Bible Question: What's the best advice you can give someome (a Christian) who is goint to marry a Catholic? Is it wrong to marry in the Catholic Church? Should the marriage be in a "Protestant" church? What other things need to be considered under these circumstances? Thank you in advance for your advice and input. Blessings! |
Bible Answer: JMR, the construction of your question, i.e. "someone (a Christian) who is going to marry a Catholic" leads me to ask, "But is not a Catholic a Christian too?" But I incline to believe that you don't mean it quite that way. First of all, I don't think the site for the wedding ceremony, whether in a Protestant or Catholic place of worship -- or even atop Mont Blanc -- is of any major import...... And for two Christians of different Christian communions to marry is not the same thing as for a Christian to be, as the Bible wording has it, "unequally yoked together" with an unbeliever. It so happens that six years ago my daughter, a Protestant, married a Catholic, and the marriage, I'm happy to report, prevails still and is alive and well. My daughter asked for my counsel when she was dating the Catholic man who later became her husband. Essentially what I said to her was framed more in the form of questions than declarative statements. Questions like: Have you discussed your faith in sufficent depth so that you understand the basic beliefs of his faith and he yours? In the event the two of you are unable to blend your faiths together, are you prepared to live with a Catholic and he with a Protestant, and in connection with this, have you discussed the role of children who may be born of this marriage? Do you both see your love and devotion, each for the other, as being strong enough to deal with and survive your differing views, not only of religion, but of other important issues as well? These questions serve to illustrate, I believe, the general direction of the questions I submitted to my daughter for her thought and consideration. They may have not been the best questions, or all the right questions, but I believe that they served a far better purpose and got better results than an attack on her judgment or even an unqualified approbation of it would have done. --Hank |