Well, it is certainly possible to find a non-Catholic who is far more supportive of your adherence to the faith than the fellow Catholics you have known. If you find someone who is compatible except not being wild about the time and attention you give to the faith or who isn’t positively in favor of raising their children Catholic, you’re asking for problems. No, you need someone who likes you better the more faithful you are and who is a force in favor of growing in your faith.
As far as I am concerned not being a practising Catholic makes someone incompatible with me. I know some people have had happy mixed marriages, but it wouldn’t work for me.
rosejmj:
Well, it is certainly possible to find a non-Catholic who is far more supportive of your adherence to the faith than the fellow Catholics you have known. If you find someone who is compatible except not being wild about the time and attention you give to the faith or who isn’t positively in favor of raising their children Catholic, you’re asking for problems. No, you need someone who likes you better the more faithful you are and who is a force in favor of growing in your faith.
In other words, mere tolerance is not enough. You need a spouse who will be a force in favor of your growth and in favor of the conditions necessary for a home that is a domestic church.
I couldn’t agree more with either of these responses.
Maybe it is God’s Will that you marry someone who is Catholic and might be less compatible with you than that non-Catholic partner, yet is “compatible enough” and you could have a happy marriage together.
Well, when it is a serious Catholic and a lax Catholic, the bishop knows that as long as both are free to marry the couple still has the right to marry. When it is a Catholic and a non-Catholic, the bishop has authority to say whether or not the spiritual welfare of the Catholic and the couple’s children precludes the marriage. Since people intent on marriage have this way of finding a way to get married, I think bishops have opted to make certain everyone has been advised of the obstacles they face rather than forbidding marriage in the Church at the risk of seeing the couple opt to marry and live their lives elsewhere. (I wouldn’t exactly call that a rubber stamp.)
The memo from you to you had better read, “Only date Catholics you’d marry.” When you find a splendid person and they’ve become attached to you and want to make a life with you, you’re going to be choosing between rejecting them (in the hopes that you’ll ever want anyone else) or going ahead and marrying that splendid person. You cannot wait until it is time to pop the question to make a rejection for reasons you’d have to admit to the person you’re hurting that you saw coming a mile off. That is not a decent way to treat someone. Why date them when they are looking for a spouse and you’ve already rejected them? You’re wasting their time and using them, really.
Quite aptly put. In today’s world, people generally don’t fear going to hell, and nobody in the world, other than orthodox Catholics totally faithful to the magisterium, will think twice about a Catholic marrying before a justice of the peace or a non-Catholic minister — everybody will be offering well wishes, and will regard them as “legally married”. Nobody cares whether it is two Catholics, a Catholic and a non-Catholic, or whether one or both spouses are free to marry in the Church. It’s not even unheard of for couples to “keep a low profile” regarding the objective validity of their marriage, and continue to go to communion, sometimes with the priest’s knowledge, sometimes not. Not sure what they do about confession. Some people just don’t go.
I think the way it works a lot of times is that the couple says, “Fine. If you people don’t want us, we’ll go to her church, then.”
Have you ever heard, in the United States anyway, of anyone having their request for dispensation denied?
I’d never let it get to that point in the first place. Get those things out of the way up front, before there develops such an attachment, that it would be hurtful and even traumatic to both parties, to have to break the relationship.
)The reason I don’t call it a rubber stamp is that there is a requirement to explain things to the couple, so that neither the Catholic nor the non-Catholic is mis-informed about the way the Church sees the matter.
Oh, yes, I meant a “you” who is free to marry, yes! I don’t ever suggest that persons not free to marry “date”…which is to say socialize with persons who might get the idea that marriage or some kind of romance is in the cards.I’d never let it get to that point in the first place. Get those things out of the way up front, before there develops such an attachment, that it would be hurtful and even traumatic to both parties, to have to break the relationship.
Better not discuss it beyond that. I have found (even on this forum) that some Catholics are scandalized by one who is in a marriage bond — as I am — even hypothetically entertaining the possibility of marrying someone else, and entertaining this thought while either their spouse is still living, or while they do not have a declaration of nullity yet.
(The latter was on my short list of things to pursue in 2020, but then came up COVID-19, grave illness in my own family not connected to CV and expanded caretaker duties, and the need to create a concentrated homeschool curriculum for my son. I’m too much of an ornery old cuss, set in my ways, to be thinking about marriage anyway — she’d probably end up putting cyanide in my iced tea, and not without some justification!
While I agree with your remarks, in today’s society, use of the word “partner” also serves a purpose. It avoids the high potential of characterizing someone’s partner as spouse when that’s not so. It also avoids referencing a legally married man’s partner as “wife” when that might not be so!
oh yes!
I think it is unlikely.