When Former "Flower Children" Convert - Halfway - or Fall Away

[Apologista]

I seem to encounter them frequently, among my own friends and just here and there. They are children of the 1960s and 70s - peace, love, etc. They are cradle Catholics who may or may not still practice their Catholic Faith, or who don’t agree with the Church on the life issues.

Or they are enthusiastic converts in midlife, but can’t shake the hippie baggage of being liberal or progressive in those areas. They get influenced by old assumptions that Catholics are “judgmental” and they go back to their safe, feel-good platitudes - lines that could’ve been lifted from John Lennon songs. They talk about Love this and Love that - as long as it isn’t a demanding love. As long as it has no difficult sacrifice required, or moral requirements attached.

I know prayer is the best approach. I’ve tried scolding and nagging, and I know that is generally ineffective and I guess if I’ve tried to point out the basics for them to consider, I must step back and let God work in their souls.

I suppose I’m posting this to ask if others have encountered many people like this, and if I’m doing any good at all for God and His Church, and how to be sure my own motives are pure, or that I don’t get impatient or angry with these folks. I even feel like in describing or summarizing these observations I may be stereotyping, and I know it’s important to remember everyone is an individual . . . just need suggestions and feedback perhaps . . . thank you.

 

[jmr_1985]

I’m in a great RCIA with an older Priest (late 80s) leading the group. He loves the Church so much, but one day he brought up the Latin Mass and the “dissenters” who forced the Holy Father to bring it back because they just couldn’t accept Vatican II. He said, “Pope Francis’s attitude towards those people is to just leave them alone, don’t bother them.’” Needless to say I was shocked and very saddened by those comments.

Well, a few weeks later, he was almost reduced to tears, suddenly talking about his Bishop sending him over to talk to a Priest in our diocese who broke from the Church after Vatican II. He said he’d known this Priest since his ordination, and he pleaded with him not to break with the Holy Father. He ended by saying, “That Priest has gone on to heaven now, never reconciled…” He was so upset.

It seems to me there are a lot of wounds with the generation that came right after Vatican II. Whenever I talk with someone in that generation, often these issues come up. They go on about “the bad old days” or go on about some experience they had as a child or about all the money that the Church is hoarding. I try to put myself in their shoes, even though these comments make me sad.

Those Catholics Come Home commercials always make me almost tear up. I always hope that my silent love for the Church will bring them back home or bring them to peace with their Mother.

JMR

 

[Modern_Revert]

My dear sister-in-law is part of that particular generation. The 60s ideals were great but sadly, could not be sustained in the long term. She and her friends are all well-educated, well-employed, interesting people. They are also, for the most part, unmarried and childless…and LONELY. Their philosophies have ensnared them.

 

[Apologista]

Another issue I thought of was women’s ordination - and it also ties in with the push going on in society to “legitimize” same-sex unions and cohabitation unions. It’s the underlying belief that not to do so is to be “unfair” or discriminating.

It’s good to work to eliminate discrimination on the basis of race, religion, national origin, and so on, and this generation did great work in those areas. It’s just that sometimes they don’t know where to draw the line.

I’ve even seen Catholics cheer on women who want to leave the Catholic Church so they can be ordained, and put peer pressure on other Catholics to accept and encourage these people. Or to attack if a Catholic attempts to point out to another Catholic that something they’re doing such as contraception is not in line with Church teaching. I’m not saying all we should spend our time doing is policing one another, but it just seems so wrong that the default position sometimes seems to be encouraging people to be disobedient to the Church.