Wife Won't Accept My Victory

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How actively does your wife practice her faith? it it more of an “in name only” thing or does she regularly attend church? Does she or has she ever took your son to her church?

I think the best approach would be becoming more active yourself, trying to go from Mass when you can to Mass every Sunday unless there is a serious reason you can’t make it (and trying to get to the Saturday vigil then). If you don’t already, pray the rosary, at least a decade if you can’t find time for a whole set of mysteries or the whole thing, and say the morning offering. Explain to her that you are obligated, as a Catholic, to raise your children as Catholics, but she will probably respect that more when she sees you taking your faith seriously and trying to live it out.

I’m in a similar situation with my husband, except he is not even a Protestant. He was raised in an anti-Catholic protestant sect, but is not an atheist, and probably closer to an anti-theist. He is openly hostile toward God and all Christian churches and made fun of me when I told him I was converting to Catholicism, thinking I was crazy or it was just a phase. He has sort of accepted it now because he has seen that I am serious about it and has agreed to let me raise our son Catholic - I take him to Mass with me, pray the rosary with him, and read him Bible stories and teach him about the Church and what we believe. He even agreed to Catholic school in the future, if we end up living in a city with one and I can afford to pay for it.

There is hope, but she will need to know you mean business, and that is is not just about something as small as a coin toss or about “winning”.
 
**Well… Since you take the family to church weekly until around Christmas, and you don’t say that your wife then wants the family to go to her church the rest of the year, that the only time your children would get ANY sort of religious experience is when they go to the Catholic Church.

I don’t know why she is then fighting you about the children’s choice of religions since she doesn’t practice one. What is her concern then that the children be raised Catholic since she won’t be having them practice anything in the protesting religions ?

Since you do kinda practice your faith, and she doesn’t practice hers, she really doesn’t have a dog in the fight. Are you willing to make sure your kids get to Mass every Saturday or Sunday and that they will go to religious education once a week ? You have to walk the walk and be serious or you WILL give your wife a leg to stand on.

God bless**
 
AvignonPapacy94 said:
I’ve become increasingly serious about my faith after the birth of my eldest son. So it will be more than just rituals. I try to get the family in Church every Sunday, but life happens, and so I would say we go a good 15-20 times per year. Usually we have perfect weekly attendance leading up to Easter and Christmas.
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15-20 times a year is better than not at all, but it’s a long way off the obligation Catholics have to attend every week. Perhaps if you took this obligation more seriously, your wife would take your faith more seriously too?

Make God a priority above everything else - yes, above your family - and then worry about how to handle these concerns. If your wife sees that your faith means more to you than her faith means to her, she may feel more inclined to defer to you on this matter. So I think you should work on your own faith first, which for starters means weekly mass.
 
What bothers me is that you consider yourself to be the “winner” of something against your wife.

You and your wife are supposed to be a team, working together. Any victory of yours should be her victory also, and any victory of hers should be your victory, as well. You should both be pulling in the same direction, rather than pulling against each other.

The question that only you can answer is, how can you get a victory for both you and your wife, as well as for your children, in this situation? How can you raise your children Catholic without making it seem to your wife like she is a “loser”?
 
southern_knight said:
I don’t mean to be uncharitable but the OP and his wife are obviously not that serious about their faith if they decided what religion to raise their child in based on the flip of a coin.:eek: To the OP, as a Catholic man, you have the obligation to do your utmost to raise your kids Catholic. You are the spiritual head of the family. It’s time for you and your wife to take that role seriously.
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This. It’s time to assert your role as spiritual head of the family. If she is serious about her faith, then maybe you can go to the Saturday vigil and then church with her on Sunday. As others have stated, if you start showing that you are serious about your faith and take on a leadership position (in a loving way), then she will probably start to come around. Seek the counsel of a priest, pray, and ask your wife to pray also. The Holy Spirit will do His work as long as you are both seeking God.
 
I’ve been talking to my wife about this today as you can imagine.

She thinks the best thing we can do is “alternate”; raise the second kid Protestant, third Catholic, fourth Protestant, and so on.

It’s definitely not ideal–we would alternate between going to Catholic masses and Protestant services each week, thus making relationship formation with other communities difficult.

She feels “slighted” in that her faith seemingly ends with her; and it’s hard for me to provide a rationale for why I get to “win” and raise all the kids Catholic. It’s kind of a big deal to us, and she doesn’t think it’s fair that I get my way with all of our children.

I could talk to a pastor, but we’re trying not to get others involved and make a big hooplah about our personal lives.

My mother-in-law actually was something of a voice of reason on this, pointing out that our religious beliefs (that is, my wife’s and I’s) are indistinguishable, and maybe the difference between my brand of Catholicism and her brand of Protestantism isn’t that terribly distinct from the other, compared to say, if it was a choice between Catholicism and Islam.

Personally, I think all the children should be the same religion, because it would be weird teaching my kids different truths based on their birth order, but nothing good happens when you call a woman crazy…
 
To all,

I’m not sure I can comment on the “seriousness” of my wife’s faith. How can you truly know what is in someone’s heart???
 
When you did the initial coin toss, if I understand correctly, you both prayed that the Holy Spirit would decide the coin toss. This is how it should continue.

It seems that is a problem, so how about some scripture?
You should not be working for perishable food but for food that remains unto life eternal, food which the Son of Man will give you; it is on him that God the Father has set his seal. John 6:27
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I solemnly assure you, it was not Moses who gave you bread from the heavens;
It is my Father who gives you the real heavenly bread.
God’s bread comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. John 6:32&33
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I myself am the living bread come down from heaven.
If anyone eats this bread he shall live forever;
The bread I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world. John 6:51
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Let me solemnly assure you, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
He who feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has life eternal, and I will raise him up on the last day.
For my flesh is real food and my blood real drink.
The man who feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.
Just as the Father who has life sent me and I have life because of the Father, so the man who feeds on me will have life because of me. John 6:53 -37
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This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and died nonetheless, the man who feed on this bread shall life forever. John 6:58
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When Jesus was teaching this, the disciples remarked, “This sort of talk is hard to endure! How can anyone take it seriously?” John 6:60
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They understood exactly what Christ was saying, and Christ did not say, “Oh hey! Wait a minute! You misunderstood me! I meant it symbolically!”. No. He stood by his words, said it over and over, and many left him because they understood exactly what he was saying. We as Catholics understand that by God’s design, He deigned to give us the Body and Blood in the Eucharist, and we are being obedient to what he asks of us. We are not the ones who say “This is a hard saying, who can endure it!”. This is the truth that we as Catholics are called to witness, and to witness first to our spouse and children.

When manna came down and fed the Israelites in the desert, it was a heavenly bread that pointed to the Eucharist, the Bread of Life, to come. God does not give a type in the Old Testament that is greater in the New. No. All the types in the OT that point to Christ, is a lesser sign to a greater that was coming. Moses was a type of Christ, pointing to Christ who was yet to come. Christ of course is greater, being God. There is no way that God would give a heavenly manna in the OT and then make the Eucharist lesser. The OT type is there to confirm our belief that the Eucharist is indeed the Body and Blood of Christ.

That’s a lot of info, but it’s the kind of info that teenagers should know. I hope this helps you in this struggle. May the Holy Spirit come upon your family, your marriage, your journey, especially during Lent and the coming Easter season. God bless.
 
Thank you for those Scripture links. I shall find them quite useful.
 
AvignonPapacy94 said:
Like what? Tell my wife we’re raising our kids Catholic, and that’s final??? Okay…
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I revised my post above to add more suggestions.

Don’t call her crazy, just say that the kids need to be raised in the same tradition. If that means that they will be raised both Catholic and Protestant, then fine - go to Mass on Saturday and Protestant church on Sunday. In the meantime, ask your wife to pray with you about it and let the Holy Spirit do the work.

Have you ever read Rome Sweet Home by Scott Hahn? It might help you figure out how to approach this with your wife.
 
AvignonPapacy94 said:
I’ve been talking to my wife about this today as you can imagine.

She thinks the best thing we can do is “alternate”; raise the second kid Protestant, third Catholic, fourth Protestant, and so on.

It’s definitely not ideal–we would alternate between going to Catholic masses and Protestant services each week, thus making relationship formation with other communities difficult.
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I’m not sure how her Protestant community would react to that idea, but the Catholic Church would definitely consider that a non-starter - Catholic children are required to be at Mass every Sunday and Holy Day of the year, and they should not be attending non-Catholic services on any kind of regular basis at all.

I think that any Protestant organization hoping to stay in business would insist that its members, also, be fully committed to weekly attendance.
She feels “slighted” in that her faith seemingly ends with her; and it’s hard for me to provide a rationale for why I get to “win” and raise all the kids Catholic. It’s kind of a big deal to us, and she doesn’t think it’s fair that I get my way with all of our children.
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What if, say, you look after their religious education, and she gets to teach them to cook, or gets to pick out their sports, or what kind of music they do, or other extra-curricular activities?

Again, a conversation that should have happened prior to the wedding, but now that we’re here, it’s a thought to consider.
 
PennyinCanada said:
When you did the initial coin toss, if I understand correctly, you both prayed that the Holy Spirit would decide the coin toss. **This is how it should continue. **
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I respectfully disagree with this advice. The Holy Spirit never promises to determine the outcomes of coin flips for us. We’re supposed to exercise our good judgment. I think it would be just encouraging superstitious thinking to continue this tradition (as well as treating a very serous matter completely flippantly).
 
AvignonPapacy94 said:
Thank you for those Scripture links. I shall find them quite useful.
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Awesome.

There is John the Baptist saying “Look! There is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” John 1:29 All the lambs that were slaughtered were pointing ahead to the day when Christ would come, be slaughtered for our sins. The lambs were slaughtered, their blood marked the door posts, and they were eaten, at that first Passover long ago. We must eat the Lamb of God, that God provided for us, so we might be released from the slavery of sin.

And Protestants think Catholics don’t know scripture. lol
God bless and guide you today.
 
AvignonPapacy94 said:
To all,

I’m not sure I can comment on the “seriousness” of my wife’s faith. How can you truly know what is in someone’s heart???
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Please. You know what we are asking here. Does she regularly attend her church? Or does she only go for Christmas? Does she not go at all?
 
Also, I’m not encouraging separation at all. I just think the worst thing for a child would be to be raised in an environment in which every other sibling was practicing a different faith based on the outcome of a coin flip.🤷 I don’t know how they could possibly grow up to treat faith as a serious matter.
 
AvignonPapacy94 said:
To all,

I’m not sure I can comment on the “seriousness” of my wife’s faith. How can you truly know what is in someone’s heart???
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By how the person behaves. If she never does anything with her faith, then she doesn’t really take it all that seriously, but if she does everything that her faith asks her to do, then she takes it very seriously.
 
southern_knight said:
I respectfully disagree with this advice. The Holy Spirit never promises to determine the outcomes of coin flips for us. We’re supposed to exercise our good judgment. I think it would be just encouraging superstitious thinking to continue this tradition (as well as treating a very serous matter completely flippantly).
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I am not encouraging a coin toss actually. I am pointing out that they, as husband and wife, went this course, and since she is ‘back pedalling’, (perhaps a Protestant way of talking) if I can call it that, the strategy would be to go to scriptures, as I outlined right after. I’m building from the actions the poster offered us, it’s not a recommendation as a way to determine important decisions. I think I should have offered the scriptures without mentioning the coin toss at all. Thanks for pointing that out, and making it clear.
 
AvignonPapacy94 said:
I’m Catholic, the wife is Protestant. When we flipped coins on which religion to raise our son, I won. So he’s a four-year old little Catholic, no problem. Now, my wife is pregnant again. She says we need another toss to determine Baby 2’s religion, and I’m trying to explain to her how insane it would be to raise children with different religious faiths. The Holy Spirit has already spoken, and I’ve been praying on the issue, but if you have any thoughts on how I could persuade my wife to raise our second son Catholic, I’d greatly appreciate it.

God Bless to all who read and comment (and even those who don’t as well).
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I read the title of your thread and my thought was “problem! There is a competition going on in this marriage if the husband is claiming victory”

My thoughts are you need to look at the dynamics of your relationship with you wife.
Are you partners or are you competitors. The idea of victory over another in a marriage is a signal of something needs to be looked at, and it may start with looking at one’s pride and ego.

JM thoughts at the title of the thread alone
 
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