Last night I was talking with a good friend of mine, who had told me that her parents were arguing very loudly, and her father was talking about how he wanted to get a divorce.
Knowing that she AT LEAST believes in God (which puts her farther along the road than most), I told her to pray the Rosary. Apparently she did, and after doing 1 decade and finishing off the Rosary (because she didn't know she was supposed to do 5 decades), her parents suddenly stopped fighting. I thought this to be miraculous, if not a very strange coincidence, but then I was met with her doubt. I asked her if she trusted in Our Lady and she said no, and: "If I had done this (x) minutes earlier, nothing would have happened". This is the kind of attitude that she has with God.
Every time I try to discuss the faith with her in any way, she takes it as though I'm trying to show how much more Catholic I am than her. I told her she should pray the Rosary more often, and she answers with "I don't pray as intensely as you". In the past, I've told her she should go to the mass, confess and so on. She makes it quite clear that she doesn't "need" the sacraments and that she has God by her side. When she told me that she prayed to her grandparents in heaven, I told her that she shouldn't do that when she doesn't know if they're in heaven, because it's not at all like praying to saints. She then answers with "they were more religious than you", as if that somehow adds anything to the discussion.
*sigh*
I just don't get it. This girl is so depressed in many ways and I want to help her by actually bringing her to the Church, but she won't listen. She seems to have her own brand of pseudo-spirituality that you CANNOT break through with any kind of reasoning. She's also the kind of teenager that won't listen to any speech longer than 5 minutes, and will not read anything more than 3 paragraphs because it's always too long for her. Sometimes, I wonder if these people don't want to convert to Catholicism, simply because they think it's difficult. As much as I would like to, I cannot condense 2000 years of the one true faith in a couple of sentences.
Please counsel me my fellow CI members. What do you believe I should do besides pray? Maybe I'm just thinking wishfully, but I truly believe that I can get through to her somehow, and then only God will be able to do the rest.