Have you ever gone to a non Catholic church service?

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I recently went to my cousins confirmation, who is Lutheran. Service seemed very similar to a Catholic one.

While we were dating I went with my future wife to her father’s church to see her brother get baptised. Her whole dad’s side is southern Baptist. That was a strange experience. Alot of guitars and even a drum set on stage. Probably 90% of the people holding their own Bible during the service. Very loud.

Also went to a “non-denominational” service in college because my future wifes friend worked there and we were invited. That was definitely weird. In a little office style room, and people walked up to get tiny plastic cups of grape juice and what looked like rice crispies which didn’t claim to be consecrated, but her friend said were there for people “who felt more comfortable eating something like that during worship” 😬 yikes. I definitely didn’t partake.

I made it very clear that once the future wife became the wife we wouldn’t be going to things like that.
 
Yes, my grandparents were Presbyterian, and I occasionally went to hear the choir when they were alive.
 
Honestly I’ve always wanted to see what an orthodox Jewish Sabbath service is like. But I’ve never lived anywhere with a big enough Jewish population where a temple would be within reasonable driving distance.
 
My wife quite enjoys going to my church the few times a year we’re able to go. We always are able to walk out and have a discussion about the sermon that day.
 
nfinke said:
I made it very clear that once the future wife became the wife we wouldn’t be going to things like that.
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Wow…did I read that right? You told your wife (fiance) how/where she had to worship after you got married?
 
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I have been to many many different kinds of services in different religious settings. There is good in all of them. There are also aspects that I find undesirable. I enjoy taking in the culture and the spirituality.
 
I made it clear that once we got married we wouldn’t be going to non-denominational services.

Her father’s family is all Baptist, but her mother was/is a Catholic, though she wasn’t raised Catholic outside of the basics (baptism).

But yeah seeing as we were planning on having kids very early, and she was already a nominal Catholic, I don’t see anything wrong with saying “if we’re going to church, we need to be going to a Catholic church”. If she had said in response she didn’t want to raise our kids Catholic, I would have started looking for a new potential wife. (We were only dating back then, not engaged).
 
I am amazed that a woman lets a man dictate this stuff to her. I really can’t comprehend it. And you state it with such a sense of pride, it seems.

My hope for my spouse has always been that he find spiritual peace, where ever his path leads.
 
nfinke said:
she was already a nominal Catholic
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As in she was baptized Catholic and is Catholic or just understands it?

As someone who isn’t Catholic (non-denominational) if my wife had told me I couldn’t attend my church services and could only go to Catholic church…probably the same…I would have needed to start looking elsewhere, but she never would have done so. I was pretty taken back by your statement.
 
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She didn’t “let me dictate” anything to her. It wasn’t like she was dying to go to these things. But as a father i have a right to decide what religion I want my children raised in, as much as their mother would/does. Obviously I was going to continue in my faith regardless, and it was important to me that my children not be tugged in two directions with parents that practiced different faiths. I explained to her, while we were dating, that when I had kids I would be raising them in the Church. She agreed that made sense, and responded by getting more involved in the faith herself than she had been before. I didn’t force her into anything. I said myself if she wasnt willing to raise children in the faith I would have chosen to marry someone else.

So it seems you either don’t understand what I’m saying, or that you can’t comprehend that a Catholic man might take a woman’s religious beliefs into consideration before proposing. I’m not sure why that would be hard to wrap your head around.
 
I went to a Baptist church a few times in the country, and it was funny how I was in the PNW but it seemed like I was in the South. There was this man who kept screaming in a southern accent Alleluia! Amen! Lord Have Mercy! It seemed like something very stereotypical
 
Yep, non-denominational and presbyterian. I am a current Anglican and will be converting to Catholicism. Don’t expect much from a non-Catholic service, they always leave me empty.
 
She was baptized, but hadn’t gone to church in a long time. It wasn’t like she had been going to these non-denominational things regularly and I said “by royal decree this must end”. I said, after a one-time try at a service, if we’re going to do this and have kids, these aren’t the kind of things were going to be taking them to. She was free to put her foot down, but she agreed with me.
 
I live near my metro areas name bearing city so I could go, if I got a car, bus pass, or maybe even a bike. Also, like an hour walk away is a mosque near a convent. I’ve always wanted to check out the two.
 
nfinke said:
So it seems you either don’t understand what I’m saying, or that you can’t comprehend that a Catholic man might take a woman’s religious beliefs into consideration before proposing. I’m not sure why that would be hard to wrap your head around.
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I understand just fine. If your wife’s family is all Baptist, your statement conveyed that you dictated if she married you, she would not be going to anything in a Baptist church. Wild horses wouldn’t keep me from weddings, funerals, choir performances, or anything else in a Church other than the one I belonged to, if it was important to my family. My statement is that I can’t understand how a woman would take orders from a man that way. I didn’t say anything about how you decide which faith in which to raise your children.

Perhaps you didn’t explain your situation properly. The thread is about people attending services in non-Catholic churches. It isn’t about choosing a faith for your family.
 
JMMJ said:
My statement is that I can’t understand how a woman would take orders from a man that way.
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You seem to not want to understand what @nfinke explained. He did not state that about his wife’s father’s church, just the non-denominational church they attended once. It’s all there in his posts.
 
Yeah it was mostly what seemed to me a weird mockery of the Eucharist that turned me off from that. I would never make her break ties with her father’s family. Her uncle is a Baptist preacher. We get along with him very well and he read scripture at our wedding mass.
 
The methodist churchs I have been to were interesting. I wasn’t expecting them to be quite so stark. Admittedly, my sample size is small.
 
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