Balancing the desires of your parents with your own spiritual well-being when undergoing conversion is a lot like walking a tightrope: no matter which way you turn, you are going to fall off. I am taking a break in my narrative regarding my journey to Catholicism because this issue has been especially pressing in my personal life as of late, and is a part of my journey that I am still actively figuring out. As such, it seems like good writing fodder. Enjoy!
Honoring our parents is so central a tenet to the Judeo-Christian tradition it is explicitly ordered in the Ten Commandments.[1] In the New Testament Christians are additionally ordered to obey their parents.[2]
However, what do we do when we, as adults with spouses and children of our own, realize that we need to move in a different spiritual direction from our parents? Is it dishonoring them to act against their wishes for us and our families? Are we being disobedient?
Having read my previous posts, you know all about the NICOC, to which I belonged my entire life up until last year. From that, you have probably ascertained that my parents were—and still are—members of that sect. When I told them in February that I was planning to join the Catholic Church it sparked immediate and obvious anger.
I had not made my movement away from the NICOC a secret. I had kept my parents apprised of my spiritual journey as I worked my way through Orthodoxy, Lutheranism, and Catholicism. In fact, when I informed my parents of my decision to join the Church, my father was completely unsurprised. I had kept him so apprised of my thoughts and feelings as I worked out my faith that he anticipated my move to Catholicism before I had made it.
Even still, that did not stop the onslaught my wife and I received from my parents. First, my dad sent me a three page letter via email outlining various protests he had against the Church. In his letter he alluded to my responsibilities as a father and expressed disappointment that I had not consulted with him before making this decision. I then spent three nights formulating what turned into a thirty-three-page response, where I not only addressed each of his concerns in-depth, but outlined my issues with the NICOC and gave him my biggest reasons for becoming Catholic.[3] As I explained to my wife, my reasoning for this was twofold: (1) to ensure my father understood that I took seriously the commitment I was making, and; (2) to show him proper honor and respect as my father by fully giving account for my actions.
A few days later, I received another email—this time two pages long—partially addressing one of my points against Protestantism,[4] raising a different point, and then promising he would send me another email soon discussing two other points in the near future. That email still has not come.
Shortly following that email, I received multiple text messages from him accusing me first of a “contemptuous attitude,” then a lack of “respect,” before finally settling on “disloyalty.” Although in these texts he does not explicitly refer to my decision to become Catholic, it is clear that is the unspoken catalyst fueling this latest frenzy of angst and anger.[5] The biggest proof of this is that at one point he stated I owed him an answer for my decisions as a “man and Christian.”
From my mother I have simply received silence. My wife is several months pregnant, and we have two sons besides, but my mother has appeared uninterested in maintaining communications with them, either. Interestingly, it was actually her whom I called the night I formally announced my decision to become Catholic. After dropping the news, I tried to continue having a conversation with her, but she quickly became one-worded and unresponsive. As a result, and based on my knowledge of how my mother operates with family members she feels disrespected by, the ensuing silence was sadly anticipated.
Given how they have reacted with anger and withdrawal since finding out about my move toward the Catholic Church, and given my father’s claim I owe him an explanation for my decisions as a Christian, it has reasonably caused me to reflect on my responsibilities and duties towards them.
I already listed above that we as children are called to honor and obey our parents. Parents also have obligations in Scripture: they are not to provoke their children to anger, and are commanded to bring them up in the faith.[6] That is not all Scripture tells us about parental relationships, though. We are also told that when we marry, “a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.”[7] Additionally, Jesus tells us that he did not come to bring peace, but instead a “sword,” and that because of his teachings “the father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father.”[8]
This might seem like a mishmash of instructions, but looking at it as a whole, one can decipher how we are to treat our parents as we grow and have children of our own. First, obviously we cannot be completely subject to them any longer, because we have separated from them, per Genesis 2:24. Second, we have to accept that, when it comes to Christ, we must be willing to sacrifice our relationship with our earthly parents to ensure a relationship with our Heavenly Father. Third, we need to recognize that our parents have an obligation to us as well to avoid provocation.
So we know we are not duty-bound to obey our parents after we have separated from them, especially when it comes to matters of faith. The question remains, though, how do we still “honor” them as commanded, if we do not directly obey them?
[1] Exodus 20:12.
[2] Ephesians 6:1.
[3] My intention is to release these letters in the near future as posts in their own right. I need time to make redactions and ensure no personal information is visible in them.
[4] This was surprising. In my letter to him I had briefly touched on why Protestantism held no sway for me in my journey to Catholicism. I did not give this section much thought because the NICOC is expressly not Protestant, either, having arisen from the Restoration movement rather than the Reformation. However, my father interestingly did not defend the NICOC in his letter whatsoever; a possible concession to the fact either that the NICOC position is untenable under scrutiny, or that due to its congregationalist nature far fewer resources exist within it to help in a debate against Catholicism when compared to Protestantism.
[5] Although I am sure people would like me to, in the words of my paralegal, “spill the tea” regarding these texts, I will not be sharing them. One, because there is limited theological value to them since my dad never discusses my conversion explicitly, and two, because there are far too many personal details shared for me to redact them and have them make any sense.
[6] Ephesians 6:4.
[7] Genesis 2:24.
[8] Luke 12:51–53.
The Crossroads Commentary 
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