Please bear with me.  I may not be the parent of a 19yo but I'm a guy and have been 19.  From what you said your H is protestant in every respect and not catholic.  Quite frankly in imo he is wrong in every respect, but I'm not perfect.  You REALLY should be talking to a solidly traditional priest on the matter.  You are right to worry about your children.  I will also say this though.  It took me 33 years to be innoculized of my cranial rectitus.  If you don't know what it means, google it.  

I have 22, 20, 10 year old boys and 18, 16 and 15 year old girls. I have also been a teenage boy.

Aall we can do is keep leading them the right way. Yours will be the voice of reason that he will always have in the back of his mind that will keep him from extraordinary stupidity, but he will still make mistakes.

If you think he is using drugs, it is extremely necessary to cut off his funds.

You should be extremely frank with him about what you are thinking and he will be forced to address it with you. You must earn this respect with him because it can not be tolerated that he lies, etc.

Your house, your rules. He must FEEL that and KNOW that. If you make that a serious non-negotiation, he will realize that it is that important and that might just be enough to turn him back around.

He is an "adult" and has to have an understanding that "there is the door" trying to get by on his own if he won't follow your rules won't be easy, especially in this economy , but make it CLEAR to him what the rules are and what the consequences will be.

Be firm. Kids will play everyone against each other forever if they see that THEY have the power.

Your husband will either be with you or not, but you will have done everything that is in your power and that, with your rosary, will be enough. Don't let H's weakness prevent you from doing what you know to be right. Don't second-guess yourself because of H's weakness. Kids sense this like blood in the water!!

It would be awesome if all of these questions of ours could be answered on a forum!!!!

I will pray that your son returns to his Catholic mother.

MrsZ said:

I'm married to a non confrontational, passive, weak ... nominal Catholic

If you will forgive my saying so, you should not be talking about your husband this way.  It sounds like you hold him in utter contempt, and surely he picks up on this.  That cannot be conducive to a peaceful household.

You are clearly a "hard sell" kind of Catholic. I sympathize, so am I, so is my best friend, who feels like he drove his entire family out of the Church by being too strict.  But a little bit of patience and meekness would not hurt the situation at all.  

You can't change people by screaming at them or lording it over them, only by setting a good example, raising them in the faith and teaching them the best you can, and praying for them.  If you have done that, your conscience is clean.  Your husband and son can traipse merrily to hell but you will have done your duty.

Thank you all so much for your answers and advice.  

You're all right about various things you picked up on.  

First thing I want to emphasize, and I think many of you understood this, our son is a good kid (young man).  He has never caused us any trouble.  He's hardworking and responsible ... and until he joined the fire dept., he'd been remarkably free from corrupting influences.  He also is essentially honest, although, obviously,  he is keeping things from us, from me ... and I agree Raoul that in some kind of perverse way, it is a type of respect.  

He goes to Mass with us every Sunday ... except when things like the class he's taking requires a all day Sunday session, or the ski park has training on both Saturday and Sunday starting at 8am and going all day (this drives me crazy ... no one has one ounce of respect for Sunday and going to church at all anymore)

Also, referencing my comment about my H.,  I thought about it again after I posted and knew it wasn't the right thing to say.  I have reached times of absolute feelings of terror in regard to the differences between my H and myself with regard to moral issues and practicing the Faith.  You're right that I'm a hardliner "legalist" and I have been seeing things more clearly this year than ever before.  I have been wrong many, many times ... and yet I can't seem to bring myself not to say something to my H when it comes to this seeming huge disparity in our beliefs.  My H is more prone to laxity and I'm obviously more prone to scrupulosity. Having said that I realize that my H has many excellent qualities, not the least of which is that he's here and he supports his family and he's incredibly loyal.  

Frankly, if anything has an adverse affect on our family over the years, it's been this lack of meeting of minds between my H and myself.  I have not been able to get to that place of trusting his spiritual leadership because of this ... and I know that's not good.  So as others have said, this is not unrelated to how he deals with me and how we end up battling each other instead of addressing the problem.

Only one young man (teenager younger than my son) is Catholic and goes to Mass regularly .. but he moved to a different fire dept last year .. and he's not around anymore.  Not one other firefighter goes to a Protestant church let alone Catholic Mass.  The chiefs are not good examples.  The girls that hang out at the dept are either daughters of the chief, or as lately, one "mascot" firefighter girl who has sexy pictures put up all over the internet.  The daughters are not good girls either ... I won't go into all that.  

But the fact is .. .where are the good girls?  There are no good girls!  We've talked to our son about that .. and I realized recently here we've told him don't do this, don't do that (or I have) and yet what's the alternative plan of action?  Where will he meet a nice, Catholic girl?  We live in a small town, we have one parish church (Novus Ordo) and are 4 hours from the nearest FSSP.  We have no options in that regard.  

I've wanted to leave this area for 10 of the 13 years we've lived here ... and my H would not budge.  Now we couldn't sell our house if we wanted to and we're stuck.  It's very frustrating .. and our daughter has virtually no options for part time job or schooling .. our local community college has had lots of budget cuts and unless you're going into fire fighting or nursing ... there's not much here.  Our daughter joined the N.O. youth group to at least meet some kids her own age that are "Catholic" ... what a joke.  They don't know their Faith at all .. and are unfortunately, seemingly retarded in their mental abilities.  Daughter is frustated and bored ..

 As you can see from my avatar, St. Monica picked me when I converted to Catholicism and she knew what she was doing! I resisted her for a long time for some reason and now in the last year I've turned to ask for her prayers many times.  

My H came home from business trip last night (after we'd talked on the phone) and he said he'd have a talk with son today.  That's all I can hope for.  Thank you all again you've really helped me.  It's so comforting to know that others have been through things like this themselves.

And pray the Rosary. It is efficacious for these problems.

Thank  you Matthew.  I just wanted to make clear that neither I or my H has ever yelled or resorted to strong arm tactics, ever, in raising our children.  We don't yell in this family, or threaten ... I was emotionally distraught yesterday, because I was actually really frightened by the potential implications of what I'd discovered.  But those emotions are not anything to act on and frankly, I'm grateful that I do have my H to balance me out in times like these.  

Also, we pray the Rosary every night, and have for the last 18 months or so.  Our son isn't always here with us ... but when he is, he prays with us.  We also pray before meals (can't seem to get into praying afterward) and I personally have increased daily prayers and going to Confession more often.  As I mentioned, thanks be to God, our son also goes to Mass with most of the time, and tries to go to a Vigil Mass during times when he can't get out of a work or school situation on a Sunday.  So these are all very good things and I am aware and thankful of this.

I agree with you about kicking him out.  As someone else mentioned, it'd be one thing if he were blatantly, under our roof, doing whatever ... but aside from this one image and some other things like comments from some of these girls on their walls on Facebook .. (I suspect they're all playing games using references about boys being their "bfs" and another girl sending my son a song title that refers to a song with filthy lyrics...) I'm not saying these girls aren't available ... just that this kind of talk and behavior is just the absolute norm amongst everyone in the "world."  I can't just assume the office environment is any better ... I hear about affairs in the workplace constantly ... there is no safe haven "out there."

And I also thought that it would be a harsh and terrible thing to do to him to kick him out over something that is very slight, concerning, but slight in the scheme of things . I don't know the background of the photo .. I don't know how "set up" it was ... a dare type thing whatever. But then this girl has this as her one and only available profile pic on FB ... so I don't know what it is, and I probably never will.

Unfortunately there's not much room for error these days when everything is photographed and posted on FB.  

I will continue praying and I think I should step up fasting and almsgiving ... and working hard to be a better example.  My marriage is a good place to start, I think.