"Well, that went well. NOT! How to deal with family not supporting your conversion

[spauline]

Cairisti,

I don’t think you have it as bad as you could have it. At least your families are most likely in a state of grace. Most conservative Protestants are usually material heretics in a state of grace. After all, their morals are basically Christian, save contraception and divorce and remarriage.

But my family is nominally Catholic and probably in mortal sin. my little brother and sister fornicate in the house, and my parents support it, even though they think they’re good Catholics (they don’t faithfully attend Weekend Mass either). They’re cafeteria Catholics and they have made it clear that i’m not welcome to preach when in their house.

honestly, then, you don’t have it so bad. You don’t have to worry that your family is headed toward hell. Southern Baptists understand the basics of the meaning of life and they take religious truth very seriously. The same cannot be said for nominal, fornicating, contracepting, marrying-before-the-annulment “Catholics,” who think that it’s ludicrous to believe that you must watch every word that comes out of your mouth (“Amen, Amen, I say to you, men shall give account of every idle word they speak!”)

I know i’m not much comfort, but put things in perspective. it could be much worse.

Scott

 

[bhanifan]

I feel for ya. Actually it would be my wife that feels for you mostly. We haven’t gotten to where you’re at and we’ve already had a similar explosion. When my wife (church of Christ) and I announced that we were getting married the tensions shot through the roof. Finally one night Nicole’s mother decided we would discuss things. There we were in her parent’s living room (where we’d been 2 or 3 nights a week for 2 years), and her mother just starts yelling like crazy, and threatening to disown her and saying how she is so disapointed in her and everything. Wow!

I can’t even imagine what will happen when Nicole begins her RCIA classes. Hopefully, they are preparing themselves for that announcement.

 

[dream_wanderer]

bhanifan:

I feel for ya. Actually it would be my wife that feels for you mostly. We haven’t gotten to where you’re at and we’ve already had a similar explosion. When my wife (church of Christ) and I announced that we were getting married the tensions shot through the roof. Finally one night Nicole’s mother decided we would discuss things. There we were in her parent’s living room (where we’d been 2 or 3 nights a week for 2 years), and her mother just starts yelling like crazy, and threatening to disown her and saying how she is so disapointed in her and everything. Wow!

I can’t even imagine what will happen when Nicole begins her RCIA classes. Hopefully, they are preparing themselves for that announcement.

I told my husband and children ( two kids were nearly grown at the time and have since left home…I have a 13 year old still at home). They were all 100% completely supportive. Husband just didn’t want it to ‘split up’ the family and wanted me to keep attending church with him in addition to Mass. I spoke to the Priest and he told me to go ahead with it for now. Small sacrifice for family harmony.

However the above scenario is one my husband feared. My family are Bible fundamentalist and he rarely exercised his husbandly authority in such a way but he didn’t want me to tell them. I am a cancer survivor and his reasoning is I had already been through enough and I didn’t need the stress they would put on me if they knew. I myself didn’t care if they knew or not but I obeyed him. My mom (who would have been the one most likely to act like the mom in bhanifan’s family) has since passed away. I think my husband is softening up to let me tell the rest of them but I’m not going to make some ‘grand’ announcement’. I’m just going to let the news leak out gradually.

dream wanderer