What’s my duty to family members who aren’t practicing the Faith?

This is a related question, and please take it seriously as it's a large issue for me that I would appreciate insight on.

What do you with family members that practice the faith very well with mass attendance and formalities to a T - but live total opposite with regular drinking to drunkenness, lots of swearing, and general mean behavior? Some how they think they are right with God because they do all the rituals. They even think they are doing above average because they do Latin - which is much more pure and reverent.

How would you confront such a thing?

Markie Boy said:

This is a related question, and please take it seriously as it's a large issue for me that I would appreciate insight on.

What do you with family members that practice the faith very well with mass attendance and formalities to a T - but live total opposite with regular drinking to drunkenness, lots of swearing, and general mean behavior? Some how they think they are right with God because they do all the rituals. They even think they are doing above average because they do Latin - which is much more pure and reverent.

How would you confront such a thing?

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This is a problem situation, and not at all uncommon or unusual. The desire of God - His will for all persons He created - is the fullness of loving obedience to Him. We are to love Him with all our God-given human facilities. Jesus was asked:
"Which commandment is the first of all?"

Mrk 12:29 Jesus answered, "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one;
Mrk 12:30 and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.'
Mrk 12:31 The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."

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God doesn't want a lot from us, or of us, He wants all of us. This is because whatever we withhold of us from Him - whatever of us that we keep back, as "ours, not His!" is actually what used to be called "an idol". A false god. And mixtures of two gods, one True and the other false, is called "syncretism" (and is sinful) and is actually impossible to do, although it is attempted very commonly.

So it is painfully common to find people who think of themselves as Christian, and/or Catholic, who see nothing wrong with loving the world and the things of the world - seeing it as "normal". Not "saintly" for sure, but not "evil" either. Figuring God to be very forgiving, many seem to get they can "get by" and not anger God "too much" because, after all, "we're just human."

None of the above answers your question, I know. IMHO, the number one reason why so many think there is no problem with living a lukewarm faith in the Lord along with a "normal" love for this world and the things of this world, is that such a life of contradiction is so very common - "usual." The world is full of people living a life of contradiction, so it is what it is.

Sometimes a believer begins to hurt inside, seeking such hypocrisy in the House of God. That hurt may be sent by God with a very personal message to us, a hint at our own defects.

If we do try to correct the person, who may be relative, or neighbor, or fellow parishioner, or even the pastor, we can most probably be sure of the result: the Cross. So first, examine your own heart very carefully: do you find traces of mercenary love there, where there should be purity - God loved with all and all others loved only in God and with the love of God alone? If we are lacking in the very thing (except in the matter of degree) that we see to a fault in the other, then our tears ought to be for our own faults first, then for the rest of the world. For a "human sacrament" - or a witness - to be efficacious, it must be pure.