Watching others helplessly

[Eric_Peter]

Have anyone ever go through this before?
I mean watching your friends or family living in sins, but unable to do anything.
E.g, a family member who isn’t Christian staying overnight with his/her boyfriend/girlfriend,
a Catholic friend who stays overnight with girlfriend in a room every weekend,
some Catholic friends who skip Masses / going to Protestant Church and thinks he fulfills Sunday Obligation, / Receiving Holy Communion after deliberately skipping Masses on weeks before, going to Protestant Bible study knowingly they have errors,
Catholic and Muslim friends who think looking at girls’ legs (in hot pants) / in bikini is okay,
Catholic friends who watch pornography,
Christians (Protestants) friends who think it’s okay to incite a bit lust to men to attract attention,
Agnostic/Atheist friends who are having fornication,
list goes on.

It sounds ideal that we as Catholic should remind them. But it reality, no one’s going to listen to me. I’m a convert, sometimes I even need to ask them about the Catholic traditions as they know more about the traditions than I do. They’re born in Catholic family, I’m born in Atheist/Agnostic (mixture) family.

For non-Christians, they have different believe and they will not listen to anything about Christians belief on what is sin and what is not.

I’ve once try to bring out topic about chastity and modesty, and I’m no “Jason Evert”, so I ended up severing my own credibility and viewed as “sexist”, “blaming women for men’s sin”, “offensive to ladies”, etc.

So in the end, I can only struggle for my own conversion (since i’m not perfect too), make sure I live my life as holy as possible (still got a long way to go since i’m still struggling a certain sins), and watch my friends and family in their condition helplessly.

 

[stephe1987]

We need to pray for these people and hope they listen when the Holy Spirit tries to lead them to the Church. The information is out there. Cohabitation and fornication lead to adultery in marriage, which leads to divorce. I wouldn’t be surprised if the divorce rate goes up even more in the next 20 years or so, as more members of the “me generation” reach marriageable age. People don’t want to listen because practicing chastity and dressing modestly isn’t “fun” to them. Inner-strength and self-control is not something they want to learn. But someday they will hopefully atone for their sins and realize that the way they act isn’t what God intended for humans.

 

[Contra_Mundum_1]

So in the end, I can only struggle for my own conversion (since i’m not perfect too), make sure I live my life as holy as possible (still got a long way to go since i’m still struggling a certain sins), and watch my friends and family in their condition helplessly.

Yup, something like that. In my experience, talking to poeple about their sins just doesn’t work. But let’s not get pessimistic about it all. We can pray for others and show good example of living a Christian life. Pobably most of the time it will go unnoticed but you never know. A friend told me recently that she was very much influenced by something I had said several weeks before. It made her change her behaviour. Thing is, I couldn’t even remember that conversation! And I realised it wasn’t my doing - God used me to get a message accross. And she listened. Maybe we will never witness someone’s conversion but maybe that’s not important. A seed can be planted without anyone being aware and then work miracles later on.

 

[dotFaith]

Hi Eric Peter. Glad you found the Catholic Faith!!

You mentioned several things that I have worried about with not only family and friends, but strangers, too. I have tried to be non-confrontational, but unfortunately, haven’t been able to convince them of their Catholic duties. It is a very difficult position to be in and it bothers me almost daily.

I have come to see, however, that prayer truly is the best way to handle this situation. The Lord knows I care about these people’s souls and maybe He allows me to be bothered by their sin so that I am moved to pray.

Please know that you are not alone.

• dotFaith

 

[rapunzel77]

for a while, I was worried about my sister. She isn’t Catholic and had been living with her then boyfriend. Eventually, they got married just a few months ago but before they finally tied the knot, I was very concerned about them and prayed a lot. Now, I hope that they will stay together although they were co-habitating. They are both Lutheran and so far they are going to church when they can as their schedules allow but I don’t know if they ever thought that what they were doing was wrong . I pray for them everyday. Hopefully they will have a good and fruitful marriage although I know they are also using birth control which is also depressing .

 

[Stuart5]

“Lord that I may preach the Gospel and only when necessary with words”

Saint Francis of Assisi