What to do when close family or friend leaves church?

[Paperback Writer]

This thread reminds me of an experience I had when I was about 13. My parents took us to Disneyland, Sea World, Tijuana, etc. Somewhere on that trip, they took us to a Catholic church. Not for mass or anything, just to see the inside of the church. As soon as I entered the church, a feeling of peace and love came over me. I had never felt anything like it before or since. When we got back to the car, my dad made the comment that he had never felt a more a dark and oppressive feeling than what he had just experienced inside that church.

I'm not sure what all that means, but I remember it bothered me as a kid that we had such different feelings about the same place.

On a similar note, I had a somewhat similar experience at about the same age. I attended a stake priesthood meeting with my dad. I listened intently to the talks and was reverent. After the final speaker, a couple of men on the stand (probably in the stake presidency) both testified that we were in the presence of angles and they [the angles] also bore witness. And I kept looking around and feeling like I had "missed out" on a once-in-a-lifetime spiritual experience. I was upset because I had listened to all the talks while a friend sitting near by had slept. We both got the same result - no glorious witness, no angelic beings to behold. I kept pestoring my dad about it (where were all the angles?) and the best he could do was utter "you're too young" or some such. Several decades later, I still feel gipped. Wish he would have said, "I dunno, I didn't see the angels either".

Edit: the funny thing is that this [missing out on the angels] comes to mind whenever we rehearse D&C 13 in Deacon's Quorum about twice every month: ...the Priesthood of Aaron, which holds the keys of the ministering of angels...

[RobinFinderson]

Would it be fair to say that the process didn't change all that much for you so much as the desire, want, and expectation of the process?

In other words, once you had a desire to walk away, were the answers you received more in line with your want and desire to do so?

(not sure if I'm making sense in the way I am asking that...)

You aren't being accurate. Once I decided that the kind of answers I was receiving could be just as easily understood as wishful thinking, I started to pray for answers to come in some different way. I wasn't sure what that other way might be. Obviously a Joseph Smith experience would satisfy my need for answers, but I wasn't really expecting that. In fact, I wasn't sure what to expect, because I didn't want to be a 'sign seeker.' I just figured that God would know what to do. I have not had a prayer answered in any way that is recognizable to me since that time. From time to time, as a token of love and respect for my parents, I pray for answers to life's big questions using the pattern of prayer that I was taught in my youth. I'm not sure if this qualifies as a 'mustard seed' worth of faith, but it is all I've got.

[SuperGabers]

I would imagine that that is a very tough place to get to on both sides. How to discuss the church or church related items without one side thinking the other is being inflamatory and the other side thinking the one is being preachy.

Don't worry. We won't feel that way.

[Portland Ute]

This thread reminds me of an experience I had when I was about 13. My parents took us to Disneyland, Sea World, Tijuana, etc. Somewhere on that trip, they took us to a Catholic church. Not for mass or anything, just to see the inside of the church. As soon as I entered the church, a feeling of peace and love came over me. I had never felt anything like it before or since. When we got back to the car, my dad made the comment that he had never felt a more a dark and oppressive feeling than what he had just experienced inside that church.

I'm not sure what all that means, but I remember it bothered me as a kid that we had such different feelings about the same place.

I have had similar experiences and have heard similar comments. They have made me feel as if I am a bit "off."

[oxcoug]

This thread reminds me of an experience I had when I was about 13. My parents took us to Disneyland, Sea World, Tijuana, etc. Somewhere on that trip, they took us to a Catholic church. Not for mass or anything, just to see the inside of the church. As soon as I entered the church, a feeling of peace and love came over me. I had never felt anything like it before or since. When we got back to the car, my dad made the comment that he had never felt a more a dark and oppressive feeling than what he had just experienced inside that church.

I'm not sure what all that means, but I remember it bothered me as a kid that we had such different feelings about the same place.

I hear you but I don't find the two things impossible or even difficult to reconcile. I've often been impressed, in historical Catholic churches, by the realization that the place itself is sanctified in some sense by the pure devotion of tens of thousands of people who worshiped there, and the hundreds of hard-laboring clergy who spent their lives there trying to help people.

That realization also comes with the awareness that the doctrines taught there contained enough spiritual truth that it led thousands to strive to lead good lives.

But you can also walk into a place like that and be aware instead of the institutional crimes of the Catholic Church over the centuries, of the ways it has often exploited its following, of its lethal and papally sanctioned violence against dissenters, and of its spooky, pre-Christian obsession with the physical suffering of Christ, of how its suppression of human sexuality in its clergy has brought about untold abuses and destroyed untold lives....

I think those things co-exist in any of the great cathedrals or ancient abbeys and it's possible, depending on what one is focused on going in, to walk away feeling either.

[Sullyute]

I hear you but I don't find the two things impossible or even difficult to reconcile. I've often been impressed, in historical Catholic churches, by the realization that the place itself is sanctified in some sense by the pure devotion of tens of thousands of people who worshiped there, and the hundreds of hard-laboring clergy who spent their lives there trying to help people.

That realization also comes with the awareness that the doctrines taught there contained enough spiritual truth that it led thousands to strive to lead good lives.

But you can also walk into a place like that and be aware instead of the institutional crimes of the Catholic Church over the centuries, of the ways it has often exploited its following, of its lethal and papally sanctioned violence against dissenters, and of its spooky, pre-Christian obsession with the physical suffering of Christ, of how its suppression of human sexuality in its clergy has brought about untold abuses and destroyed untold lives....

I think those things co-exist in any of the great cathedrals or ancient abbeys and it's possible, depending on what one is focused on going in, to walk away feeling either.

It is kind of funny, I think that you could almost substititute temples for cathedrals and Mormon for Catholic in your post and it would read the same way. I don't think any religious institution with any length of history is free from skeletons in the closet.

*I have definitely felt the spirit in St. Peters and the sistine chapel. Amazing places.