How do I raise a child Catholic when my husband won't let me?

[Kinetica]

I am a proud mother of a beautiful boy whom I would love to raise Catholic, but unfortunately my husband, whom I love and respect, is Baptist and will not allow me to baptize our son Catholic and raise him in the faith. Sad to say, we have had many discussions about this and it has gone nowhere.

Basically, I made a vow to God when I married my husband to love and cherish him forever. I also made another vow to raise our children in the faith. Am I letting God down? And is this a sin not to be able to do my Catholic duties?

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

Forgive me, but I am going to have to be frank with you.

You took a chance when you chose to marry a non-Catholic that your husband would allow you to raise the children Catholic. This is one reason why the Catholic Church strongly discourages interfaith marriages (while providing for their validity if the couple insists on marrying each other). Marriage is not an official stamp on a romance. It is a vocation that has as its purpose to form the couple in sanctity and to enable them to raise their children to be saints.

Now, if you married with the permission of the Church, then your husband was informed at the time of the marriage of your responsibility to remain Catholic and to do your best to raise the children Catholic. As a matter of respect for the consciences of non-Catholics, the Church no longer requires non-Catholics to sign a promise that the children will be raised Catholic. But the negative effect of this is that many non-Catholics, such as your husband, may honestly feel that they never committed to allowing their children to be raised Catholic. (A signature on a document is a more tangible sign of commitment than a verbal indication that one understands someone else’s responsibilities.)

Certainly, if you went into marriage with your husband with the understanding that you would be allowed to raise the children Catholic, then he should respect the agreement he made out of love for you and out of personal integrity. My guess though is that this “understanding,” if it existed, was not explicitly hammered out and agreed to. If so, then the consequence of that lack of foresight on your part is that you cannot now require your husband to allow you to raise your son Catholic. Of course, the flip side of that is that he cannot require you to allow the child to be raised Baptist.

Where this leaves your son though is with the possibility of no religious faith at all (another reason why the Church strongly discourages interfaith marriage). I strongly recommend that you convince your husband of the need for marital counseling to facilitate discussion of your son’s religious upbringing, if for no other reason than to ensure that some agreement is reached on how your son (and any future children) will be formed religiously. Referrals to marriage counselors can be obtained from the Pastoral Solutions Institute and from CatholicTherapists.com.