Adviced on mixed-marriages

"Mixed marriages," in Catholic parlance, typically refers to marriages between Catholics and non-Catholic Christians. Recently a young Catholic career woman wrote to me about a young Christian she's been seriously dating. She was very excited about this fellow and went to some lengths to assure me that, even if he wasn't a Catholic, he was in any case a very good Christian. This, after all, she wanted to stress, is all that really matters. Of course, this puts a committed Catholic in a tight place, because the position of the Church on the matter is very simple, even though very many these days would like to sweep it under the rug or at least keep it from seeming very clear.

The young lady, let's call her Sara, wrote:

This guy is head over heals in love with Jesus and it shows not only in how he talks about Jesus like He is his best friend, but how humble he is and how lovingly he treats other people. Those have always been more important to me than whether a person believes that the Catholic Church is It.

How to reply? I wrote:

Please understand that I want to be supportive. I'm thinking, though, that "support"--in the sense of people affirming whatever you want to do--is something you likely have an ample supply of these days (though tell me if I'm wrong). What I'm assuming you may need is someone uninvolved with you who can play the role of a constructive skeptic. Understand that nothing I say is meant in anyway to reflect negatively on your friend, since I have never met him and don't know him. It's meant only to help, for whatever it's worth, with your own reflection on your impending decisions.

Religion is easy to manipulate. It's especially easy, if you know the ropes, to pass yourself off as a deeply spiritual person in conservative evangelical (Baptist, Presbyterian) circles. All you've got to know is the "language." It's also easy to perceive what we want to perceive in people, and to accommodate ourselves to what we want them to want from us. Of all people, I'm sure you know what I mean.

The first stage is the "I love pizza, you love pizza stage." He says I love pizza." You say: "Oh, really? Why, that's amazing! I love pizza too!" and you both express your amazement at how well your tastes coincide, suggesting miraculous compatability.

On an only-slightly-subtler level, however, if a guy really likes a young hottie like you, it's the easiest thing in the world for him even uncounsciously to censor certain aspects of his vocabulary and self and set forward other aspects. The "Master's of Suspicion" teach us to look for a subtext: Freud(it's really only about sex), Nietzsche (it's really only about power), Marx (it's really only about money), etc. In this instance, this guy's being "head over heels in love with Jesus" might be the manifest meaning of a subtext which reads: he's "head over heels in love with young hottie." It's easy acting like a model Christian and exhibiting the behavior of a perfectly caring and com-passionate gentleman if it will help impress a young lady. "Jesus? He's my BUDDY!" becomes a smoke signal for Austin Powers: "Do I make you horny, baby!? Do I make you R-A-N-D-Y!!?"

A subjective perception of a guy's "love of Jesus" is something much less reliable than the Catholic Faith. The latter gives you a defined understanding of who God is, what "Jesus" stands for, so that you can truly know Him. On the other hand, subjective impressions of "what Jesus means to me" are a dime-a-dozen and about as reliable as jr. high romantic commitments. I once met a young man from India who accompanied me on a one-mile walk back to a hotel after a lecture in Switzerland. En route, he started telling me how much he loved Jesus. As we continued, he told me that Jesus had been so good to him that he had brought this girl into his life. In fact, she was waiting at the hotel for him, where they would have glorious sex together that night. Uh, sure. You can be sure that that relationship was headed for a glorious future. Even if it could have made it as far as the matrimonial altar (a snowball's chance in hell), you could bet your life it would end before long in the divorce courts.

But let us listen to what else Sara had to say:

He behaves in ways far more humble and loving than many Catholics I know who do believe in all of the teaching and doctrines of the Catholic Church. He cares more about being a loving witness or example for Christ than whether or not he is following the correct religion. I agree, a "both/and" would be nice, but he has the right priorities and I don't expect him to be perfect. I'm pretty sure that God is okay with someone loving Him and all His people but not believing that purgatory exists. I am confident of the fact that my hormones are not the ones making my decisions in this case because I would not even find the man physically attractive if it wasn't for me asking God for it...he is physically not my type and I thought he was unattractive when I first met him.

How to reply? I wrote:

I agree with you that evangelical Protestants often put to shame Catholics by their godly lives, their knowledge of Scripture, etc. A Lutheran pastor friend of mine often likes to point out Protestants that are "more Catholic" than most Catholics either of us know. But this misses a crucial, simple point: this doesn't make any of them a Catholic. The temptation is construe this as only a minor matter-- a question of which church you hang your hat in on Sunday mornings, to think of it as just a minor matter of "formal membership" that is just an "organized religion thing" and that what REALLY counts is what's in your heart. But this view of the matter is very Protestant, secular, and wrong. It misses the interior meaning of what it means to be Catholic. The most biblically illiterate, unloveable Catholic still has something that no Protestant has: he or she is literally incorporated into the Body of Christ as He intended them to be.

I know that in today's Protestantized ethos, these may seem little more than empty words. But they're not. Catholicism doesn't teach that we're saved by believing in Christ (even demons do that), imitating Christ (since He did for us what we couldn't do for ourselves: die for our sins), or being externally "covered" with Christ's righteousnes (the way a pile of dung, according to Luther, is covered by clean white snow: that would still leave us pretty smelly on the inside)! Rather, the Church teaches that we're saved by being incorporated in to Christ through incorporation into His Body (=Church). The Eucharist is how we become "partakers in the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4); and no Protestant church has the real Body and Blood of Christ.

All of this is as hard for the secularized modern mind to see as it is for society today to see that sex belongs only in marriage, that "same-sex marriage" is an oxymoron, or that contraception is stupid. It is all so "counter-intuitive," people will think. And this is because people today have lost their ability to see the spiritual "inscape" of things, the internal meaning of things. If they saw Jesus today, they would see only a mortal man. If they examined the Bible today, they would see only a flawed, human book. If they examined the Church today, they would see only an imperfect human organization. Thus, they would miss the divinity of Christ, the divine revelation in Scripture, and the divine life of the Church which has the Holy Spirit as her soul.

Sara continues:

I really appreciate that you care about me and my happiness. I am not trying to avoid all suffering at all costs (which we know is impossible). I am aware of other people's fears based on their own personal experiences or the experiences of watching those they love suffer. I don't have any of those fears and do not plan on developing any...I'll just trust in God...especially because I know that both this man and myself are trying to do His Will.

I reply:

Your digressive strategies are showing: only that would have led you to try to pin the locus of the difficulty on "other people's fears based on their own personal experiences" here! Ha! Of course it's true that I've been divorced, like half the populations these days. But my personal experiences have little to do with the objective realities we're talking about here. The objections to mixed-marriages aren't something that can be psychologized away. If I was standing in the parking lot across the busy five-lane road from St. Aloysius Catholic Church, and I told you that was going to walk across the five lanes of traffic in order to go to Mass, and, furthermore, that I wasn't going to look either way to see if any traffic was coming, just because of other people's fears based on their personal experiences, but that I would simply close my eyes and step out across those five lanes of traffic and trust in God . . . what would you say to me? You ought to slap me silly and tell me I'm out of my mind!

What are the objective facts here?

1. The Church forbids mixed-marriages (with non-Catholics).
2. The Church tolerates (but does not approve) mixed marriages for grave reasons where both parties promise to raise the children Catholic, etc., and a special dispensation is granted.
3. Catholics who contracts a mixed marriage before a Protestant minister contract no marriage at all, commits a mortal sin and in principle should not be admitted to the Sacraments. Catholics who act thus are declared to be guilty of mortal sin, because they sin through disobedience, by refusing to conform to the precepts of the Church; they give great scandal, and deny the Faith; they turn their back upon the sacraments of the true Church and receive the rites of a Protestant sect. (Source.)

Don't let anyone tell you that the Church has "changed it's position on these matters. It hasn't, even though you'll find few people willing to tell you the hard truths. Here's Pope John Paul II's own declaration on the matter: (Matrimonia Mixta)

While all of this may seem negative at the moment, hopefully you will at least understand that these strictures surrounding marriage, just like the Church's prohibition of so-called "same-sex marriages," are intended for the protection and wellbeing and ultimate happiness of her children.

Three last things: first, these are "ecumenical" times, in which we like to stress what we have in common with other Christians, which is a good thing. But the danger is that we can easily lose sight of what we don't have in common and what is at stake in turning our backs on the Catholic Faith. Call to witness the hundreds of Catholics who went to their cruel deaths in England, hung, drawn-and-quartered, disemboweled, crushed with heavy weights (like Margaret Clitherow). All of these embraced death before they would accept a state-imposed religion (Anglicanism) that is very much more like traditional
Catholicism than any other Protestant religion today. Why did they do this? Why DIE rather than be Protestant? They could have saved their lives, their homes, kept their families intact, only by agreeing to go to a non-Catholic Christian Church! Why? Because they saw and understood something that we today are in danger of losing altogether: our understanding of our Faith.

Second, if you accept a difference of religion into your marriage, you don't accept a minor difference in preferences, like a difference in culinary tastes or even preferences for political parties (which is a great deal more significant). Rather, you are accepting a difference at the very heart of your marriage, in the area of those things that you trust and treasure most. At precisely that point you are saying: I am willing that in the most inimate part of our married life, there should be something alien and unreconciled between us.

Third, God "leads" us in different senses. Even though Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery in Egypt, God used this later to bring blessing to his brothers when they were starving and came down to Egypt to find food. God thus works all things together for good, or, if you prefer, "writes straight with crooked lines." Still, although we can see in retrospect that God used this evil act of betrayal on the part of Joseph's brothers to bring good out of it, we cannot say that those brothers were "led by God" to commit that act of betrayal. In doing that, they were not following the Lord's leading. Rather, they were spurning it. Hence, if we believe the Catholic Church has the authority of Christ behind it, it would be hard to ignore her teachings and simultaneously claim to be following Christ's will for us.

Now you're REALLY no longer going to want to have anything to do with me!!!

Have you read Sheldon Vanauken's love story, A SEVERE MERCY?