Does anyone think a dispensation is turning your back on your faith?

[JohnnyArcade]

Thanks for the advice and prayers, all. I have a lot of thinking and praying to do, obviously. The girl is wonderful, and shares my values and morals, but I just fear that if she continues to slide within marriage, I am setting myself up for an experience that will be much less fulfilling and more difficult than it needs to be. It likely won’t happen, but that is a chance I may not be willing to take.

 

[amcalabrese]

I received a dispensation to marry my Lutheran wife. When I proposed, the next words out of my mouth were that we had to be married in the Catholic Church and that our children had to be baptised AND raised Catholic (she was baptised Catholic by her father, yet raised Lutheran by her mother).

I think it depends on the people how it works. She rarely attends services and while I admit I am not as churchgoing as I want and should be, she has no problem with me taking our son to church.

 

[Joe_Kelley]

Re “I would never waiver on raising the children Catholic, but I worry that what if she decided she DIDN’T want to be come Catholic once we were married?”

While it would be good for her to take enough instruction to know what the Catholic Church teaches, she should become Catholic only if she is convinced of the truth of the Catholic Faith. One should not become Catholic to please another, to keep family unity in worship or any other external reason.

In J. R. R. Tolkein’s biography it is noted that his wife became Catholic as a condition of their marriage. While they were happily married, she never completely committed to Catholicism, and it left a bit of a rift between them. I have seen similar problems in my own family.

This is a problem in RCIA, especially with some of our immigrant cultures. It is difficult to ascertain that people fully understand the Faith and are not just going through the motions to satisfy their future in-laws.