M
MJDorry
Guest
I have a wonderful, beautiful girlfriend. I knew from the beginning that she was not Catholic, but Protestant, and she knew from the beginning that I was and that I was adamant and fervent in my Catholicity and have an unimpeded desire to marry in the Church. But we agreed on many of the social teachings of Christ and the Church (no contraception, the sanctity of life, chastity, etc…), so I thought there might be a chance for a great relationship.
At first, I was admittedly tentative, but she seemed quite open to my Catholicity and had even professed to having read some books she loved by Catholic authors and clergy prior to our meeting. And when I would communicate why Catholics and Protestants differed, and why, she seemed to understand. I took this as a possible sign that she might be right for me, especially as I am a catechumen perse, and we could enter into RCIA together so that she could at least discern through a more formal education.
Lately, however, she says it’s hard to agree with everything the Church practices, especially those sacraments that Protestants have forsaken, and that she doesn’t have confidence that she’ll ever agree with it. She cites her personal relationship with Jesus Christ as being her foremost priority, and doesn’t seem to take it to heart when I tell her that everything the Church does, it does with its eyes toward a direct relationship (what is more direct than the Eucharist?). Instead, I think where she stumbles is in her understanding of “personal”. She seems, as most Protestants seem, to equivocate a personal relationship as an isolated one, by which what an individual believes Christ is telling them takes primacy over the community (hence how many thousands of denominations now, and how many countless “non-denominational” Christians?), and that the community does not achieve union and community in the Catholic sense of a mystical body, but are simply a community of individual neighbors who get along and agree that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are working through the lives of each.
What bolsters these resistances, I think, is that her mother fell away at a young age in favor of a Protestant charismatic church, and transmitted her own misunderstandings of the Church (the common ones that fallen away Catholics seem to hold onto, regarding Confession, Mary, etc…) to her children.
I want to be patient because my girlfriend has been open in the past, but she also recently told me that although she does appreciate learning about it and does think there’s something personally attractive about it, her motivation in going to mass with me has been partly the hope that her openness to my Catholicism would lead to my openness to Protestantism. Which I think is a fatal approach, and which felt slightly underhanded and ulterior in approach.
Please, pray for her and her conversion and her ability to see the truth of the Church, and pray for me, that I may both retain hope for her conversion, and discern whether ultimately this relationship is right for me or not, even if my GF does come into the Church. The gap of understanding seems to be much wider now than I originally perceived.
At first, I was admittedly tentative, but she seemed quite open to my Catholicity and had even professed to having read some books she loved by Catholic authors and clergy prior to our meeting. And when I would communicate why Catholics and Protestants differed, and why, she seemed to understand. I took this as a possible sign that she might be right for me, especially as I am a catechumen perse, and we could enter into RCIA together so that she could at least discern through a more formal education.
Lately, however, she says it’s hard to agree with everything the Church practices, especially those sacraments that Protestants have forsaken, and that she doesn’t have confidence that she’ll ever agree with it. She cites her personal relationship with Jesus Christ as being her foremost priority, and doesn’t seem to take it to heart when I tell her that everything the Church does, it does with its eyes toward a direct relationship (what is more direct than the Eucharist?). Instead, I think where she stumbles is in her understanding of “personal”. She seems, as most Protestants seem, to equivocate a personal relationship as an isolated one, by which what an individual believes Christ is telling them takes primacy over the community (hence how many thousands of denominations now, and how many countless “non-denominational” Christians?), and that the community does not achieve union and community in the Catholic sense of a mystical body, but are simply a community of individual neighbors who get along and agree that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are working through the lives of each.
What bolsters these resistances, I think, is that her mother fell away at a young age in favor of a Protestant charismatic church, and transmitted her own misunderstandings of the Church (the common ones that fallen away Catholics seem to hold onto, regarding Confession, Mary, etc…) to her children.
I want to be patient because my girlfriend has been open in the past, but she also recently told me that although she does appreciate learning about it and does think there’s something personally attractive about it, her motivation in going to mass with me has been partly the hope that her openness to my Catholicism would lead to my openness to Protestantism. Which I think is a fatal approach, and which felt slightly underhanded and ulterior in approach.
Please, pray for her and her conversion and her ability to see the truth of the Church, and pray for me, that I may both retain hope for her conversion, and discern whether ultimately this relationship is right for me or not, even if my GF does come into the Church. The gap of understanding seems to be much wider now than I originally perceived.
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