Suggestions for approaching a spouse that is anti-Catholic

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Well he has to explain why he is converting, right? I am expressing my opinion, if you have a different approach for the OP that’s fine.
 
Not converting. I was confirmed Catholic. Fell away from God following my divorce. Here I am 15 years later wanting to come home. So many obstacles.
 
Sorry my bad. Anyhow glad to have you back in the true Church.
 
I would also confirm that we are all on the same path to deeper conversion. Whether coming back after many years or daily communicants we are all equal in the sight of God and we each have to pick up our cross each day and follow him.

It’s a relationship of love, not rules and regulations. When we lose sight of the simplicity of our relationship with Jesus, which is one of love we can easily over complicate things.

I think we have a human tendency to want to hide in the long grass and make things complicated because it makes us feel so vulnerable to admit to ourselves how truly simple it is.

Marriage is a vocation and your marriage is a path to sainthood. So by embracing the challenges that are coming to you currently in your spousal relationship, God can transform that pain into a deeper love and greater holiness. Your marriage is evidence of you living out your belief in God. Focus on what you share in your beliefs and deemphasize the differences unless really necessary. Blessed are the peacemakers. Remember your children are watching you and learning how to be a Christian and loving spouse from you.
 
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Ya…I’m with @TheLittleLady…

This is the last thing you should say to your wife.
 
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Jrp72 said:
My wife is very ant-Catholic…born and raised a devout Baptist.
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To be perfectly honest with you, I’m not sure how somebody who is “a devout Baptist” can also be “very anti-Catholic”. Absolute respect for freedom of individual belief is a fundamental principle of the Baptist faith, including recognising the right of the individual believer to have beliefs that are not Baptist, not Christian, or not even religious. This is why the Baptist faith itself is able to include believers who hold contradictory and mutually exclusive positions on a range of issues (e.g. abortion or war). One could say that the only position that a Baptist cannot tolerate is a position of intolerance. I would not expect a Baptist to accept, for example, the Immaculate Conception, but I would expect a Baptist to defend to the death (quite literally) the right of a Catholic to hold that belief. If your wife is anti-Catholic she perhaps ought to reflect upon what it really means to be a Baptist. She hopefully will find that it means allowing you to follow your own conscience just as she presumably follows hers. She doesn’t have to share your beliefs, but she does have to respect the fact that they are your beliefs and that you are free to believe what you believe.
 
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Then you need to come have a talk with her family. They don’t consider Catholics to be Christians
 
Was not positively received when I shared with her I wanted to speak with a priest. Uhgg.
 
@Jrp72 @Anrakyr I don’t know. I guess if Baptists are free to believe what their conscience tells them to believe, they must also be free to believe that Catholics are not Christians, but it seems like an eccentric and uncharitable belief. But it doesn’t change the fact that as Baptists they must affirm that if somebody wishes to be a Catholic he must be allowed to be a Catholic.
 
Londoner said:
To be perfectly honest with you, I’m not sure how somebody who is “a devout Baptist” can also be “very anti-Catholic”. Absolute respect for freedom of individual belief is a fundamental principle of the Baptist faith, including recognising the right of the individual believer to have beliefs that are not Baptist, not Christian, or not even religious.
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I was Baptist for almost 60 years and every Baptist I know is 100% anti-Catholic. My family included.
 
Hmm. I’ve known anti-Catholic Anglicans, anti-Catholic Pentecostals, anti-Catholic non-denominational Evangelicals, even an anti-Catholic Salvationist, but never a truly anti-Catholic Baptist. I did know a Baptist who held somewhat negative views about Catholics, but she was very young and her ideas about Catholicism seemed to be rather vague (“The problem with Catholics is that they focus too much on Good Friday and never get to Easter Sunday”).

I have actually found Baptists to be somewhat frustrating precisely because of their refusal to commit to dogmatic certainties. I remember asking a Baptist ordinand whether she would be able to explain to me the Baptist position on abortion, and she explained that this was a matter for the conscience of the individual believer and the consensus of the local congregation, from which individual members could of course dissent.

In the nineteenth century Baptists opposed the Public Worship Regulation Act 1874 and supported those who were imprisoned for the crime of ritualism. The Baptists didn’t agree with the theological position of the ritualists, but they did consider it an affront to their cherished principle of religious liberty that the state had assumed the power to punish people as criminals for worshipping in a manner not approved by the Church of England. I always think that this is a nice example of the best qualities of the Baptists.
 
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Maybe different areas of the world? In the U.S. - we used to think the pope was the anti-christ. Seriously.
 
Yes, I understand that some American Baptists now hold views that would have been rather surprising to the original 17th-century British Baptists who were prepared to go to prison and even die for the sake of religious liberty. However, I didn’t think that this was universal. I have an American friend who was a Southern Baptist minister but who left the Southern Baptists to help set up another Baptist grouping when he decided that he no longer regarded homosexuality as sinful and, crucially, believed that as a Baptist it was his absolute right to follow his conscience and be tolerated by his fellow Baptists (and to tolerate those who disagreed with him).
 
Londoner said:
Hmm. I’ve known anti-Catholic Anglicans, anti-Catholic Pentecostals, anti-Catholic non-denominational Evangelicals, even an anti-Catholic Salvationist, but never a truly anti-Catholic Baptist. I did know a Baptist who held somewhat negative views about Catholics, but she was very young and her ideas about Catholicism seemed to be rather vague (“The problem with Catholics is that they focus too much on Good Friday and never get to Easter Sunday”).
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There are hundreds of them where I live. Truly hundreds.
 
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