Possible Conversion due to Marriage

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CassieL

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My boyfriend and I have been dating for a year now and often talk about marriage, having children, and our future lives together. However, he is a very serious member of the Church of Christ and I am a cradle Catholic. There is so much I don’t know about my own faith, but I do know that my family would be very very disappointed and hurt if I left the church as they are all very hardcore Catholics. It is very unlikely that he will convert and I am honestly scared to death to convert- not necessarily because of my own beliefs but because I would basically be giving up my family. I know, the easiest solution would just be to leave him but the issue is that I know God put him in my life for a reason and I truly believe that reason is marriage. He and I are both very very strong Christians, I am just not comfortable in and don’t fully understand my Catholic faith. I know that the Eucharist is the big thing that separates Catholics and Protestants and I do believe that the Catholic church is “technically correct,” but I don’t know if it really matters what denomination a person is as long as they are a devout Christian. I’m in desperate need of any thoughts or advice anyone wants to throw my way.
 
I can’t imagine God put a person in your life to lead you away from the Church and estrange you from your family.
Also, a good man wouldn’t expect you to leave your church and cut yourself off from your family in order to be his wife.

If this guy can’t, at minimum, accept that you stay Catholic and agree to raise the kids Catholic, then you need to find another guy. Also if you marry him in his church and not your own, that is a problem for a Catholic.

Also, if you’ve allowed yourself to be weak in your faith so you don’t understand it and are uncomfortable with it and think any old Christian church will do, this is the underlying cause of how you’ve managed to end up in a relationship with Mr. Serious Church of Christ. My personal opinion is that you need to take a step back and re-evaluate your priorities, as this is a big mistake, and also he is not the only guy out there.
 
OP, I’m kind of confused by you post. Do you think one of you needs to convert for marriage?

My wife and I have been together for almost 20 years (married for over 15). I come from a nondenominational background and she’s Catholic. Neither one of us have ever pressured the other to convert.
 
Have you talked about your intentions about how you would raise any children you might have?
 
Tis_Bearself said:
If this guy can’t, at minimum, accept that you stay Catholic and agree to raise the kids Catholic, then you need to find another guy. Also if you marry him in his church and not your own, that is a problem for a Catholic.
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On the first part, I agree. It seems reasonable for him to accept that she remain Catholic.
As for the kids, why is it that he is the one that has to agree? Why doesn’t she agree to raise them Church of Christ?
Now, I personally would counsel them to raise the kids Catholic rather than Church of Christ, but the reasonableness argument is simply that they need to agree ahead of time, which ever decision they make.
 
I deleted this post because I confused it with another marriage thread to which I was responding earlier, that deals with a different situation, and hence I wrote a wrong response here.

Sorry about that. I need coffee. Carry on…
 
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CassieL said:
I know that the Eucharist is the big thing that separates Catholics and Protestants and I do believe that the Catholic church is “technically correct,” but I don’t know if it really matters what denomination a person is as long as they are a devout Christian. I’m in desperate need of any thoughts or advice anyone wants to throw my way.
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Do you believe what the church teaches in that the Eucharist is the real presence of Christ? Can you actually leave this? My opinion is that some who leave do not actually believe what the church teaches about the Eucharist.

Peace!!!
 
JonNC said:
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Tis_Bearself:
If this guy can’t, at minimum, accept that you stay Catholic and agree to raise the kids Catholic, then you need to find another guy. Also if you marry him in his church and not your own, that is a problem for a Catholic.
Click to expand...
On the first part, I agree. It seems reasonable for him to accept that she remain Catholic.
As for the kids, why is it that he is the one that has to agree? Why doesn’t she agree to raise them Church of Christ?
Now, I personally would counsel them to raise the kids Catholic rather than Church of Christ, but the reasonableness argument is simply that they need to agree ahead of time, which ever decision they make.
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If she believes the Catholic church is “technically correct”, not sure i like the phrase, how would agreeing to raise her kids CoC not be going aginst her consicence? I realize the opposite position is also true from the boyfriend pov, hence all the possible problems in mixed marriages.

Peace!!!
 
JonNC said:
As for the kids, why is it that he is the one that has to agree? Why doesn’t she agree to raise them Church of Christ?
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OK, I had some coffee, now let’s try this again with me paying attention to what thread I’m in.

The facts in this situation are
  • The guy is stronger in his Christian faith than the girl is in her Catholic faith. This suggests that his faith is going to dominate in the marriage unless she suddenly steps up and gets a lot more interested in her own faith.
  • As a Catholic, if the couple are married in the Catholic church then the Catholic spouse has to sincerely promise to do all she can to raise the kids in the Catholic faith, per current canon law. Therefore, she can’t just agree to raise the kids Church of Christ. I note that her spouse, as a non-Catholic, doesn’t have to agree to raise the kids Catholic, but he needs to be informed of the promise that she has made to do so. This can lead to problems. This canon law source goes into more detail:

Alternatively, the couple might choose to either get married in the Church of Christ or to just go the civil-only marriage route, but the Church doesn’t approve of those choices for a Catholic. I don’t know if the Church of Christ would also have an objection to its member being married in a civil ceremony to a non-church member outside the Church of Christ. Maybe someone from that denomination can address that.

Bottom line is, this situation is setting itself up for a conflict between the religions especially when it comes to which faith the kids will be raised in. As a Catholic, I myself would avoid it and find another guy. There is a second risk here in that the girl is not a strong Catholic and doesn’t really understand her own faith, and therefore, is prone to quit and join her husband’s church (which would be the path of least resistance once they are married) or just not be an active member of any church. She may regret this later if she gets thinking and learning about the Catholic faith after marriage and realizes she gave up something important that she didn’t realize was important at the time.
 
adf417 said:
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JonNC:
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Tis_Bearself:
If this guy can’t, at minimum, accept that you stay Catholic and agree to raise the kids Catholic, then you need to find another guy. Also if you marry him in his church and not your own, that is a problem for a Catholic.
Click to expand...
On the first part, I agree. It seems reasonable for him to accept that she remain Catholic.
As for the kids, why is it that he is the one that has to agree? Why doesn’t she agree to raise them Church of Christ?
Now, I personally would counsel them to raise the kids Catholic rather than Church of Christ, but the reasonableness argument is simply that they need to agree ahead of time, which ever decision they make.
Click to expand...
If she believes the Catholic church is “technically correct”, not sure i like the phrase, how would agreeing to raise her kids CoC not be going aginst her consicence? I realize the opposite position is also true from the boyfriend pov, hence all the possible problems in mixed marriages.

Peace!!!
Click to expand...
Entirely agree. A lot has to be agreed to in advance
 
You must speak with your boyfriend about this.
Actually, when you marry a non-catholic, you must make a promise to the Church to raise your kids as catholics. Marriage is a very serious step. I think the best advice I would give you is to try to understand your faith better. Belive me, I already had a similar relationship.
Do not think about marriage now. Try to get deeper in your faith and pray a lot.
 
Please define what you mean by “technically correct.”

Catholics can marry Protestants. While it is best to raise any children the two of you have, if you do marry him, Catholic, you can do what my parents did and raise them in both churches.

Be aware, however, that if you do this, the day will come when they must decide whether they wish to remain in the Catholic Church or in the CoC.

Being raised in two churches gives the advantage of seeing “the other half” first hand. But it can also cause conflicting emotions in the child as to where his or her loyalties lie esp when it comes to conflicting teachings and beliefs. And your children wouldn’t be able to receive communion in the CoC even tho they could receive in the Catholic Church.

My advice is to grow stronger in your own faith before marrying anyone. Do not convert to his church. You would be settling for less than you have now. Why do that when Jesus is the Founder of the Catholic Church? You have the fullness of Truth in the Catholic Church.
 
Which branch of the Church of Christ?

Non-instrumental, Disciples of Christ, Independent CoC/Christian Churches?

The reason I ask, if you were to pick up “The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement” my dad is listed in there. That is how serious a member, well known traveling evangelist, of the Church of Christ my daddy is.

Only 2 months after I was received into the Catholic Church, my mom and dad came to Mass for our son’s baptism/First Communion. Dad would have been at my Easter Vigil, but, he was scheduled to speak somewhere.

It would be difficult to raise children where mom and dad believe some very opposite things. In my experience, most often the kids end up following dad faith-wise.

I know exactly 1 in real life successful, happy, mixed faith marriage. On-line I know three more (friendly Bear is one of them). In those cases, the non-Catholic has been “Catholic Friendly” so to speak.

Your husband, should you marry, will likely have pressure from his parents & extended family to delay baptism until the child reaches the age of reason. I’d cover this hurdle first, Formed.org has a wonderful set of videos called “Reborn” that would likely help him understand infant baptism.

CoC places far more value on baptism than do some other non - Catholic denominations. They share the belief of the Catholic Church that baptism is salvific.

The CoC taught me a reverence for the Lord’s Supper that led me to the Catholic Church.

I could go on and on, and would be happy to answer questions.
 
This is a great opportunity for the OP to study their faith.
 
I agree with this. There is a very serious danger of her falling away from the Faith. I suspect little effort, if any, would be made on her part to baptise and raise her children in the Catholic Church.

I do not necessarily think she should dump this guy and go find another one. That is simply not that easy. What I think they should do is face this problem head on and work towards a solution. They should do this slowly and certainly not rush into marriage. I would hope both would involve their families and the Catholic priest.

I know of a very successful marriage where the wife was a Catholic and the husband a Jew and they married before Vatican II. Mixed marriages are not always a good idea but some do work very well.
 
TomH1 said:
I know of a very successful marriage where the wife was a Catholic and the husband a Jew and they married before Vatican II.
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(Edited, I looked it up) There was a hit play, a film, and a radio drama on this exact situation that ran for years, called “Abie’s Irish Rose”. I bet it happened a lot when Catholic and Jewish immigrants were living in close proximity.
 
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I live in the UK. I guess that you live in the USA. I have never heard of that radio drama.

The Catholic involved was not an immigrant. Indeed, the Jewish gentleman was not either. Where I live we have a very large Jewish community. Mixed marriages between Jews and people of other faiths are not uncommon in my city.
 
In the USA, mixed marriages of all kinds, including between Catholics and other Christians, were considered a big deal prior to Vatican II. As shown by the parts of the old Baltimore Catechism that deal with mixed marriage, there were more restrictions on them (such as you weren’t allowed to have a Mass, you might not even be allowed to be married inside the building of the Church).

The Jewish people also very much frowned on their children marrying gentiles.

Mixed marriages happened nonetheless, but usually the families weren’t at all happy about it back then.

In addition to the hit play/ movie/ drama I mention, I remember there was also a major plot point in the novel and film “The Cardinal”, a bestseller later made into a 1963 film (which won several Golden Globe and Academy Awards) about a US priest who eventually rises to Cardinal, in which the priest’s sister wants to marry a Jewish man, both families object and she ends up running away, getting involved in scandal, and dying a tragic death.
 
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Jesus gave us his Body and Blood in the Blessed Sacrament and scripture says Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of God and drink his Blood, you have no life within you.
Are you ready to go forward in life married to a person who will fight you on this?

Jesus gave us the sacrament of Reconciliation so when we sin, the merits of His death on the cross is applied to us so that we can again come into God’s friendship. Jesus set this up as the ordinary means of saving grace to the world.
Are you ready to go forward in life married to a person who will fight you on this?

When you marry a believing Catholic and your children see a man who goes to confession, a man that kneels in church and goes up with reverence to receive the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, you are giving them a wonderful example and gift. That is true gold in this world. The pearl of great price.

My inlaws were/are Catholic and 1 daughter went to the Church of Christ. When we got together for Sunday dinners and dad said the prayer before the meal and did the sign of the cross, daughter and her children did not. It just made my heart ache. What on earth would they have against doing the sign of the Cross? She would say that there is a lot of stuff Catholics do that we don’t believe in. Heart breaking. She put her inheritance of faith to the side and accepted a counterfeit.
 
You should do you, and let him do him. Plenty of married people don’t belong to the same religions or faith. It’s possible to have a very happy marriage, despite this.
 
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