catholic-mormon marriage QUESTION from Alberto on November 27, 2002 Dear Father, I am engaged with a girl who was baptised catholic but since immediately after raised in the Latter-day faith. I knew that and worried about that from the very first day I met her, three years ago. We are both well-educated and with close interests.
I have always thought that a catholic should be courageous, not to escape from bad situations and instead get involved and with hope and faith try to make things better. Love should come before every other thing, isn'it?
When I first met her, she was a faithful mormon, I showed patience and read several books. Even before to meet me, she used to sing in the choir of my catholic parish, and no one over there knew about her faith. She never ever attempts to bring me to her faith, on the contrary I am continously hammering on that. Knowing her pushed me to better knowing my own faith.
Now she is not anymore a practicing mormon, has not been in her church for the last eight months. My friend and priest has become one of her better friends and she works now in a catholic-funded orphanage. She comes without any problem to mass along with me and says that she wouldn't have any problem having our children baptized and raised as catholic.
In spite of this all, she still thinks that the Mormon church (about which now she knows much lesser than me) is a great institution.
And she still holds the most irrelevant teaching: no coffee, no alcohol.
Her parents converted from Catholicism to Mormonism some twentyfive years ago, but stil sometimes use to go to mass and nicknamed me as taleban. Yes, it seems that everybody is more tolerant and openminded than me.
My friend priest comments: what do you want more than that? marry her!. I sometimes have the suspect that may be he pushes me in order to convert her. Essentially, I still cannot believe that intelligent people take this matter so superficially. I am alone in that, my parents too do not understand my fears. The Pope too uses to say do not be afraid! quoting the Bible. But I am afraid of people that are appealed by the concept of God being bodily (that's in Catholicism too, it's Christ, but is a much more refined idea, isn'it?), or by the idea of a living prophet that urges people against science.
I'm making an effort to be more charitable but sometimes I lose my patience. Sure, I cannot expect a whole family to definitely convert just for settling things for me. And I hate my teaching to older people.
Please, tell me what you really think about the whole issue. Thanks.
Ps. note that the whole thing is happening in Europe, where we are not so used to having people of different faiths.
ANSWER by John-Paul Ignatius, OLSM on December 19, 2002 Dear Doctor:
There are many people who find themselves in these sorts of situations.
The botttomline is that the Church DOES NOT encourage marriage with a non-catholic and especially not with a non-Christian (Mormons are NOT Christians) for obvious reasons.
The Church WILL allow a mixed marriage but you have to get permission from your bishop to do so. The Catholic party must agree to raise the children Catholic and to avoid anything that might harm the faith of the Catholic party. Obviously the non-Catholic party must be agreeable to this. The marriage must also be a CATHOLIC wedding and not a non-Catholic wedding.
Love is NOT the final determiner here. Love is not an emotion, but a decision of will. To truly have love we must rejoice in TRUTH and we MUST be obedient to God. If we are not obedient then we do not love no matter how much we say we do.
You need to do, as we all need to do, whatever GOD wills for you, not what your emotions will for you.
One of the truths that MUST be affirmed is that Mormonism is NOT Christian, it is a rather diabolical sect that believes many weird things -- such as that Jesus and Satan are brothers, for pete's sake. Most rank and file Mormons have no idea the extent of the doctrines of demons that Mormonism teaches.
The bottomline is that there is NOTHING about Mormonism that is Christian even though they use Christian terminology. It is the MEANING of the terminology, not the terminology itself that must be examined.
I would be concerned that your children may be contaminated by the ideas of this non-Christian sect no matter how hard your wife tried not to influence her children about Mormonism.
This is one reason that it is very dangerous to marry a non-Catholic -- how can the non-Catholic parent possibly not influence their children in non-Catholic ideas at least subconsciously?
One should NEVER marry a person in order to convert her. This is dangerous and foolish. One cannot expect their marriage partner to be anything other than what they are as of the day of the wedding. We can NEVER expect they will change.
I tell couples thinking of marriage that they better accept each other AS IS on the day of their wedding and NEVER expect ANYTHING to change later. Many women say, He'll change after we are married or I can change him. This is a fools game.
There is NO guarantee that this woman will convert if you marry her. Thus you must be prepared for that if you do marry her.
We will be in prayer for you as you discern this most difficult life decision.
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