Urgent situation, any advice?

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Tigercat789

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I am in high school in a Protestant family, I was also Protestant but through personal study I came to Catholisicm. I am a baptized Catholic but my parents fell from the faith when I was 10 and they won’t let me go to mass or confession. Any advice?
 
How old are you now?
14-16 you get one set of advice
17 you get another
18 yet a third

On CAF we cannot advocate for the disobedience of minors so how old you are changes the conversation quite a bit.
 
I’m 16 no driving license so I can’t drive myself to the nearest church. (There are 3 in my city)
 
Basically, you cannot do anything but wait. We can’t sit here and tell you to lie or otherwise subvert your parents wishes.

Personally, my only idea would be to look up a Lifeteen Mass/Lifeteen group and ask your parents, if you can attend that as a youth group…even if you have to skip Mass it would afford you the opportunity to learn more about being Catholic, be with your peers and go to Confession in a private and non-obtrusive way. Many parents are OK with youth group activities if they are not comfortable with actual services.
 
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Basically what Xanthippe Voorhees said. You are 16 which means that you have a few more years until college (basically adulthood) when you can choose which religion. Unless you get your parents permission, you should accept the situation, pray, plan on becoming Catholic later and go on with your life. God understands.
 
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New developments, worked up the courage to ask parents if I could go to the nearest Catholic Church for mass and confession, but was refused and then an argument sprang up. They asked why I needed to go to confession and could not confess to God directly, I told them it’s because Jesus willed it to be that way and that early Christians behaved just like the Church does, but they are Fundy Evangelicals so they just kept repeating that the Bible alone is the answer and did not consider the my historical arguments. I asked them where they think the Bible came from and they just said directly from God, so I tried to explain the council of hippo and the compilation of the canon of scripture but that was no use. They go on to say that I lack real faith in my heart ( emotional faith) and that I “only have faith in my head” ( logical faith)so they don’t accept my arguments and basically they seem to think that their faith is based on emotion so they are not giving credence to critical arguments. I’m not meaning to knock my parents I know they only want what’s best for me but could anyone who sees this please pray for me and my parents?
 
Tigercat789 said:
New developments, worked up the courage to ask parents if I could go to the nearest Catholic Church for mass and confession, but was refused and then an argument sprang up. They asked why I needed to go to confession and could not confess to God directly, I told them it’s because Jesus willed it to be that way and that early Christians behaved just like the Church does, but they are Fundy Evangelicals so they just kept repeating that the Bible alone is the answer and did not consider the my historical arguments. I asked them where they think the Bible came from and they just said directly from God, so I tried to explain the council of hippo and the compilation of the canon of scripture but that was no use. They go on to say that I lack real faith in my heart ( emotional faith) and that I “only have faith in my head” ( logical faith)so they don’t accept my arguments and basically they seem to think that their faith is based on emotion so they are not giving credence to critical arguments. I’m not meaning to knock my parents I know they only want what’s best for me but could anyone who sees this please pray for me and my parents?
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I will pray.

You need to stop arguing with them. You are not going to get anywhere. You are rejecting their ideas…and that is never going to go over well.

Like I said, ask to do something they won’t object to–like a youth group event.

You’re 16, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt but seriously, don’t be stupid. Your parents told you they forbad XY &Z and you walked up to them and said you wanted to do XY&Z. That’s not courage, that’s stupidity.

If they are going to rely on emotions, then try to identify with that. Confession makes you feel good. You like the worship style of Mass. You feel the hymns are uplifting. As Indiana Jones would say you brought a knife to a gun fight.
 
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