Wife becoming a Wiccan

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mikew262

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This thread is mainly addressed to former Wiccans, current Wiccans, and relatives of Wiccans, but others may respond as well.

I am a life long Catholic, as is (was) my wife. We each have had some disagreement with the Church over certain issues, but we more or less practiced the faith. However, over the past year or 2, my wife has had a strong interest in New Age and Wicca, and I’m not sure how to deal with it.

For the most part, she has abandoned her Christian beliefs. She does believe in God, but not in a Christian sense anymore. She says she never had a true strong relationship with God through the Church, and has been looking elsewhere for it and feels she may have found it through Wicca. Wicca is a nature based pagan religion which professes first and foremost to do no harm to others. She sees God in everything and he (or she) manifests himself through nature, among other things. It is not even remotely connected to Satan worship, as some may think. It’s not evil, but it’s not right either IMO.

My mind is telling me to let her follow her own path in finding God, and not fight her or judge her on it, but my heart is telling me she is going down the wrong path. She feels everybody must follow their own path in their relationship with God. While I also espouse to that to a certain degree, I’m finding it real hard accepting what path she is currently on.

I do pray on it and ask God that if what she is doing is pleasing to him, so be it, but if it’s not, to give her the wisdom to seek the right path. I’m hoping this is just a phase and she will find her way back.

She has not totally abandoned Christianity yet, but it’s getting there. She still has a St. Joe’s prayer book and her rosarys.

I go to Church almost every Sunday, and she does not ridicule me for practicing my faith, so I hesitate in giving her grief about what she is doing, although by my looks and attitude, she knows I don’t really approve.

To be honest, I’m also a little embarrassed by this. My wife referring to herself as a witch? Oh boy!! I know thats rather shallow of me, but…

I’m really having a hard time dealing with this and would like some advice and comments.
 
I think you are right in saying that you should just let her follow her path for awhile; telling her it’s wrong might only reinforce her decision to become Wiccan. Often, it’s hard for us to accept that someone close to us chooses another path, especially when we are very much strong in our own faith. But to realize the truth about the Church, sometimes there’s the need to wander from her–a paradox, but it’s important to realize that one will not always see the truth when one is near it. Sometimes it does take God to knock some sense in us, so to speak, and thus He would let us wander away from Him in order for us to learn and realize the truth. Pray for her, and be open to her when she does ask questions regarding why you are still Catholic, but do not attack her choice or her belief, since that might only lead to estrangement and her blocking off anything you say.
 
I understand your difficult position. I have also been in a similar position, and I realize how difficult it is. I Agree with Millandro, do not attack her, as this means that you are threatened by Wicca, and as a follower of Christ nothing can truly threaten you. I believe that the Catholic Church like any other man made organization has many faults. One area I believe the church really struggles in, is helping people to find that emotional connection with god.

In my case our relationship was not sustainable if my woman was not Catholic. I listened to her about her concerns with the church, and both of us started to read some non-Catholic writing. The non-Catholic writing has made her more Catholic than I am so I guess we chose correctly. I learned that the real key was to find out what she really needed, and I tried to provide this with christen ideas and writings.

The book we started reading together is called A Course In Miracles. I once took it to a trusted Jesuit, and he told me the book falls in line with the teachings of Catechism, so this gave me even greater confidence in pursuing it. Further, the book really helped us to grow together, and we built common faith, within the faith.

I hope this helps you,

Matt Cos
 
Hi mikew262,
I know where you are coming from in your concern for your wife.
I myself fell off the Catholic bandwagon for a while and dabbled in tarot reading, psychics etc for a while myself and actually believed it was ok to do all that.
After a while when i realised i had moved away from the church in leaps and bounds, and found my life was just spiraling out of control and how this new age stuff was not helping me, i then turned back to the church, i prayed and ever since i turned back to Jesus, my life has improved so much, ive kicked my alcholic addiction, i stopped having casual sex etc etc, so it was a real wake up call for me.

I hope your wife will find that the new age stuff doesnt work the way i did and find her way back the church.
Just give her time and space and she will turn around, the best thing you can do is pray for her.

That new age stuff is just like bells and whistles, its all exciting at first, but once you see past the surface, its just hollow and not fulfilling.
Your wife will find that, dont you worry.
God bless and ill pray for your wife to turn away from this.
 
Milliardo said:
I think you are right in saying that you should just let her follow her path for awhile; telling her it’s wrong might only reinforce her decision to become Wiccan. Often, it’s hard for us to accept that someone close to us chooses another path, especially when we are very much strong in our own faith. But to realize the truth about the Church, sometimes there’s the need to wander from her–a paradox, but it’s important to realize that one will not always see the truth when one is near it. Sometimes it does take God to knock some sense in us, so to speak, and thus He would let us wander away from Him in order for us to learn and realize the truth. Pray for her, and be open to her when she does ask questions regarding why you are still Catholic, but do not attack her choice or her belief, since that might only lead to estrangement and her blocking off anything you say.
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Thanks for your advice. I don’t think she would ever question my faith. She feels if I have found God through the Church, then she has no problem with it.
 
I do not know what “more or less practice the faith” means.
If you will immerse yourself and live an exciting life that shows the love of Christ in EVERYTHING you do…that is what I saw in people when I was an atheist and I wondered if they had popped some Prozac.
Instead they had a new and intense relationship with Christ and that was appealing.
She already knows you disapprove, love her into changing. Love is stronger than the Devil’s lies.
 
I offer no advice - just that I will pray for her reconversion and change of heart.
 
Judging by your birthdate (you’re two years older than me) you may or may not have children in the home, but you do have grandchildren. Your wife may be a big girl and free to decide her own destiny, but how are you going to deal with this on a practical level with younger family members? Will she start undermining their Catholic Faith by, in all sincerity, teaching them Wiccan beliefs and giving them Wiccan books and gifts? This is something you need to discuss with all involved before it gets to that point.
 
There is a great book “surprised by Truth” which touches on several different converts to the church. One of them was a wiccan. There is a second edition of the book also, so when you go to the Catholic bookstore to check it out, make sure to look at all eleven titles of the chapters and it says “wiccan work it out”.

I hope this helps you! PRAY PRAY PRAY and love her.
 
It is a serious situation, Mike. I can only relate my experiences. Every person I have known who has dabbled with new age practices such as enneagram, reiki, mandalas, etc—always got sucked in deeper. The result usually manifests itself as wiccanism or some form of theosophy. And it can, and oftentimes gets worse.

The good news: I have seen the situation remedied through intense and persistent prayer.

Pray for her Mike.
 
I can relate on a personal level. My daughter is a professed Wiccan follower as most will know from some of my postings. But I must disagree with you on one thing though. Any “faith” that says there is a Female goddess Equal to God, from what I have studied, they believe in a Main God who inturn “begot” a male smaller god and female smaller goddess, and it is Them who “created” the universe, this is total and compete nonsense of course, and remember, Satan does his best “work” when he convinces us that he does NOT exist.

So to say that the wiccan faith is not Satan worshiping is on the surface true enough, but any “religion” that worships many god’s and goddesses is just a very subtle trick of the devil to steal souls from the One True and ONLY God.

I will pray for your wife, as I pray for my daughter. Both are caught up in a lie, and we both know who the Father of Lies is.
 
Grace & Peace!

Like others here, I think you’re right to let her follow her own path, and to pray that God’s will be done.

It seems to me that many people who move from Christianity into Wicca or New Age spiritualities are fundamentally looking for a more immediate experience of God. Sometimes, given the way we were raised, the church appears to be an incredibly monolithic institution which has been set up to mediate our relationship with God. While the Church does indeed mediate God’s grace to us (principally through the Sacraments), it seems that many believe that it separates us from God. For those who are experiencing a period of spiritual aridity, that sense of separation can be difficult to overcome, and can often be a source of disillusionment. In contrast, nature-based religions which focus on the immanence of God in the beauty of the world, which contain elements of ritual (which is so important to being human), and which do not tend towards dogmatic legalism (as often the Church appears to do) look more able to provide the soul with a means to touch the Divine.

As I’m sure you know, this view of the Church is not accurate. But it is not often dispelled by our contemporary culture, nor is it often dispelled in the pulpit. The Church’s mysticism is a wealth of riches, though a spotlight is not often thrown on it–indeed, Bonaventure (in his mystical opucula)discusses how nature reveals God to us, how the universe is fundamentally sacramental. Moreover, the Church does not call us to an ever-more-mediated relationship with God, but it calls us to fully embody the Word–we are called to bear the Word of God in us, just as Mary bore the Eternal Word in her own body and soul. What we are called to be is revealed in Christ and modeled by Mary and the saints. The Church provides us with various sure means of grace in order to bring us to a condition of receptivity such that we, like Mary before us, may become theotokoi. How much more direct and intimate can you be?

None of this is new to you, I’m sure. But a witness to your wife may involve more intensely modelling these ideas to her. If she feels that the church discourages individual approaches to God, why not take up regular private recitation of the Daily Office (or at least Morning Prayer), regular recitation of the rosary, or another spiritual practice or exercise (the Ignatian exercises–with a spiritual director–or the practice of Lectio Divina, or regular recitation of litanies, or praying novenas, or any number of practices). Take up reading on the mysticism of the church–John of the Cross, Theresa of Avila, the Cappodocian Fathers, Meister Eckhart, Julian of Norwich, or more contemporary apologists for the Church’s mystical life like Jean Borella, Danielou, Hans Urs von Balthasar, etc. In this way, you may be able to witness to the Church’s open-ness to the individual’s spiritual path within the larger Ecclesia. What is often forgotten is that we are a nation of priests, and that while the Church has people set aside for this very important particular function in her ritual life (people who are given grace to perform great mysteries), we are called to consecrate our life, our world, our work and offer it to God as well–we are called to bless and be a blessing. You may not re-convert her, but you may, by your own practice, be able to show her a side of the Church she may not have ever seen before.

Also, it is good to remember that some of the thought behind and some of the ritual arts of Wicca are taken from other spiritual sources (like Christianity!). Try to understand what it is she is believing and practicing–you may discover some remarkable points of convergence (and opportunities for dialogue). Alchemy, for insatnce, was once a discipline (and a symbolic language!) designed to reveal the goodness of God in nature and which had as its focus (in the West) the image of Christ as the Stone of the Wise (the Stone the Builder’s Rejected) but is now popularly thought of as either darkly occult or pure quackery (read Burckhardt’s classic “Alchemy” for more info)! A quick persusal of the Hermetic Renaissance and the work of Christian Cabalists (like Reuchlin, Ficino, and della Mirandola) may give you a basis from which to understand some of your wife’s “new” ideas, as well as a basis on which to engage her in dialogue and discussion. The boundaries between science, magic, and religion were not always as clearly drawn as they are today.

Again, you may not wind up re-converting her, but you may ultimately prove a a fantastic witness to the living spirituality of the Church!

God bless you and your wife at this time!

Under the Mercy,
Mark

Deo Gratias!
 
I do pray on it and ask God that if what she is doing is pleasing to him, so be it, but if it’s not, to give her the wisdom to seek the right path. I’m hoping this is just a phase and she will find her way back.

She has not totally abandoned Christianity yet, but it’s getting there.

I truely have no wish to hurt you, but I cannot accept that God would be even remotely pleased about the path your wife is on. I know you love her, but allowing her to do this is a dangerous thing for her.
As someone who got “sucked in” by a new age group, I can say that alot of the attraction for me was the promise that those whom I had lost recently would visit me. Crazy wierd, I know, but in the throes of grief you seek relief. Also, the people who encouraged me to follow, appeared kind, caring, loving and thoughtful. It may be that your wife has connected with this group on a more social level, meaning that she really likes them as people, and they have manipulated her into accepting their beliefs. Gratefully, I returned to my real church and received more support from God than I ever received from the “new age group”.
I thank God everyday that I was able to see my way out of the mess I was in. I pray that your wife does the same. We have a forgiving Lord, but breaking the first of the Ten Commandments by worshiping a false god is a scary thing to do. Do what you can to bring her back.
 
Friend you have received quite a bit of advice on this forum. I agree with some of it…disagree with most. Hold your wife in the Light…be a faithful and loving husband…live a spiritual life before her…love her for all you’re worth…find your own spiritual Center and live out of that Center…I’ll say it again as I think it bears repeating…love her.
 
It’s really hard to say what is going to happen.

My experience (my SIL is Wiccan and I’ve looked into it)…is either she will get deeper or it won’t feel right, and she’ll come back to the Church even stronger. I pray for the later. The later is what happened to me. Wicca seemed so…stupid…just to put it bluntly. Maybe get her some books on St. Francis of Assisi, his love of nature and the animals, etc…I know that sounds strange, but that’s what is appealing to her. When someone first starts this journey to Wicca, they feel like the church has left something out, and usually it is women aka Goddess worship, and nature, aka no reverence for our beautiful world…

Is she starting to hang out with groups of people, or is she a solitary witch?
 
I agree about introducing St. Francis to her. The Canticle of Creatures is great! I have some experiance with Wiccans and for the most part, I have found them to be sincere. I have also found that I have trouble communicating with them. Perhaps it is my chouvanistic ways. Anyway, try to find out what she sees in Wicca that she does not see in the Church. If it is the godess aspect, try to open the dialog about why that is important to her. If it is a matter of God being in nature and not in a church, there are lots of ways to approach it.
 
There are a lot of things I am sure the church has wrong; but when it comes to belief if God, a God. It is 100% right.
I dont know what I would do if my husband stopped believing in God. ???
I would say let her go “that way” for awhile, it may lead her back and more devote to God.
We ALL stray. It is natural and it is natural to come back.

Be patient.
 
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