Did Jesus Just Tell You to Stop Listening to Your Parents?

On family loyalty, faith, and the distinction the Church doesn't talk about enough

There's a line in this Sunday's Gospel that tends to get glossed over in homilies. Jesus, mid-sermon, turns to his disciples and says: "Anyone who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me."

Sit with that for a second.

This is the same Jesus who, when asked about the commandments, listed "honour your father and your mother" without hesitation. And yet here he is, telling his followers that family loyalty has a ceiling.

So which is it? Honour your parents — or put Christ first, even at the cost of that relationship?

The answer is both. But unpacking why reveals something the Church rarely says out loud: honouring your parents and obeying them are not the same thing.

Honour is not a blank cheque

The fourth commandment has been used — sometimes weaponised — to keep adult children in line. Stay in the family business. Marry who we approve of. Don't make waves with your faith. But the commandment says honour, not obey. That distinction matters enormously. Honour means to respect, to care for, to hold in high regard. It does not mean unconditional compliance. It does not mean surrendering your conscience.

I say this as a parent of three. And I'll be honest — there are days when I want my children to simply listen to me. I have more experience. I can see further down the road. I know what I'm talking about.

And yet, if I'm being truthful about what I actually want for them, it isn't obedience. It's something harder to cultivate and harder to let go of: the ability to think for themselves, to form their own conscience, and to make choices they can genuinely own — including choices that might one day put them at odds with me.

The tension is real — and the Gospel names it

Thomas Aquinas wrote about what he called ordo amoris — the right ordering of loves. The point was never that family love is wrong. The point was that all loves must be properly ordered. When love of family pulls you away from who God is calling you to be, something has gone out of order.

For a generation navigating faith in households that range from indifferent to openly hostile, this is not abstract theology. It is Tuesday evening at the dinner table. Maybe your family thinks your faith is a phase. Maybe they're uncomfortable with the choices your conscience is leading you toward — a vocation, a relationship, a moral stance. Jesus does not pretend this tension doesn't exist. He names it directly. Following him will sometimes put you at odds with the people you love most.

What good Catholic parenting actually looks like

Here's the uncomfortable implication for those of us raising children in the faith: if we want our kids to grow up to be genuinely good Catholics, we have to raise them to be capable of disagreeing with us.

Faith that holds only because a child never questioned it is not really faith. It's habit. What we want — what the Gospel seems to ask of us — is children who have wrestled with their beliefs, tested them against real life, and chosen them freely. Even if that wrestling takes them somewhere we didn't expect.

That means creating homes where questions are welcome. Where doubt isn't treated as failure. Where a child can push back on mum or dad and still feel loved. Not because authority doesn't matter — it does — but because the goal was never compliance. The goal was a conscience formed well enough to one day stand on its own.

Honour your father and your mother. Yes. And raise children brave enough to honour God first — even when that means respectfully, lovingly, telling you no.

That might be the most Catholic thing you ever teach them.