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I’m in need of some advice about how my wife and I can get on the same page in our spiritual development/advancement.
We are both practicing and serious Catholics, but we come from very different religious upbringings. I was raised in a series of evangelical traditions and became very disenchanted in high-school and collage. Shortly after collage, after much searching, I discovered the truth of and fell in love with the Catholic Church. My wife was baptized as an infant and raised in a Catholic family, but her family did not practice the faith with a great deal of devotion or consistency. She strayed from the faith quite a bit during her collage years, and at the time that we started dating was at a point where she really wanted to return to the Church.
We were each about three years out of college when we met. We were married last summer and are expecting our first child sometime in late July.
Now we both practice the faith consistently in as much as we attend mass weekly and seek to live according to the teachings of the Church, but I feel very much like we each have great difficulty understanding each other’s inner spiritual life. We pray together occasionally, but it’s still a little awkward. At times that I find myself particularly moved by a mass, or a particular practice of some devotion, I have a really difficult time explaining that to her because I’ve never really seen her become emotional over a religious experience.
I find that trying to talk to her about this kind of thing too easily begins to feel like I’m beginning to talk down to her from my spiritual high-horse. I happen to know a lot more about the church than she does just because, frankly, I’ve studied it much more. She likes that about me, but certainly doesn’t like to feel like she’s being talked down to. This creates an impasse because, whereas I want to express my heart to her, I find I can’t really do it without somehow hurting her feelings.
This explanation has gone on much longer than I meant for it to. I’ll cut it off here.
Any advice for a new husband and father trying to start things off right?
We are both practicing and serious Catholics, but we come from very different religious upbringings. I was raised in a series of evangelical traditions and became very disenchanted in high-school and collage. Shortly after collage, after much searching, I discovered the truth of and fell in love with the Catholic Church. My wife was baptized as an infant and raised in a Catholic family, but her family did not practice the faith with a great deal of devotion or consistency. She strayed from the faith quite a bit during her collage years, and at the time that we started dating was at a point where she really wanted to return to the Church.
We were each about three years out of college when we met. We were married last summer and are expecting our first child sometime in late July.
Now we both practice the faith consistently in as much as we attend mass weekly and seek to live according to the teachings of the Church, but I feel very much like we each have great difficulty understanding each other’s inner spiritual life. We pray together occasionally, but it’s still a little awkward. At times that I find myself particularly moved by a mass, or a particular practice of some devotion, I have a really difficult time explaining that to her because I’ve never really seen her become emotional over a religious experience.
I find that trying to talk to her about this kind of thing too easily begins to feel like I’m beginning to talk down to her from my spiritual high-horse. I happen to know a lot more about the church than she does just because, frankly, I’ve studied it much more. She likes that about me, but certainly doesn’t like to feel like she’s being talked down to. This creates an impasse because, whereas I want to express my heart to her, I find I can’t really do it without somehow hurting her feelings.
This explanation has gone on much longer than I meant for it to. I’ll cut it off here.
Any advice for a new husband and father trying to start things off right?
Oh, and don’t forget to pray *for *your wife, too. Offer the whole thing up to God, and beg the Blessed Mother’s intersession, and you will not have to worry about your efforts having results!
a lot of the pre Vatican II. There are some slight differences. I also think some were just regional differences. My family is an old German Catholic farming family from a small rural parish, where my DH has only attended urban Catholic parish.