Catholic marrying a non believer

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I agree with Dan123.

Is the daughter upset with her boyfriend, or is she upset because the parent, who lives at a distance, is pushing this issue when Daughter calls or visits? Is the parent reading parent’s OWN upset into the daughter’s reactions?

If this is a serious, potential-marriage relationship, has the parent spent some time with the couple as a couple, and seen how they get along with respect to things like going to church, talking about Catholicism or Jesus, etc. ? I don’t mean sitting at the dinner table pointing at the boyfriend saying, “So how do YOU feel about raising your children as Catholics?” or otherwise putting someone on the spot, I mean just seeing casually how somebody reacts when it’s Sunday during a family visit and church time rolls around.
 
Dan123 said:
feel this needs to be considered. There IS the possibility the interfaith thing doesn’t bother the daughter as much we her strongly Catholic parent is lead to believe. I don’t know what the relationship is like but it’s possible when the daughter visits home she’s confronted with all this and is, in the moment upset, but that it doesn’t bother her as much outside of that.
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Exactly this. The woman is 27 years old, has successfully completed law school and has a career of her own. Sounds like what she is upset about the most may be that mom is upset. Is she typically a people pleaser in her personal relationships. Honestly, the best advice is to love her and accept her. I wouldn’t delve too deeply in trying to figure all of this out for her. It needs to be her journey. She will figure it out.
 
Tis Bearself and Dan123. I completely understand where you’re coming from. My husband and I have talked about the possibility that maybe she’s conflicted because she doesn’t want to disappoint us. We have been very hands off concerning the relationship and have just tried to get to know them as a couple. We have never brought up religion and the only time it’s discussed is when our daughter has confided in us about her reservations. He is a very nice young man, but comes from a very different upbringing than our family. He skipped out on attending church with us the first weekend we met him but when he visited our home last, he did attend Catholic mass with us. We saw that as a positive step, but at that point did not really know where he stood on faith as we knew it was the elephant in the room and we didn’t want to be pushy about our faith or interrogate him before getting to know more about him and the relationship. My more urgent concern about the seriousness of the relationship just came to light after seeing her this weekend. My son who is a very bold christian, recently met the BF and his sister. He really thought BF was a great guy and they got along well. However, he too feels like us and is concerned for his sister. He gave the BF the Ravi Zacharias book “Jesus among other Gods” to read hoping it would plant a seed. That’s what prompted my daughter’s recent melt down because BF told my her that he’d read it but didn’t think anything was going to change his mind about christianity. I think she’s been hoping all along that he would change but is now realizing that he may not. I know it’s her decision and she is a deliberate, smart girl, but this is also her first long term relationship and I don’t want her to settle if this is something that really bothers her. I also think that she’s probably allowed things to go to far, and that can make it easy to confuse companionship and intimacy with true love.
 
I can see where brother giving BF a Jesus book might cause a meltdown. I wouldn’t have appreciated that, either as the daughter or as the boyfriend. Not appropriate, especially when people are still getting to know each other.

I would say you don’t need an elephant in the room. I would work hard on getting rid of that.
 
Brother asked sister first about the book, so she wasn’t blindsided.
 
How serious are they? Is marriage in prospect? Are they contemplating having kids? Would he allow them to be baptized? Would he go to church for a wedding?
Unless these matters are on the table or even possible the rest is just your daughter’s angst. It is her decision.
St.Monica married a non Christian and many other saints had pagan spouses. Maybe today the world of indulgence makes us think that love, marriage and faith should come easy?
Does she love him? Does she believe she loves him enough to pray for him while he doesn’t get what she is doing? Jesus also said to the friends of the paraleptic - “for your faith he is healed.” Faith of one may save another even if the another is not a person of faith. Husband and wife are one. One’s faith can save the other.
Is faith is the only trouble she has with him?
 
He told her that he thinks she’s the one he’s supposed to spend the rest of his life with. She told us she’s not sure. I haven’t asked her if there’s anything else about him that troubles her, as the faith issue kind of trumps all. All along, my prayer for her was that God would send a good Christian man into her life. Now I pray that God will take his heart of stone and give him a heart of flesh. And while I believe that God can save an unbeliever through those who believe, I pray that she doesn’t make any long term commitment until when and if he accepts Christ as his Lord and Savior.
 
smos said:
Brother asked sister first about the book, so she wasn’t blindsided.
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But it wasn’t your daughter who was blindsided.

Had my Anglican BIL done that with me when I was engaged to my now husband, I wouldn’t have been too impressed myself.
 
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Oh good someone else saw that. Basically “asked the sister if he could blindside her partner so she wouldn’t be blindsided”
 
Seagull said:
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FiveLinden:
I don’t mind religious symbolism around the house
except crucifixes
because to me they show the tortured death of a man.
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A little bit off topic - and oddball !
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It is not off topic at all if you read the entire post.
 
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smos said:
Now I pray that God will take his heart of stone and give him a heart of flesh
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He sounds like a good man. Why do you think he has a heart of stone?

The more I am reading in this thread, the more I am thinking this may be more your issue than hers.
 
My prayer comes from Ezekiel 36 for those who had turned against God, that he would change their hearts of stone and give them a heart of flesh so the holy spirit can dwell in them. It’s a common thing for Christians to pray for non believers as they need a heart change that can only come from God, in order for them to open their blinded eyes to the truth.
 
Yes, going to mass was positive indeed. However, he has yet to read the book and has stated that he doesn’t think anything will change his mind regarding Christianity. He is not baptized. He comes from a divorced family where God was not a part of his upbringing. His family does not believe. I don’t know about grandparents.

My son went to an evangelical bible based college and my daughter to Catholic schools. From viewing both experiences I can say without hesitation that my son’s experience definitely fostered a personal relationship with Jesus whereas my daughter’s, not so much. That’s a topic for another day, but I was disappointed in the “absence” of God in so many of her school functions. It’s no wonder many Catholic college graduates can’t defend their faith.
 
The kid is certainly lucky to have found your daughter.

I’ll give an example:

A few years ago a childhood friend came to my house to spend 1 week with my family. He was a mess. Not baptized, son of divorced parents. Hadn’t gone to mass for his entire adult life. And it was the first time I could actually give an apologetic to all his questions. Everything he said regarding religion was completely wrong, his entire investment in trying to find God was invested in all the wrong places.

He ended up staying 10 days and wreaking havoc on my social and family life. After one year he was going to church every week, sang in the choir, and is still altogether on his way to organizing his own baptism. Knowing him the way I do, he’s catholic for life.
 
smos said:
Yes, going to mass was positive indeed. However, he has yet to read the book and has stated that he doesn’t think anything will change his mind regarding Christianity. He is not baptized. He comes from a divorced family where God was not a part of his upbringing. His family does not believe. I don’t know about grandparents.

My son went to an evangelical bible based college and my daughter to Catholic schools. From viewing both experiences I can say without hesitation that my son’s experience definitely fostered a personal relationship with Jesus whereas my daughter’s, not so much. That’s a topic for another day, but I was disappointed in the “absence” of God in so many of her school functions. It’s no wonder many Catholic college graduates can’t defend their faith.
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No sure why the last sentence. This thread, which is about your daughter’s relationship with a non-believer. I can see it as a concern for you but hope you take cognisant to some of the advice here rather going into Catholic-non-Catholic issue.
 
I was replying to adgloriam’s comment about Catholic college graduates. I did say it was a topic for another day.
 
This is perhaps slightly off-topic but nonetheless:

https://www.chabad.org/library/arti...o-I-react-to-my-daughter-dating-a-non-Jew.htm
Children cannot accept contradictions—that a parent does not live Jewishly but then demands that they marry Jewishly. Ultimately, the more Jewishly you, your family and your daughter live, the less of a likelihood that she will want to marry someone who is not Jewish, because her Jewishness will really matter to her and become integral to her life.
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Substitute Jewish to Catholic, and it’s a similar sort of thread.

You have brought up that she didn’t connect to her faith where you thought she may have, so maybe she isn’t as connected as she could be.

I’m sympathetic, but like I said before, I married a complete non-Believer and it’s working out. 🌷
 
I really do appreciate all your insight and thoughts and prayers. I should tell you all that I found this site 8 years ago when my son started using drugs, starting a 3 year battle with addiction. Through prayers and support of people like those of you on this thread, our family came through those dark days. My son is almost 5 years sober, he has since graduated college, gotten married to a wonderful Christian girl, and is on fire for sharing the gospel news. He has helped countless others through sharing his story and allowing God to work through him as he lives out his faith boldly. I believe his recovery all started here, with prayers and support from wonderful people like you all.
 
smos said:
That’s what prompted my daughter’s recent melt down because BF told my her that he’d read it but didn’t think anything was going to change his mind about christianity.
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The first issue at hand is the “meltdown”.

Why? Because this is causing your daughter grief, preoccupation, uncertainty about the future. What is more: the “meltdown” means your daughter sees no way around the problem or any solution on the horizon. This should be the first thing to address.

We could start by saying this is not an “inter-faith” relationship but a relationship with a “secularized” young man. These are completely different things. What happens is that all the work in terms of faith is yet to be done. What is more, when you are dealing with a “secularized” person they will have had plenty of exposure (throughout their whole lives) to different kinds of anti-religious rhetoric. It could be “anti-catholic” rhetoric (protestant variant), “anti-religion rhetoric” (Marxist variant), “anti-God rhetoric” (atheist variant), “anti-supernatural rhetoric”(science variant), and all other forms that plant seeds of “captious sophism” (these last two words are worth looking up in the dictionary.)

Against every form of “apologetic” a form of “deleterious” argument exists. As if two syllabus of attacks and defenses, for and against the faith, mutually opposed and complementary.

So, throughout his life, the young man has been exposed to a set of “arguments against the faith” for which he wasn’t supplied the adequate “apologetic” tools to defend himself. And boy, can those arguments against the faith be ubiquitous and overwhelming…[I would be willing to bet your daughter was left without a response to many of the arguments the young man produced, more so than your son would have been.]

So this is the work lying ahead of your daughter. As clear-cut as can be. There are no “magic formulas” and no way around it.
 
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