Generation Gap

While listening to N.P.R. today I heard a very interesting movie review. In it, the reporter drew parallels between the three movies; The Reader, Doubt, and Gran Torino. The reporter says that the movies characterized the elders as intolerant and unfeeling, but that the new generation is "damaged, compromised, not necessarily a better guide to morality" as well. The exception, the reporter says, is in Gran Torino, (staring Clint Eastwood) where a bitter, racist, old veteran becomes a neighborhood hero when he breaks up a gang fight and inadvertently helps his Chinese immigrant neighbors. "He becomes for them what our society once valued, and what theirs still does; the wise protective elder capable of routing gangs and knowing instinctively what's right." That was what the reporter said anyway.
It made me think about my own evolving relationship with my parents. I have always been on relatively good terms with my parents and I have always valued their advice. Lately thought the true value of it seems to have gone down.
Even before I left for college I could tell things were changing. Their advice became less and less helpful and more and more hurtful. My relationship with my boyfriend for example, became something I felt unable to speak about. My boyfriend is a Catholic and I was raised a Protestant. When my parents realized how serious we were (we've been dating now for a year and a half now :)) they began to worry that I would marry into a mixed religion marriage. They fostered fears of marital problems, religiously confused or (perhaps worse for the alieness of it) Catholic grandchildren. (is alieness a word?) Even worse, I might turn Catholic myself. Their fear reflected itself in small worries about the very nature of our relationship. Whenever I came to them for advice my Mother sowed her worries into me. Then I would go and talk about it with my boyfriend, we might even have a spat over it, but every time I would eventually realize these worries were groundless.
Since I've stopped coming to them for advice so much the problems have stopped but I still miss them.
What I desperately wish I had, is a wise old elder, with a instinctual sense of right and wrong (and a good knowledge of Catholic and Protestant theology), who could talk to me calmly without judgement, and lead me to the truth.
Instead I find I have to defend myself and hide my thoughts from the whole world, and simultaneously find my way in the dark. Is this what it means to be a grown-up?
Where's Clint Eastwood when you need him?