On The Patrick Madrid Show, a caller named Joe opens up about a challenge many Catholic parents face today: how to talk about faith and morality with a child who’s grown up in a very different cultural world. Joe’s daughter is a senior at a prestigious university – brilliant, thoughtful, and passionate – but also deeply shaped by the progressive campus mindset. When Joe shares one of Patrick’s earlier shows about gender and faith, she pushed back hard. Still, Joe wants to keep the conversation going and to do it with love.

Patrick reminds Joe that it’s no surprise his daughter sees things differently. After all, she’s spent years in an environment where secular and ideological views dominate. The goal, Patrick says, isn’t to “win” an argument – it’s to stay connected and let truth unfold over time.

Joe shares that one of his daughter’s main objections comes from scripture itself. She says Christians “cherry-pick” what they follow, pointing to Old Testament passages about not eating shellfish, stoning adulterers, and slaves obeying masters. She wonders why believers still quote some Bible verses to make moral points but ignore others. Patrick explains that many of those passages come from the Mosaic ceremonial law, which governed ancient Israel’s ritual and civic life – but was fulfilled and ended in the New Covenant through Jesus. Christians still follow the moral law, but not the ritual purity codes that no longer apply.

He suggests a resource for Joe – Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties by Gleason Archer – a helpful guide to understanding those apparent contradictions in scripture. But Patrick also emphasizes that information alone won’t change hearts. It takes prayer, patience, and genuine curiosity about where the other person is coming from.

When Joe mentions that his daughter admires Justice Sonia Sotomayor for her ability to respect opposing views, Patrick says this means she’s starting to see that disagreement doesn’t have to destroy relationships and that civil dialogue can lead to truth.

Patrick encourages Joe to ask calm, open-ended questions like:

- “Why does hearing a different view make you angry?”

- “Can we discuss this without getting angry?”

Patrick reminds him that anger often hides uncertainty and that as young adults mature, they often rethink positions they once defended fiercely. “She may look back one day,” Patrick says, “and realize how much she’s grown.”

The takeaway? Parents don’t have to convince their kids in one conversation. What matters most is keeping that bridge of trust strong enough for truth to cross.

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