See, this would be fine with me. And it was something my husband and I agreed on while I was pregnant, that if our kid ever decided to practice a religion of some sort we would support that even if we didn’t believe in it personally. But we both, up until things changed, didn’t believe in foisting religion on children until they were old enough to make an appropriate decision for themselves. Obviously, now, things are different, and he has explained that he’s sort of bound to try to raise our kids Catholic and that baptism is a part of that, but I still don’t really like the idea, even if I don’t believe anything substantial happens other than my son getting wet.
The thing is, if a child isn’t presented with any religious background, they how will they come to it themselves?
If I might add a bit of (name removed by moderator)ut - when you decided these things about your children, neither of you had a faith. You still see what your husband is doing as ‘practicing a religion’ - an action one takes, I guess - a life choice. But for him, he has experienced a life-changing conversion of heart. He is not merely practicing a religion, but is living out his faith. There is a subtle difference. He has been overcome by what he sees as the Truth - the truth about the meaning of life and he has been given a guide for how to live. He has seen how the teachings of the Church are in keeping with that Truth that he has discovered. He has also encountered the living Christ and experienced His love. That’s something that he is going to want to share with his children and with you - out of love for you.
That said, he has to honor and respect your views as his wife and mother of his child.
My situation is a bit different, but somewhat similar. I married a baptized non-believer, who I always held out hope would eventually come to know Christ. He never opposed baptizing the kids or raising them as Christians, though once we were married, his ‘I don’t not believe’ turned to ‘I don’t believe’. Long story short, we are divorced and when I entered the Church last year, I wanted to educate the kids in the Catholic faith. He was adamantly opposed, and tries to indoctrinate the kids against Catholicism. This surely doesn’t make the kids open to my discussions about faith. In the very beginning, they would say to me, ‘You can’t make me believe anything.’ I don’t want to ‘make them’ believe anything.
It was very hard, at first, to come to terms with the fact that my children will not be confirmed or receive the Sacraments unless and until they are adults and choose to go through the process themselves. But, the best I can do right now is to share my faith with them, to take them to church when I can, and to expose them to other Christian ministries when possible. Other than that, I pray. I pray every day for their conversion. Your husband may have to do the same. (Though I will say that the fact that the children are baptized is of much comfort to me.)
But what I was going to suggest, and forgot to mention - what If you present a variety of different faiths to the children? (Including Catholicism, of course) It can’t hurt to have that information so that, one day, when they are old enough to make their own decisions, they will have a basis of knowledge from which to draw.
Well, for Catholicism, I just generally disagree with a lot of the positions the church takes on things like gay marriage, abortion, women, and so on and Christianity has always seemed like a really weird system to me, but that could be because I wasn’t raised with it. For religion in general, I could go on about why it bothers me, but the short version is just that it seems to be one more thing people use to berate, control, and abuse each other. The only thing they all seem to agree on it is that everyone else is wrong and that if you don’t do things their specific way, bad things will happen to you. That’s sort of what worries me most about my husband going back to the church, because my parents were cool with their religious differences until I came along and then suddenly they both wanted to raise me in their respective traditions and they fought about it a lot when I was kid. I don’t want something similar to happen with my kid, but I don’t want to have to pretend like I agree with my husband’s religion for the sake of our son either.
Oddly enough, someone above suggested Rome Sweet Home for reading material and my husband came home with a copy of it yesterday, so I will probably read that and go from there.
I talked to him about it a bit last night and I think we’ve reached a temporary compromise, though. We’ll make an appointment to talk to his priest about validating the marriage, but no baptism for the foreseeable future and he has to tell his parents to bud out on that score. Also, we’ll make a trial run to Mass next week. If it’s not too weird or too difficult to manage with our son and if he stops pestering me about it during the week, then we’ll go as a family at least a couple times a month and in exchange he’ll babysit for a couple hours every other week so I can get out of the house by myself for a little bit. As for the contraception thing, I’m going to look into NFP, but I’m skeptical. It sounds like a lot of work to keep up with.
It sounds like you have a very strong marriage, and I think you will be able to work through this. I will pray for you.
