flameburns623:
If I am not mistaken, Catholics are permitted to attend certain kinds of religious services where there is ‘good reason’ and ‘no risk of offense of faith’ or something to that effect. In general, attending an LDS baptism would be an event one could attend, unless perhaps theperson receiving baptism was a former Roman Catholic who was renouncng Catholicism for Mrmonism or something like that.
I do not think that I inferred that no Catholic can attend. I said our family chose not to attend the service. This was a former Catholic whose oldest was Baptized Catholic, whose other children are not. As a family, we will not attend (and give implicit approval to) the religious events.
But if the Mormon family were good friends–one could hopefully explain the situation to them and explain that your son or daughter would be permitted to attend such an event ONLY if the LDS parties could assure you that your child would not be proselytised by attending. Of course, your child also could not participate in any religious aspect of the ceremony, but Mormons would be extremely unlikely to ask them to do so.
My children, when young, stayed at their home for nearly two weeks, in which time, they promised to take my children to a Catholic Mass, and not to their church, allowing me to decide to let them stay, while I drove the 1500 miles home without them. Before I had left, the yellow pages had been consulted to find a nearby Catholic Church… When my children returned home with them, I was told by them that they had NOT gone to Mass, but had gone to the LDS service.
This is only one example of the duplicity involved. There have been others, including outright proselytizing of our children over the years right up to the present, as well as our siblings.
Part of the duplicity is that it was known that we would not attend Mormon church functions, but would attend family functions. For this reason, the invite that we received mentioned ONLY the Baptism time and place. The family celebration held at the home later was not mentioned.
The result was a hurt child, who was then told that we did not attend because we did not love her.
That was not only a lie, but also put us in a very bad light. It took nearly a year before we found this out, with the resultant damage to the child continuing. An 8 yr old not loved by aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandma?
I have to say that Mormon Temple Weddings are a very special case. Even Mormons cannot attend Temple ceremonies if they do not have a Temple Recommend, and so this is not a question of excluding people because they are non-Mormons.
Yes, a well known fact, but still points out a similarity in thinking. These are Temple Recommend Mormons.
This is much different from excluding people from something as a relgious gesture of disapproval. A Catholic is not obliged in most cases to ‘shun’ a wedding or similar service for religious reasons.
“Shun” is not the term. To ‘shun’ means to keep them out of your lives. This has not been done. To choose not to attend a religious service is not shunning. Long before this, they were made aware of our feelings and beliefs. Their own duplicity entered into this situation from the begining.
A Catholic is also not supposed to attend the wedding of another Catholic outside the Church , though many do. Add the fact that it is a divorced person marrying outside the Church without having gone before the Tribunal, and it makes it even more serious. To attend the wedding service implies approval. Regardless, that was not the point that I was making.
The point was, what was being said to take place only in Utah does not just happen in Utah. And my family is not the only one who lives outside of Utah who has witnessed it.
The point of the post that you used to respond was that the writer was attempting to make it seem that I am in need of help, etc. To turn the tables and take the focus off of what had been said, and is typical of things that I have witnessed many times, in order to not deal with the issue at hand. To make it personal, rather than a discussion. To change the meaning of what was said, and to twist it.
The reasons we did not attend had been made clear long before. The previous duplicity of the family in question had been manifest long before. The resultant lie that was told to their daughter was, in fact, VERY similar to what the writer was trying to do here, but much more personal, and very hurtful to that eight year old.
