Q. Are not some parents unjust towards children that wish to enter the religious state?
A. Yes; unfortunately some parents are both unjust and unreasonable with their children in this matter.
Q. How is this unjust and unreasonable conduct of parents more clearly shown?
A. When there is question of marriage with a rich, or an influential person, many parents not only make no objection, but even urge the matter, whether such a marriage is the will of God or not; and yet when the children are evidently called by Almighty God to higher and holier states—to become spouses of Jesus Christ—these same parents object, and place obstacles in the path of their children.
Many parents, having allowed their own faith to become deadened by contact with the world, lose sight of the snares and pitfalls before the feet of their children.
Q. What do the Fathers of the Church say of parents who oppose children that wish to enter the religious state?
A. Speaking of religious vocations, St. Thomas says: "Frequently our friends according to the flesh are opposed to our spiritual good."
St. Liguori says: "Parents often prefer to see their children damned with themselves rather than to see them saved away from them."
On this subject St. Bernard exclaims: "O hard-hearted father! O cruel mother! Unfeeling souls! You are not parents, you are murderers; for you grieve to see your son saved, and you rejoice at the sight of his eternal perdition."
This is one of the ways in which, as Our Lord tells us: "A man's enemies shall be they of his own household." Hence the touching admonition of the Holy Ghost is particularly applicable to a person called to the religious state: "Hearken, O daughter, and see, and incline thine ear; and forget thy people and thy father's house."
Again, our blessed Lord says: "He that loveth father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me."
Q. Do parents commit sin in preventing their children from entering the religious state?
A. If children themselves incur imminent danger of losing their souls by neglecting a divine vocation, parents that prevent a vocation to the religious state incur the danger of damning both themselves and their children. Such parents will have to answer also for the eternal loss of all those souls that their children would have saved in the religious state.
Q. What is the exact teaching of theology with regard to parents preventing their children from entering the religious state?
A. St. Liguori gives the following, not only as his doctrine, but as the teaching of theologians in general: "Parents who, without a just and certain cause, prevent their children from entering the religious state cannot be excused from mortal sin; and not only parents, but any one who prevents another from following a religious vocation, sins mortally."