What do I do when my daughter refuses to attend Mass?

[hoppeda32]

My daughter is 16 and it is a battle every Sunday. I have offered to take her in the evening and she still screams and states “I don’t believe in God. You are making me hate church even more and I will never change my mind.” Despite our restrictions regarding computer, cell phone, etc., she still refuses to go. When she is banned from the computer she refuses to do her homework for that week. We know that as Catholic parents we are required to ensure that our children attend Mass and we are held accountable. But I am afraid that our insistence is causing her to rebel more and more and we are starting to lose ground with her in other areas. When not forced to attend Mass, she is a straight-A student, lets us know where she is, etc., and overall is compliant and polite in meeting our requests.

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

And yet you allow her to scream at you, treat you disrespectfully, refuse to do her homework when she’s being punished, and you deign to play pointless one-upmanship games with her by taking away computer and cell phone privileges in an effort to get her to do what you want. All this is accomplishing, it seems, is that you are allowing yourself to be pummeled into submission by figuring that her grades and otherwise “good behavior” (which isn’t really good behavior at all but calculated manipulation) compensate for her refusal to go to Mass.

To be perfectly frank, you are going to have to adjust your own attitude toward this before you can hope to improve hers. She must be made to understand that she is the child, you are the parent, and that her obedience is part of the honor and respect she owes you as her parent. That she doesn’t believe in God is tragic (and she shouldn’t receive Communion under such circumstances), but it doesn’t matter one bit to the question of whether she goes to Mass. She goes to Mass because she is a member of the family and Mass is a family responsibility. Once she is entirely independent, you must tell her, whether or not she attends Mass will be her choice and responsibility; until then, she will go because Mass attendance is just as much a non-negotiable as school attendance.

I understand that this is easy to say and difficult to enforce. I recommend contacting the Pastoral Solutions Institute, a Catholic counseling apostolate, for more assistance. I also recommend the book linked below. The author is a Jewish parenting instructor, but her advice applies broadly.

Recommended reading:

Raising a Child with Soul by Slovie Jungreis-Wolff