like being a Catholic. Say what again???

throughout the whole funeral Mass I just quietly cringed to see my non-practicing family members and their non-Catholic friends receiving Communion.

Oh I could go on and on but I think you understand perfectly well what I am trying to convey.

Here’s what I found out:

You cannot even have an intelligent discussion with this type because deep down they feel the CC just has too many rules for them and it is just too hard for them to follow and so they believe what they want to and stay within their perceived comfort zone. However, three of my cousins did go to confession and 2 went back to Mass. It’s a start.

I even spoke with my Priest about this and he said that sometimes the less said the better and so I just refer them to this site and the hundred other ways to educate themselves.

Just pray for them.

I only had to live this way for 3 months. I couldn’t imagine the frustration level living in the same household day after day with this.

I’ll pray for you for guidance from the Holy Spirit whenever speaking about the CC to your relatives and that they will be open to hearing.

 

[Gordon_Sims]

While I certainly have relatives like the ones you mentioned (e.g. getting mad at me for saying the Rosary, making fun of me for going to Confession more than once per decade, let alone on a regular basis, etc.), with my wife, son and mother it’s not quite the same. None of them are critical of the Church in general, and my mother would be shocked if anyone told her that her beliefs weren’t in line with Catholic teaching. My wife’s all in favor of us raising our kids to be good Catholics, but she’s opposed to the idea of being too open about it and has a lot of contrary ideas. The fact that I was able to sway her opinion on abortion gives me a lot of hope as far as being able to give her better guidance in other areas as well.

Part of the issue with my wife, aside from her absolute lack of a formal catechesis growing up (mine was pretty flawed, but at least I got something of a foundation) is that her dad really went off the deep end, religiously speaking, toward the end of his life. He fed her all sorts of crazy ideas from the various churches, sects and cults he took an interest in, and I think enough of that took hold that she was led astray in some areas.

I have a big head start on my wife both in terms of my upbringing and how much I’ve worked at reinvigorating my faith over the last few years; I just need to figure how to get her on a better path.

 

[familyof4]

Hi Gordon,

Are you approaching your wife as your student or your peer? As a wife, I can tell you that if my husband was attempting to “school” me in my faith, I would not be very accepting.

To share a bit of the story coming from the other direction, my husband was agnostic when we met, and had a tremendous experience that left him with no doubt of God’s existence. When that happened, he spent a lot of time exploring and trying to figure out what path God wanted him to follow. He went off in some really weird directions at first (maybe like your wife’s dad did), and got involved in a group of “universalists” that I would have nothing to do with. I may have been a bad Catholic, but was still Catholic enough to know when something was wrong.

He left that group, and prayed to God for answers on how to follow Him-- and it struck him that he should be Catholic (this is the condensed version, obviously). He looked at his wife and children who were Catholic, and signed up for RCIA.

So-- my prayers are answered, right? I have a husband on fire for the faith, and convinced that he is in the right place. BUT-- I had been lazy about going to church, had fuzzy thoughts about abortion, birth control, and other subjects. As he learned, I had to learn. We started going to church weekly. We talked about the homilys. I listened as the deacon talked about the grave sin of abortion.

My husband would talk about what he learned in RCIA. I would read up on ideas as well-- and we’d talk. I prayed. At times I clung to past beliefs (change in core beliefs takes time), and we argued.

But, here we are a year into the journey. We are closer than ever because we are walking side by side, and learning and sharing together. Please approach this with love and kindness rather than as a debate where there is a winner and a loser-- because she will only dig in her heels, and you both lose.

 

[Gordon_Sims]

Are you approaching your wife as your student or your peer? As a wife, I can tell you that if my husband was attempting to “school” me in my faith, I would not be very accepting.

For the most part, I approach her on equal ground, although I’ll admit that I can probably get a bit preachy with her at times. She tends to be very stubborn, and she has several ideas about which I can’t get her to even bend. The biggest is probably her notion that a lot of the Church’s teachings come from man, not God, so we’re not doing anything contrary to God’s will if we don’t follow them (going to Mass every Sunday & Holy Day, and confessing to a priest instead of directly to God are two that she has problems with). When I explain the reasons behind the teachings, she’s not always willing to listen (I’m not a priest/deacon/bishop so I can’t be right about all this), but at the same time she’s not willing to talk to a priest or read Catholicism for Dummies, or anything like that.

At the same time, we’re mostly on the same page as far as our desire to want the kids to grow up strong in the faith (she agrees, but isn’t 100% on board when it comes to participating). I read a report a while back that showed that the biggest factor in kids staying strong in their faith as adults was if their dad set a good example. Based on that, I’m more than willing to be the guiding light for my family; I just want my wife to have a better understanding and be more in line with the Church’s teachings. She’s accepted some things enthusiastically and others more reluctantly. My challenge is just getting her to accept and understand the key points. I figure everything will eventually fall into place after that.

I think another problem is that she sees faith as more of a private, personal thing so she doesn’t agree with the notion of being vocal about it. It’s okay to talk about it in the car or at home, and prayer is awesome as long as it’s kept in church or in your head, but to talk about our faith with others or to say the Rosary as a family is something she’s not really comfortable with yet.

I will give her credit for trying, though. We were considering getting satellite radio recently, and one of the first things she said was that she was in favor of it because it would let me listen to EWTN radio (this, coming from the woman who hates when I watch EWTN online, or even worse, the rare times when I listen to Christian music). This actually made me feel better about the whole situation than when she finally agreed with me completely on abortion.

 

[jellysquare]

These problems apply to good friends as well. Why is it that people forget that God DID command us to keep Holy the Sabbath or Lord’s Day? They usually try to keep the other commandments? I also know that in one of Paul’s epistles he says that we also should keep the Lord’s Day, I am paraphrasing unfortunately and don’t know which epistle it is. So there are two statements from the Bible.

 

[Gordon_Sims]

These problems apply to good friends as well. Why is it that people forget that God DID command us to keep Holy the Sabbath or Lord’s Day? They usually try to keep the other commandments? I also know that in one of Paul’s epistles he says that we also should keep the Lord’s Day, I am paraphrasing unfortunately and don’t know which epistle it is. So there are two statements from the Bible.

That’s one of the arguments that I’m still not sure why doesn’t get through to my wife. She’ll say “where does it say that in the Bible” for other things and I have to go to other sources, but with this I point right at the commandments and she still doesn’t think it applies to going to Mass. To her credit, she will take the kids when I can’t go. Plus, with her being pregnant and us having a baby, she has a valid reason to miss it, although I do point out to her that I take the baby with me all the time.

With other family and friends, I know it sounds bad, but I tend not to waste too much of my breath. When someone (as in ostensibly Catholic family and friends) is getting argumentative about me saying I went to Confession (not me saying they should go, just me saying that I went), mocks the fact that I not only own but use a rosary, and doesn’t have the decency to keep their kids from making faces while we say Grace, I figure that me arguing finer points of the Church’s teachings are the least of their concerns. I’m trying to get better about that and work subtle comments into more conversations, but the confrontations aren’t worth it for me.

 

[yinekka]

As a start why not buy Catholicism For Dummies and leave it lying around. Buy Catholicism and Fundamentalism or Catholic Survival Guide (available from Catholic Answers) for yourself or listen to Catholic Answers Radio Q&A or watch Web of Faith on EWTN to become better informed with answers for your wife’s doubts.

Pray for her that she may be open to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. - the most important thing

Only talk religion if she asks a question but witness to the Faith all the time in the way you love her and the children and the way you live out the Faith by going to Holy Mass etc.

Be joyful. If your Faith makes you sad or angry that’s not much of an advertisement. Not saying you do this.

 

[Gordon_Sims]

As a start why not buy Catholicism For Dummies and leave it lying around. Buy Catholicism and Fundamentalism or Catholic Survival Guide (available from Catholic Answers) for yourself or listen to Catholic Answers Radio Q&A or watch Web of Faith on EWTN to become better informed with answers for your wife’s doubts.

I keep leaving Catholicism for Dummies lying around. She keeps putting it away and getting angry at me for not cleaning up after myself, lol. I’ve told her and my son both numerous times that I want them to read it. She doesn’t think it would interest her, although I’ve told her that it’s not a dry read, as she’s expecting it to be. I’ll have to check out the other two books you mentioned. I’ve recently found a local radio station whose signal we can actually receive that broadcasts EWTN Radio. I’ve been playing it in the car and in the house while getting the kids ready for school. This was met with some resistance at first, but has since led to a couple good discussions, so I think we’ll be listening to it a bit more often. We don’t watch nearly as much EWTN TV since they changed their streaming options and the picture is horrendous. Hopefully they’ll change it back.

Pray for her that she may be open to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. - the most important thing

Only talk religion if she asks a question but witness to the Faith all the time in the way you love her and the children and the way you live out the Faith by going to Holy Mass etc.

I’ve been praying for both of them intently. She’s not as opposed to us saying the Rosary as a family as she was just a couple weeks ago. I bought her a rosary she’s been wanting for a while the other day, and this seemed to help a bit. I’m considering other ways of getting her more involved, possibly buying a family rosary we can pass around while saying it. I’ve also told her I may buy her a nicer rosary after the new baby gets here.

Our son actually sat through most of the Rosary with us the other night, although he stopped just shy of joining in. That was a shocker for me. I think he’s embarrassed and feels uncomfortable about the idea of us praying as a family. I’ll admit that I felt the same way at first, mainly because I didn’t want to be one of “those” families. The bulk of the families I knew growing up who prayed and read scripture together were the sorts who were both very overzealous and full of the holier-than-thou spirit. I’m doing what I can to make this something the family enjoy as opposed to driving them away from it.

As far as talking religion, I try to avoid starting conversations about it out of the blue, but we’ve found that a lot more of our conversations take a religious tone at some point. Whether I disagree with something on religious grounds, or my son asks how the Church feels about some issue or another, our faith has become a fairly regular topic of conversation. I think that’s great, but I’m also trying to be sensitive to my wife’s notion of not wanting anything forced on her.

Be joyful. If your Faith makes you sad or angry that’s not much of an advertisement. Not saying you do this.

I’ve noticed that the stronger I get in my faith, the better I feel about it. When we first started saying the Rosary, it was a chore. Now it’s something I look forward to. I love being able to discuss a good sermon or something we read in the bulletin, and few things thrill me as much as when we see or hear something contrary to the Church’s teachings and one of the kids points out what’s wrong. I’m trying my best to let example lead them to a stronger faith.

 

[yinekka]

If the whole rosary is a bit of a chore why not start with a decade. It is a good idea to read the scripture passage which describes the decade e.g. the Annunciation before starting the decade; this will give something to meditate on. The last two decades of the Glorious mysteries aren’t found directly in the bible so you may wish to find an orthodox commentary on them.

As your son gets to know more about the Faith he may like to go to a website called “Phatcat” (you check it out first) there he will find he is able to discover more about and defend the Faith - young men like the cut and thrust of apologetics.

Have you thought of buying YouCat for your son and if issues come up re e.g. what does the Church think of this you and he may be able to read the answer together from YouCat. YouCat has links to the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Two books which may be useful for you to be able to talk with your son - check them out in a bookshop first or read reviews on Amazon - *Catholic Truths For Our Children * Patti Maguire Armstrong( careful here because the original cover is very offputting I think, too sugary) and Talking to Your Children About Being Catholic - various editors for the chapters

 

[Gordon_Sims]

If the whole rosary is a bit of a chore why not start with a decade. It is a good idea to read the scripture passage which describes the decade e.g. the Annunciation before starting the decade; this will give something to meditate on. The last two decades of the Glorious mysteries aren’t found directly in the bible so you may wish to find an orthodox commentary on them.

The whole Rosary seems to be more of a chore for the 20-year-old than the rest of the family. He did say a decade with us the other night, though, so that was a step in the right direction. We tend to skip the readings most nights, although I’ll give a brief explanation of what the Mystery is. This shortens things up a bit and makes it easier on our daughters.

As your son gets to know more about the Faith he may like to go to a website called “Phatcat” (you check it out first) there he will find he is able to discover more about and defend the Faith - young men like the cut and thrust of apologetics.

Have you thought of buying YouCat for your son and if issues come up re e.g. what does the Church think of this you and he may be able to read the answer together from YouCat. YouCat has links to the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Two books which may be useful for you to be able to talk with your son - check them out in a bookshop first or read reviews on Amazon - *Catholic Truths For Our Children * Patti Maguire Armstrong( careful here because the original cover is very offputting I think, too sugary) and Talking to Your Children About Being Catholic - various editors for the chapters

I’ve been trying to get him and my wife both to read more about the Faith, although that’s worse than pulling teeth. Discussions are one thing; getting them to read something they’re not choosing to read on their own is something else. I’ve gotten some suggestions for various books, so I’ll be checking those out. If nothing else, I can read them and then talk to them about them afterward.

 

[yinekka]

• If nothing else, I can read them and then talk to them about them afterward.*

That’s a great idea.

Would they be more amenable to CDs or DVDs? Fr Barron’s set Catholicism is a bit pricey at the moment but it will probably come down in price and it has in addition to the DVDs, a book and a workbook.

 

[Gordon_Sims]

Would they be more amenable to CDs or DVDs? Fr Barron’s set Catholicism is a bit pricey at the moment but it will probably come down in price and it has in addition to the DVDs, a book and a workbook.

DVD’s might be a better route, depending on what they are. I have better luck watching religious-themed movies and having those spark discussions than watching something on EWTN and trying to get them to talk about that.

We were able to see one episode of Catholicism and I’d like to get the series eventually (or, better yet, see it come to Netflix). From what I saw, that would go over a lot easier than a drier presentation on just the Catechism.