What should I do about this friend?

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lovedance4ever

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Hello everyone. I hardly know where to begin; my mind is flooded with confusion and upset and I just have no clue how to approach this situation.

I am an eighteen year old female who has always struggled in the friend department. Most of my middle school and high school years were spent alone. It was the issue that depressed me more than anything else, and I just could not figure out what was wrong with me that would keep my peers away. Fast forward to college, I was happier than ever (I graduated the summer of 2010, but did not attend a university until the spring of 2011). I was coming out of my shell, getting wonderful grades, and beginning to make friends. Finally, in the fall 2011 semester, I joined the campus ministry group and went on a wonderful day retreat where I met people (who I thought) were like-minded.

In a group of roughly sixteen, I kept in contact with one girl. We will call her Jane. Jane and I began hanging out outside of school and although we had different tastes in some things, we got along famously and were able to respect each other’s beliefs.

As time went on, I realized that she acted in ways that would not be very pleasing to the Lord. I also discovered that she was a Wiccan, which bothered me at first, but I learned to let it go and we never discussed anything that had to do with her religious views.

Jane swears, and I am ashamed to admit, I began to pick up some bad language as well (although I have always refused to use the Lord’s name in vain…it would crush me if I ever sank to that level). She talked inappropriately, and even though I laughed, there was always something inside of me that felt uneasy; my stomach always twisted whenever I participated in some way. Then I found out she had a boyfriend and that she had been sleeping around with him for about a year. I had no idea how to confront the situation, but I made clear my views that sex was for marriage only. She did not say much to that.

Jane also has a “best friend” back where she is from, and says that I am her “best friend” at our college. I thought it was sweet of her to pay me such compliments, but I always stand my guard, because in my experience (not to sound paranoid) you cannot place too much trust in anyone who is not a member of your immediate family. Well, she went home this Easter break and when she came back, she seemed different.

First of all, just the other day she posted this ridiculous picture that was directed to her other best friend’s boyfriend and it stated that she would beat him up if he did not treat her correctly. She then went on to embarrass the heck out of me by stating that I don’t have a boyfriend (which, honestly, is a sensitive subject to me) but if i did, she would feel the same way. Now, maybe I’m being overly-sensitive, but I do not think that you post such a thing for hundreds of strangers to see. Plus I don’t want the whole world knowing that I am single. Then her best friend commented and I do not recall what it is she said, but Jane replied, “Don’t worry, YOU’RE my best friend.” I felt slighted. Is that immature? After getting to know Jane, I did not think I was overreacting. I was already beginning to believe that I was just being used, because I have a car, and was generous with driving her around to various appointments and stores. Then Jane wrote to her friend that she would kill herself if she did not come to our college, because she needed a friend there. That hurt me more than anything.

Regardless of this treatment, I decided to give it another shot, keep my mouth shut, and go through with our plans to have a sleep over and then spend time together the next day. So this past Friday, I picked her up and she was moping about everything. Her best friend might be pregnant, and she was yelling about how you should “not have sex without a condom” and that her friend was stupid. This bothered me, but I remained silent. Then she began describing her friend’s boyfriend to me, and I will not repeat what she said, because it is too inappropriate for these forums. Finally, she told me how upset she was because her parents will not let Jane sleep with her boyfriend if he comes to visit at her house. My blood was boiling by this point, but all I said was that it was their house and she had to respect that.

Whenever I gave my views on sex, she snickered at me, treating me like I knew nothing because I was not “experienced.” It hurt me; I hate being treated like a child, and inexperience means nothing. I know what my religious views are. You don’t have to take poison to know it will kill you.

In her defense, the only thing I can say is that she comes from a broken family. Her father and mother divorced when she was twelve, and she spent her high school years raising her brother. Her father remarried, and the woman he is married to has several children who do not treat Jane and her brother well. She’s never had a mother figure, and I feel sorry for her. But the way she treats me has gotten out of control.

I’m ashamed that I ever laughed at a dirty joke, or swore, and I’m glad I’ve had a wakeup call. The problem is, I do not know what to do about Jane. I would feel horrible about cutting her off completely, but at the same time, I know that being around someone like that is not good for my own spiritual life. My parents are not happy at all with her behavior, but are always supportive of me in my choices. My mother does not think I should cut her off, while my father thinks I should do by best in avoiding her altogether.
 
(Continued)

My question is, what is the good Catholic thing to do in this case? I’m at a loss, and want to remain a pure Catholic girl and shield my eyes and ears from impurities in the best way I can. I’ve begun by changing my profile picture on Facebook to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, so that any time I am tempted to use bad language or say something impure, I will realize that the two contradict each other. However, as far as Jane is concerned, I do not know what to do. She is self-centered, only speaks about her problems, and talks about things that are not appropriate for discussion. Also, the whole time we were together and we were not speaking, she ignored me and texted her boyfriend. I feel used to say the least.

Any thoughts?

Thank you for taking the time to read my blathering.

God bless
 
Jesus is your most important best friend.

The first post I ever made here to CAF back in 2005 was kind of like yours, only my “friend” was a Jehovah’s Witness who had just dumped me after years of supposed friendship because I would not convert to her religion. Even though I had told her that I was willing to accept her for who she was if she would show me the same courtesy and respect. That wasn’t good enough for her.

There were about three years of silence and then, guess what? She called me on the phone.

There are times we keep in touch and other times where my being Catholic or something seems to scare her off for awhile.

That said, since the beginning of this year, I pray for her and her family every day.

My suggestions to you?
  1. Be your Catholic self.
  2. Pray for the conversion of Jane.
I’ll pray for you too.

:blessyou:

~~ the phoenix
 
Your story reminds me a lot of myself when I was your age (spare me the “old man” jokes please…I try to convince myself it wasn’t THAT long ago).

I have learned to guide my life with certain principles that tend to be fairly generic, but in their non-specificity, are often directly applicable. In regards to “friends”, and what constitutes them, I have a very simple question that I apply. “Does this person bring anything positive to my life?” If I can not answer that simple question with a simple “yes”, then my life is too valuable for me to invest it in them. My friends are not perfect in any way, nor am I, but I can say without hesitation in regards to every one of them that my life is “better” as a result of them being a part of it.

I have also come to find that in regard to the people we associate with, whatever drama and “baggage” they hold will ultimately spill over into our own life. That is neither good nor bad, it is simply the way it is. So it ultimately comes down to a personal decision of whether or not an individual bring enough positive influence into your life that it is worth the negatives that come along with them.

As if that wasn’t enough to confuse you, regardless of what you decide to do, it is important to remember our call as Christians to be compassionate without violating our call to Truth. Always remember that to some people, you may be the only Jesus that they ever meet.
 
My advice: Let her friendship go. It’s not worth the price you are paying for it.
 
It is best to hang out with your peers who are on the same page regarding morality as you are.
 
Odd question maybe…But what is a Wiccan doing working in a campus ministry??? Let alone going on a retreat.
 
TheRealJuliane said:
Odd question maybe…But what is a Wiccan doing working in a campus ministry??? Let alone going on a retreat.
Click to expand...
When I was in college there was a Wiccan girl who was a cantor at the nearest Catholic parish, though I don’t recall her ever showing up for our campus ministry things. Still, it’s unfortunately not as uncommon as one might think.
 
Responding to the original poster, I think you might be overly sensitive about your being single and people knowing it, but in general as far as this friendship goes I would let it fade and try to find better friends. This girl is obviously not healthy to be around.
 
Have you ever read The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis? You may want to.

This is Letter #10:

*MY DEAR WORMWOOD,

I was delighted to hear from Triptweeze that your patient has made some very desirable new acquaintances and that you seem to have used this event in a really promising manner. I gather that the middle-aged married couple who called at his office are just the sort of people we want him to know—rich, smart, superficially intellectual, and brightly skeptical about everything in the world. I gather they are even vaguely pacifist, not on moral grounds but from an ingrained habit of belittling anything that concerns the great mass of their fellow men and from a dash of purely fashionable and literary communism.

This is excellent. And you seem to have made good use of all his social, sexual, and intellectual vanity. Tell me more. Did he commit himself deeply? I don’t mean in words. There is a subtle play of looks and tones and laughs by which a Mortal can imply that he is of the same party as those to whom he is speaking. That is the kind of betrayal you should specially encourage, because the man does not fully realize it himself; and by the time he does you will have made withdrawal difficult.

No doubt he must very soon realize that his own faith is in direct opposition to the assumptions on which all the conversation of his new friends is based. I don’t think that matters much provided that you can persuade him to postpone any open acknowledgment of the fact, and this, with the aid of shame, pride, modesty and vanity, will be easy to do. As long as the postponement lasts he will be in a false position. He will be silent when he ought to speak and laugh when he ought to be silent. He will assume, at first only by his manner, but presently by his words, all sorts of cynical and skeptical attitudes which are not really his. But if you play him well, they may become his. All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be. This is elementary. The real question is how to prepare for the Enemy’s counter attack.

The first thing is to delay as long as possible the moment at which he realizes this new pleasure as a temptation. Since the Enemy’s servants have been preaching about “the World” as one of the great standard temptations for two thousand years, this might seem difficult to do. But fortunately they have said very little about it for the last few decades. In modern Christian writings, though I see much (indeed more than I like) about Mammon, I see few of the old warnings about Worldly Vanities, the Choice of Friends, and the Value of Time. All that, your patient would probably classify as “Puritanism”—and may I remark in passing that the value we have given to that word is one of the really solid triumphs of the last hundred years? By it we rescue annually thousands of humans from temperance, chastity, and sobriety of life. Sooner or later, however, the real nature of his new friends must become clear to him, and then your tactics must depend on the patient’s intelligence. If he is a big enough fool you can get him to realize the character of the friends only while they are absent; their presence can be made to sweep away all criticism. If this succeeds, he can be induced to live, as I have known many humans live, for quite long periods, two parallel lives; he will not only appear to be, but actually be, a different man in each of the circles he frequents.

Failing this, there is a subtler and more entertaining method. He can be made to take a positive pleasure in the perception that the two sides of his life are inconsistent. This is done by exploiting his vanity. He can be taught to enjoy kneeling beside the grocer on Sunday just because he remembers that the grocer could not possibly understand the urbane and mocking world which he inhabited on Saturday evening; and contrariwise, to enjoy the bawdy and blasphemy over the coffee with these admirable friends all the more because he is aware of a “deeper”, “spiritual” world within him which they cannot understand. You see the idea—the worldly friends touch him on one side and the grocer on the other, and he is the complete, balanced, complex man who sees round them all. Thus, while being permanently treacherous to at least two sets of people, he will feel, instead of shame, a continual undercurrent of self-satisfaction.

Finally, if all else fails, you can persuade him, in defiance of conscience, to continue the new acquaintance on the ground that he is, in some unspecified way, doing these people “good” by the mere fact of drinking their cocktails and laughing at their jokes, and that to cease to do so would be “priggish”, “intolerant”, and (of course) “Puritanical”.

Meanwhile you will of course take the obvious precaution of seeing that this new development induces him to spend more than he can afford and to neglect his work and his mother. Her jealousy, and alarm, and his increasing evasiveness or rudeness, will be invaluable for the aggravation of the domestic tension,

Your affectionate uncle
SCREWTAPE*

IOW, OP, while you must not hold yourself above any of humanity as if you were better than they are, if this friend keeps you in any way from fully living your baptism or if you feel at all as if you cannot speak openly about what moral law demands of you both, avoid her. You will do her no good and perhaps harm her by implicitly approving of her open heresy and may do yourself a great deal of harm by developing a greater and greater tolerance for behavior you ought to avoid yourself.
 
Aelred_Minor said:
When I was in college there was a Wiccan girl who was a cantor at the nearest Catholic parish, though I don’t recall her ever showing up for our campus ministry things. Still, it’s unfortunately not as uncommon as one might think.
Click to expand...
:eek:

But why??? Are they trying to sow discord? Are they drawn to the Church like how the demons recognized Jesus? This is puzzling to me. Don’t want to add too many OT posts to the thread but that just struck me as very weird.
 
TheRealJuliane said:
:eek:

But why??? Are they trying to sow discord? Are they drawn to the Church like how the demons recognized Jesus? This is puzzling to me. Don’t want to add too many OT posts to the thread but that just struck me as very weird.
Click to expand...
It’s the same reason that some members of Roman Catholic Womenpriests who have attempted ordination aren’t open about it. They don’t want to leave the Church because they think they’re a legitimate example of what a Catholic can be, if not an improved example, even though they are aware the heirarchy does not see it that way.

Remember that if being an ex-Catholic were a denomination, it would be the 2nd largest denomination in the United States. It is not just that some cafeteria Catholics feel free to smuggle in some selections that are not approved by the management. Do-it-yourself religion is very popular, and many people have childhood Catholic experiences that make them want to include our rituals in their “fusion cuisine”.

Based on my very limited experience, I would venture to say that many practioners of DIY religion consider themselves more spiritually advanced than those who “color within the lines.” They don’t concern themselves with the “purity” of organized religion, including the purity of Roman Catholicism, since many of them consider organized religion to be inherently sterile. They usually choose to “fly under the radar” in order to not upset the uptight (and therefore, spiritually immature) people, and they usually see this choice as harmless, charitable, or even the inevitable cost of their unjustly “persecuted” status within the Church, rather than as duplicitous.

Back to the OP: It puts her in a bad position to be asked to tolerate her friend’s duplicity in silence, allowing the friend to keep up the pretense that she is in agreement with the teachings of the Church.
 
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