I've fallen for a Jewish girl and I'm feeling very conflicted

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MrGallagher88

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I was raised in a traditional Irish Catholic household. I admit to not following Catholic teaching 100%. However, I have always made an effort to respect my Catholic upbringing and deep down figured I’d meet a Catholic girl some day and settle down like all my other relatives.

I work in a gym and this summer the most beautiful girl I have ever seen started coming in. I asked her out to dinner, she said yes and we’ve been inseparable ever since. I have never felt like this about any girl and feel like the luckiest man in the world. The problem is she’s Jewish. She told me on our first date and I said it wasn’t an issue at all. And it wasn’t at the time. Now that our relationship is progressing I’m wondering about the implications of our different backgrounds.

Silly thoughts are keeping me awake at night: would she go to ‘our’ heaven?, could we be buried together, would God accept us as a married couple. That’s not to mention how my family might react. I’ve briefly mentioned to my mother over the phone that I’m seeing somebody. I’ve never introduced my family to a girl before so I don’t think my mother took me too seriously but I’m going home for Christmas soon and I want to tell my family I’m just nervous that they won’t approve and don’t want to upset anyone at Christmas. Everyone else is married to another Irish-Catholic so I do not know how they would react. They have made slightly derogatory comments about Protestants over the years so a Jew might be just too much of a bomb to drop.

My girlfriends family are ‘culturally’ Jewish according to her. They live in a very Jewish neighborhood and her parents are involved with Jewish groups and charities but they don’t go to temple. Her ex-husband (they were married less than a year) was not Jewish so her parents don’t have issues with a gentile spouse. They do want to meet me before giving us their blessing which I understand and I hope to meet them soon. I’ve spoken to her parents on the phone and they’ve been very accepting. I should note that my girl is also culturally Jewish and she’s very proud of her background. She’s made it clear that she would never convert and she wants to share her culture with me. So far she’s made me Jewish food and taught me some Yiddish. Nothing religious or that I wasn’t okay with.

In some ways I feel in over my head. I’ve been googling Jewish beliefs and many of them are far from what I was raised to believe. I need some (name removed by moderator)ut from other Catholics. Do you think a Jewish/Catholic marriage could be compatible in the long run. All my friends tell me Id be a fool to let her go and that I need to wife her up before some other guy does. We are so compatible in every way except our religious backgrounds. She’s incredibly beautiful and I’ve never been happier but this would all have been so much easier if she had been Catholic too.
 
Well, the trouble will start with the addition of children. How will they be raised? What are the expectations of being Catholic versus Jewish? How will you handle that? Either Jesus is God or he isn’t.

Also many Catholics who aren’t practicing, which it seems you are not at the moment, suddenly reevaluate their situation when marriage or kids come in the picture and begin seriously practicing their faith.

She has a prior marriage, so that complicates getting married validly. And have you discussed getting married in a Catholic or Jewish ceremony? Working with a Catholic pastor for marriage prep?

So do not avoid the difficult conversations you must have to determine whether the two of you can go forward toward marriage. This is a very difficult path for two people who sincerely believe their ow faith. Because Judaism and Christianity, in the end, are not compatible. And things that seem trivial now will likely not be trivial when you mix in family and children.

Perhaps counseling with the two of you and your pastor could help you determine what areas of difficulty lie ahead and whether or not you can overcome them.
 
Will she consent to allowing the kids to be raised Catholic? If not I’d walk. Even if she does, are you cool with being 100% responsible for the kids’ spiritual upbringing? Proceed with extreme caution, it may save you a lot of heartache later. And don’t put her or anyone on a pedestal. Someone else already wifed her up once, and it didn’t work out. I’m sure she is a lovely lady, but this is the rest of your life. You’d better make sure you can come to agreement on the big issues before you say I do.
 
Let’s put aside for a moment the issues of mixed marriages etc…

This woman was previously married? As a Catholic, you are not free to marry a divorced woman. Your family will (and should) not approve, and you will not be permitted to marry in a Catholic church (unless there is an annulment of course), or be given permission by the church to marry elsewhere.

Sorry to be harsh, but from a Catholic perspective you are dating a married woman - which is the sin of adultery. I’d be very surprised if your Irish-Catholic family were not scandalised.

Step 1 - work out if she is free to marry. Your other concerns are entirely secondary to this one.
 
I don’t see the need to drop the relationship asap. Take things slow and have the important conversations about both of your expectations of your future. I think she deserves to meet your family since you are meeting hers.
Mixed marriages can work, its just better to evaluate things full-circle together first.
 
Thank you for your thoughts.

We have no intentions of having a religious wedding. She does not want to convert to Catholicism and I don’t want to convert either so we would be happy with a marriage in our local courthouse.

My girlfriend’s previous marriage lasted 3 months. He is an Episcopalian and it was a civil ceremony. Her ex-husband was a drug addict who had been able to hide the habit until they married and lived together. He has since been to rehab and is now clean and remarried with a baby daughter. I have met the man and have no issue with their marriage.
 
MrGallagher88 said:
Thanks you for your thoughts.

We have no intentions of having a religious wedding. She does not want to convert to Catholicism and I don’t want to convert either so we would be happy with a marriage in our local courthouse.

My girlfriend’s previous marriage lasted 3 months. He is an Episcopalian and it was a civil ceremony. Her ex-husband was a drug addict who had been able to hide the habit until they married and lived together. He has since been to rehab and is now clean and remarried with a baby daughter. I have met the man and have no issue with their marriage.
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If you don’t plan on living a Catholic lifestyle why are you here? If it’s simply to get tips on how to handle breaking it to your family can’t help you there. I can’t help but think you have some sense of dark foreboding about the future, and frankly you should. Things you think don’t matter when you are young, infatuated, and (apologies) horny have a way of turning into problems down the road. The divorce rate isn’t over 50% for nothing. Good luck.
 
MrGallagher88 said:
We have no intentions of having a religious wedding. She does not want to convert to Catholicism and I don’t want to convert either so we would be happy with a marriage in our local courthouse.
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Do you realise that a Catholic who does what you suggest is consider to be entering an invalid marriage? That may not matter to you, but you need to be made aware of it.

You have no intentions of a religious wedding…or seemingly of leading a Catholic lifestyle…but you are deeply concerned about her being Jewish and your families reactions? Why? If you are your own man, and chose not to live according to your families religious traditions, then why are you concerned? Why even mention that she’s Jewish?

And, as per CthgeDelendaEst’s question, why exactly are you here?
 
I have always considered myself Catholic. There is no way for us to marry in the church and have a valid marriage. If I want to marry my girl it will have to be a civil ceremony.

That doesn’t change my own personal beliefs, most of which still align with the Catholic faith.

I guess I was looking to see if any other posters here had been able to have a successful mixed marriage and how they had done it. I couldn’t find any forums dealing with interfaith marriages.
 
MrGallagher88 said:
I have always considered myself Catholic. There is no way for us to marry in the church and have a valid marriage. If I want to marry my girl it will have to be a civil ceremony.

That doesn’t change my own personal beliefs, most of which still align with the Catholic faith.

I guess I was looking to see if any other posters here had been able to have a successful mixed marriage and how they had done it. I couldn’t find any forums dealing with interfaith marriages.
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You can get married in a Catholic Church, read this. Pay close attention to #11.
w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/motu_proprio/documents/hf_p-vi_motu-proprio_19700331_matrimonia-mixta.html
 
MrGallagher88 said:
There is no way for us to marry in the church and have a valid marriage.
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That is not accurate. You can have a valid marriage whether you marry in the Catholic Church or a civil or Jewish ceremony. Of course, it takes effort on both of your parts to do so.
MrGallagher88 said:
That doesn’t change my own personal beliefs, most of which still align with the Catholic faith.
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Based on what you’ve written here, it doesn’t really seem so.
MrGallagher88 said:
I guess I was looking to see if any other posters here had been able to have a successful mixed marriage and how they had done it. I couldn’t find any forums dealing with interfaith marriages.
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There are literally thousands of threads on mixed marriage on CAF and nearly all of them express regret and discord in the marriage, and in many cases total breakdown, even if it did not surface for several years. Again, usually after kids are in the mix because people did not talk seriously, made assumptions, or just hid the head in the sand and believed it would somehow “all work out”.

It takes a very realistic and mature couple to make a mixed marriage work.
 
HungerNThirst4R said:
You can get married in a Catholic Church, read this. Pay close attention to #11.
w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/motu_proprio/documents/hf_p-vi_motu-proprio_19700331_matrimonia-mixta.html
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Yes a Catholic can have a valid mixed-marriage…but not with somone who has previously been married…that is the problem here.

If the OP was interested in a valid Catholic marriage, he could explore having the girl’s previous marriage declared null. Even though she is not Catholic, I do believe this is a possibility to explore, and given the marriage’s very short duration this may be a distinct possibility. But the OP does not seem interested in that.
 
1ke said:
There are literally thousands of threads on mixed marriage on CAF and nearly all of them express regret and discord in the marriage, and in many cases total breakdown, even if it did not surface for several years. Again, usually after kids are in the mix because people did not talk seriously, made assumptions, or just hid the head in the sand and believed it would somehow “all work out”.
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Most of the mixed marriages discussed here involve one or both people who take their faith seriously (whether they are the Catholic or non-Catholic spouse), and wish to involve their children in it. The marriage the OP’s is considering seems nothing more than a common secular marriage. But certainly, if either the Catholic or Jewish faith is to play a role in family life, there will be inevitable complications.
 
I’ve read those links but I believe her divorce doesn’t make them options for us.
 
I am not Catholic, so I will respectfully let others advise you on that score.

As the Jewish half of a Jewish-Catholic marriage, I can tell you something about my experience, noting however that it is only my experience and that really every mixed marriage that I know of is completely different. My uncle and aunt are also a Jewish-Catholic marriage, and they made some very different cultural/religious choices, and they’re also a happy family and my three young adult cousins are just fine. I’d like to echo what some people here have said and say that you and your girl should have a serious conversation of children. That really tends to be the greatest and most potentially painful issue people come across, and one that you might not be thinking about right now. I know I didn’t think about that at all when I first met my now husband, I was just enjoying learning about another culture and traditions, and it took a while for me to really get the fact that the religious tradition(s) with which we would raise our children was incredibly important for me and potentially a deal breaker. It seems all well and good because you’re both comfortable in your identities now and can share those identities without compromising each others identities, but children can change that.

I’d also say that you may not realize yet how strongly cultural Jewish identity is bound up with religious identity. Just because your girl and her family don’t go to temple doesn’t mean they’re not strongly attached to Judaism and have the desire to raise any children as Jews. (My family also don’t belong to a temple, and my parents welcomed my husband and love him dearly, but you bet I got the question of what we were going to do about the kids!) This may not be true for your girlfriend and her family, but just know that it’s much harder to separate the cultural from the religious in Jewish tradition than it can be in other traditions.

It may also be worth noting that because your girlfriend is Jewish, any kids she has will automatically be considered Jews by most, if not all, of the Jewish community no matter how you raise them.

Talk to your girlfriend and see if you’re on the same page, and really try to envision what your future might be like. Mixed marriage can sometimes be really lonely, but it can be really fun too, and it can work - if you’re both on the same page and are willing to listen to each other and find the path that really work for you.

And make sure that you both really say what you want and what you feel. Lay it all out. The absolute worst is if a couple come to an agreement before marriage but then after marriage or after the birth of a child one spouse has a change of heart and feels compelled, for one reason or another, to change that agreement. That is really devastating.

Best of luck with whatever you decide.
 
You mention that you consider yourself Catholic and that she and her family are culturally Jewish, but it is unclear if you consider yourself more a culturally Catholic or a practicing Catholic. In other words it isn’t clear if you are attending Mass every week and Holy Days and if you are regularly receiving the sacraments.

This is important since by entering and invalid marriage you would be cutting yourself off from the sacraments. If you marry outside the Church without her first receiving an annulment and a dispensation to marry a non-Christian you would be committing a gravely sinful act. That cuts you off from the Eucharist and if you don’t repent it cuts you off from receiving reconciliation.

Now let’s assume that she receives an annulment and you get the appropriate dispensation to marry outside the Church you are still required to affirm that you will do all you can to raise the children in the Catholic faith. You both also have to intend that the marriage be permanent and allow for the possibility of children. If either of you have a permanent intention against children that would make the marriage invalid. Would she also be okay with not using contraceptives? Many diocese will require you and her to take NFP classes. If you indicate you intend to contracept then I can almost guarantee that will start a conversation about church teaching with the pastor (at least it would in my area).

I guess most of it is a question of how seriously you take your faith. Mixed marriages can work, but if you both just consider yourselves culturally and not religiously Catholic or Jewish who knows what challenges you might or might not have.
 
MrGallagher88 said:
I was raised in a traditional Irish Catholic household. I admit to not following Catholic teaching 100%. However, I have always made an effort to respect my Catholic upbringing and deep down figured I’d meet a Catholic girl some day and settle down like all my other relatives.

I work in a gym and this summer the most beautiful girl I have ever seen started coming in. I asked her out to dinner, she said yes and we’ve been inseparable ever since. I have never felt like this about any girl and feel like the luckiest man in the world. The problem is she’s Jewish. She told me on our first date and I said it wasn’t an issue at all. And it wasn’t at the time. Now that our relationship is progressing I’m wondering about the implications of our different backgrounds.

Silly thoughts are keeping me awake at night: would she go to ‘our’ heaven?, could we be buried together, would God accept us as a married couple. That’s not to mention how my family might react. I’ve briefly mentioned to my mother over the phone that I’m seeing somebody. I’ve never introduced my family to a girl before so I don’t think my mother took me too seriously but I’m going home for Christmas soon and I want to tell my family I’m just nervous that they won’t approve and don’t want to upset anyone at Christmas. Everyone else is married to another Irish-Catholic so I do not know how they would react. They have made slightly derogatory comments about Protestants over the years so a Jew might be just too much of a bomb to drop.

My girlfriends family are ‘culturally’ Jewish according to her. They live in a very Jewish neighborhood and her parents are involved with Jewish groups and charities but they don’t go to temple. Her ex-husband (they were married less than a year) was not Jewish so her parents don’t have issues with a gentile spouse. They do want to meet me before giving us their blessing which I understand and I hope to meet them soon. I’ve spoken to her parents on the phone and they’ve been very accepting. I should note that my girl is also culturally Jewish and she’s very proud of her background. She’s made it clear that she would never convert and she wants to share her culture with me. So far she’s made me Jewish food and taught me some Yiddish. Nothing religious or that I wasn’t okay with.

In some ways I feel in over my head. I’ve been googling Jewish beliefs and many of them are far from what I was raised to believe. I need some (name removed by moderator)ut from other Catholics. Do you think a Jewish/Catholic marriage could be compatible in the long run. All my friends tell me Id be a fool to let her go and that I need to wife her up before some other guy does. We are so compatible in every way except our religious backgrounds. She’s incredibly beautiful and I’ve never been happier but this would all have been so much easier if she had been Catholic too.
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Are you really open to the (name removed by moderator)ut of other Catholics?

Why would you need to “wife” her before some other guy does? I am sure she is a wonderful girl, but I know many beautiful, wonderful Catholic girls as well.

I am married to a Jewish man and can share my thoughts if you are open to it.
 
If you are serious about your Catholic faith, I would not advise it. My husband and I were both fully lapsed Catholics when we met. After we got married, I reverted and became serious about my faith once more, and he’s still pretty anti-Catholic. Always bringing up bad stuff about the Church, saying negative things about the Pope, etc. It’s very stressful and a big strain. No marriage is perfect and there’s no guarantee that someone’s religious preferences will stay the same (mine obviously didn’t and his did), but I would not knowingly enter into a marriage with a non-Christian. If she’s willing to raise the children Catholic and not stand in the way of your faith, then that’s a mitigating factor, but what if she changes her mind once the children are actually there? What if she decides to become more devout in her own faith?
 
Usige said:
You mention that you consider yourself Catholic and that she and her family are culturally Jewish, but it is unclear if you consider yourself more a culturally Catholic or a practicing Catholic. In other words it isn’t clear if you are attending Mass every week and Holy Days and if you are regularly receiving the sacraments.

This is important since by entering and invalid marriage you would be cutting yourself off from the sacraments. If you marry outside the Church without her first receiving an annulment and a dispensation to marry a non-Christian you would be committing a gravely sinful act. That cuts you off from the Eucharist and if you don’t repent it cuts you off from receiving reconciliation.

Now let’s assume that she receives an annulment and you get the appropriate dispensation to marry outside the Church you are still required to affirm that you will do all you can to raise the children in the Catholic faith. You both also have to intend that the marriage be permanent and allow for the possibility of children. If either of you have a permanent intention against children that would make the marriage invalid. Would she also be okay with not using contraceptives? Many diocese will require you and her to take NFP classes. If you indicate you intend to contracept then I can almost guarantee that will start a conversation about church teaching with the pastor (at least it would in my area).

I guess most of it is a question of how seriously you take your faith. Mixed marriages can work, but if you both just consider yourselves culturally and not religiously Catholic or Jewish who knows what challenges you might or might not have.
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Yes I go to mass frequently. Thank you for laying out the points we will need to consider. Much appreciated.
 
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