"Get married with a heretic": How couples live in which different religious views
Attitude to religion is both an intimate and complex question. It happens that people throughout their lives become more religious, someone, on the contrary, gradually refuses from faith. Sometimes this question arises especially acutely - for example, if a person enters into a relationship with a person of a different religion. We talked with several such couples about whether they have household or ethical difficulties, how relatives and friends behave, and how the issue of raising children is resolved.
I belong to the Catholic Church, my husband is Orthodox. Religion occupies an essential part of my life: I go to the Holy Mass on Sunday, I confess, I take communion, I pray at home alone and with children. My husband in life is more like an agnostic, one could even say that he is one of those who have God in his heart, but everything is a little different. He believes in God, speaks with Him, prays and calls for help, but does not go to any church or read any special Orthodox prayers. He does not need to bake a kulich and generally celebrate Easter, so our marriage is more like an atheist and Christian relationship than an ecumenical meeting between an Orthodox and a Catholic.
My religion doesn’t say such a thing about marriage between members of different religions and / or denominations. There are words in the Gospel that the family is the home church, there is a catechism that describes what responsibilities there is in a married marriage, there is a code of canon law, which states that a Catholic can be married not only with a Catholic, but also with a representative of another Christian confessions. You can get married with an atheist, you can even "get married" alone, without bringing your partner with me, they say, I promise God to love him and be with him until the end of my days.
Certainly, religion affects our family life, starting with the fact that family life itself does not seem to me without a wedding. In general, I think that we are not affected by the difference between our dogmas, but rather by our attitude. Let's say my husband loves the New Year, for him it is a family holiday, he has his favorite traditions, his own demands, like general cleaning of the house before December 31st. And I love Christmas, in early December I try to do something with the children: in order to prepare for this important day, we put an advent wreath and light candles. Twenty-fourth - twenty-fifth is my holiday, and it falls just on the hottest time of preparation for the New Year. We agreed that this year we will postpone the cleaning a week earlier and celebrate Christmas at this holiday table and with a decorated Christmas tree.
Another difficulty is the Sunday service. On the one hand, I always remember that on a day off you have to be at mass - either on Saturday evening, or at any time on Sunday, based on this we plan our rest and vacation. Sometimes differences in religiosity help a lot: for example, I can leave the children with my husband and go to the temple alone - while the children are small, and it is difficult for them to endure such a long journey. We all baptized in the Catholic Church, this is one of the conditions for admission to the wedding. If one of the spouses is not Catholic, then he writes in a special application form that the bride and groom fill out that he undertakes not to hinder the upbringing of children in the Catholic faith. Without this commitment, the wedding is impossible. It is difficult to find a Catholic in our country, so my family is more surprised by this.
As an adult I joined the Roman Catholic Church, my wife is a neo-pagan. It’s hard to say how religious we are both. I go to church on Sundays, try to live according to what they say in sermons, but it’s clear that there is always room to grow. Religion is very important to me - first and foremost as a way to connect with God. It is good to know that belonging to the Catholic Church connects me with a lot of people, living and dead, whom I greatly respect, with European culture. And for my wife, religion is devoid of any organization due to the specificity of the neo-paganism of the Western spirit, it does not have clear obligations regarding practice, but it deeply influences its perception of the world around and itself in it.
The Catholic Church does not interfere with marriages with representatives of other religions. In Russia, of course, this is especially true: Catholics are an overwhelming minority here. There is a certain form of sacrament for this, slightly different from the ordinary marriage. My wife readily agreed and, in turn, asked me to perform a neopagan ritual of fastening the family together. Of course, this happened on different days, like a secular wedding.
My religion affects my family life rather in a moral sense: when we are offended at each other or we quarrel, faith helps me to step over these problems, to apologize, or simply to support those moments when I am very sad. When I observe fasting, my wife focuses on this, making food for both of us, but since the main thing for a Catholic is not to give up meat and other products, and general moderation, it is not very difficult. We do not refuse contraception, although the Catholic Church formally opposes.
There were no difficulties due to religion, except for one moment in preparation for the wedding, when we were forced to listen to a rather strange lecture by a woman who spoke not only against abortion (as might be expected), but also against vaccinations and ultrasound. - in general, with a full set of obscurantism, which no longer has any relation to the position of the Church. But in this case, we had no disagreement about how to treat it. We pledged that when we have children, we will introduce them to the Catholic faith, but the choice, of course, will be theirs.
I profess Islam, my fiancé Giuseppe is Catholic. My parents do not go to the mosque and do not pray, but in our family it is generally accepted that we are Muslim - these are our roots. Boys are circumcised, girls are not forced to do anything - I feel like a Muslim because I was born in this religion.
Giuseppe was baptized, he underwent Catholic rites, sang for a very long time in the children's choir in the church. Then his relationship with the church did not work out, because there is terrible corruption. He watched it as a child, and at a certain point simply decided that he did not have to go to church to feel that he was religious. I have the same position. I never felt the need to go to the mosque to pray there, in public. I believe that there is a higher power that protects us, loves, helps, but does not necessarily call it Allah or God.
To be honest, I know quite a bit about my religion. But I am sure that Muslims cannot marry those who profess a different faith. My brother is also a Muslim, with circumcision, but he married a Russian girl, a Christian. They have no problems - in our family, of course, there was a scandal, but they all survived. By my occasion, they were already more or less ready.
When Giuseppe brought me to meet his parents, the first thing his mother asked was: "When will you change religion? When will you get married in church?" I still laugh at this, I hope it was not serious. We are not married yet, we are going to get married in September in the city administration, not in the church. My fiancé's mom took it quite hard, but in the end it is our life.
Religion does not particularly affect our family life. I really want to know more about Giuseppe, so I think I will study Catholicism, I find it interesting. Here in Italy, a crucifix can be found everywhere: at the gate, in garages, on key chains for keys. Religion is commercialized. Now I am used to it, but at first it was rather strange to watch it.
Of course, I would really like to raise children without religion, not to impose anything on them, so that at a certain moment they could learn and choose everything themselves. But I know that my future mother-in-law will not understand this, because she is quite religious. So our children will be catholic like dad. The influence of the family is very important here. Parents are not eternal, and at some point you realize that you are ready to do something so that they are happy, calm and happy. Children will have the opportunity to go to church and sing in the choir, they will feel their belonging. All Italian children had this childhood, let ours have one too - I don’t see anything terrible in it.
How do my parents relate to this? In our family, only grandmothers are very religious, and they pray for the whole family. As a child, I also got up on a rug and pretended to pray, but it was rather a childish monkeyery than a conscious appeal to God. My mother is rather irreligious, but when I said that I wanted to change my religion in order to understand more about the new family and Catholicism, she said: "You are giving up your roots. Through my dead body!" While the conversation on this topic, we closed.
I am from a Muslim family, and my husband is from an Orthodox. My family is not very religious, parents are quite secular people born and raised in Russia, so I did not receive any strong religious education, only my grandmother and uncle were truly religious. Now I understand that we simply considered ourselves Muslims, but in fact it didn’t affect our lives in any way - except that there was never pork and alcohol in the house, but in the mosque I was literally a couple of times and never did namaz. Already at a conscious age, while studying at the ISAA MSU, I became interested in Islam, went to Qur'an studies, began to attend a mosque, and even observed fasting in the month of Ramadan. But the family reacted to this very negatively, apparently, they were afraid that I was "recruited" somewhere. In general, this is where my relationship with Islam ended. Yes, I still consider myself to be a believer, but I do not consider myself to be to any denomination, I just believe in a higher intelligence, and for me this is a personal, intimate story.
My husband is from an Orthodox family, baptized. I did not see him pray, but he often goes to the temple to light a candle for the rest of his relatives. We have never spoken on this topic, but apparently he has some kind of relationship with God. We are married, but there was no religious ceremony, and such a thought did not even occur to me. In the place where our wedding took place, there was a church, but a Catholic one, where, for obvious reasons, we would not be exactly married.
By and large, religion does not affect our family life in any way, it is a personal matter for everyone; difficulties and differences on this subject never arose. Unless I was hiding from my dad that we baptized a child, but later, having forgotten, I sent a photo of my daughter with a cross on her neck. In response, there was a long silence, but later Mom said that her father had come to terms and said that the main thing for him was her happiness and health.
We recently baptized our child, and her mother-in-law takes her to church on Sundays. Daughters just a year and a half, but she already has a children's Bible. I think if we lived in Russia, I would not dare to do this for a long time, perhaps even resisted. But we live in another country, and I realize that, with a high probability, my child will absorb local culture rather than Russian, and will consider himself a Spaniard, not a Russian woman, and while this thought scares me. The baptism of a child is my attempt to introduce her to Russian culture, to give her some moral guidelines, in addition to those that we will broadcast in the family. I even think about giving it, when I grow up, to a Sunday school at the Orthodox Church. I understand that, most likely, my plan will fail miserably, and I will not force anyone to be religious, but at least I will try to send my children.
My friends had such an episode - the son comes home from the guests, he is asked: "What Easter were you on - Orthodox or Jewish?" And he replies: "How do I know? On the table, as usual, matzo and Easter cakes." But when I got married as a child (at the age of 20), I had the absolute knowledge that the family should live "in the same religion." Why is it me, I did not really think about it. I grew up in two cultures - Orthodox and Jewish, so it was absolutely no matter where to go. At school I wore a magendovid - once I was ripped off my neck in a junction. But there was no true faith in me, I perceived all this as a package of traditions: common family values that do not need to be finished and invented.
Who offered to get married, I will not even remember. But the wedding ceremony is really much cooler than the woman in the registry office. Before the wedding, I even went to church to see if they were embarrassed that I did not believe in the resurrection. They said that ok. My husband really wanted to get married - it seemed to him that then everything would be exactly glued together. It's all the same as not to step on the cracks on the pavement, so that the wish will be fulfilled. Of course, all this is complete bullshit. No wedding saved my family from divorce.
How did I decide to baptize the children? All the same argument: a beautiful ceremony, the whole family at the table. Something very cultural. Children grew up and do not fully understand why I baptized them. I wonder what they would say if I cut them off?
I do not have friends of orthodox families, but there are families where different religious traditions are observed. It is very pleasant to go to Sabbath and paint eggs, but, in my opinion, this has nothing to do with real religiosity. Faith requires a large investment and some special attitude to life, for me it has become absolutely impossible. To live a family honestly in different canons is cunning, if only because someone will have to give in in children - and this is not at all the same thing as tolerantly accepting the religion of a partner.
I am Orthodox, my husband is a Catholic. I am more religious than my husband: for him it’s rather not a way of life, but a connection with God. For me, religion means a lot, but I am a non-standard Orthodox person. I am baptized in the Orthodox faith and I am passing through some rites in the Orthodox Church, but I treat this a little differently - as, let's say, to a physical object.
Difficulties due to different religions never arose. When I went to confess to my father before we decided to get married, and asked me to bless me to marry, he said to me: "To be married with a heretic? Yes, never!" After that, my husband and I went to the Catholic Church, where we were married. In the Catholic Church, a fundamentally different approach. During the preparation for the wedding in the Orthodox Church, talks are held with the priest, where he tells people what unbelievers they are, urges them to think ten times - in general, this absolutely does not contribute to the thoughts of the eternal.
In the Catholic Church, we had a three-month preparation: once a week (as I remember, on Wednesdays at eight o'clock in the evening) we met with my sister Irina. These conversations have given a lot. We talked for two or three hours, read the Bible from the point of view of family ethics, and this greatly changed the view of marriage in principle. Every time, returning after these classes, we looked at each other and thought: do we need it at all in this form or not? Therefore, in this regard, I even liked the approach in the Catholic Church more.
When we decided to get married in a Catholic church, my family reacted to this with suspicion - they are all Orthodox, they follow traditions. But since this is the Christian faith, we have very few differences - in fact, if we take some fundamental points, they are one and the same. As a result, they were not against.
In the Catholic church, when people from two different denominations are married, there is a condition that children should be baptized in the Catholic faith. My husband did not mind if our daughter was baptized in the Orthodox faith, since we live in the Russian Federation, speak Russian, and having another confession, living and working here, can be problematic. Therefore, we went to a Catholic church and received official permission to baptize children into the Orthodox faith, despite that commitment. I was very worried about this.
I am baptized in the Catholic Church in Polish traditions. For me, religion is above all family values, respect for elders. Religious holidays we usually celebrated at home. I am also close to the Slavic traditions, for me religion is also a belief in nature. I was born and raised in Kazakhstan, and I treat both Muslims and Christians equally respectfully. I have no experience of communicating with people of other religions.
My husband is Orthodox, and for him the Orthodox traditions have more significance than for me the traditions of my religion. He holds Lent, goes to church for religious holidays, I sometimes make him a company. We are married, there was no religious ceremony, but in the future I would really like it. So far, my husband and I have not discussed this.
We bring up our daughter in Orthodox traditions, but also tell her about the religion of my ancestors. We baptized her in the Orthodox Church in Barcelona, the father allowed me to be present at the sacrament of baptism, despite the fact that I am a Catholic. I also believe that we are Christians and we have one faith. For me, God the Creator is one, and I see no difference in the Catholic and Orthodox faith.
We have no difficulties because of different religions - on the contrary, we celebrate Christmas, Easter twice a year, if it does not coincide on dates, as this year (and if it does, it is a double celebration). I bake not only Easter cakes according to Orthodox traditions, but also poppy buns, like my Polish grandmother used to bake. Family and friends in our case perceive us to be similar, because in our religions there is not much difference. Мне важно, чтобы в семье было взаимное уважение, и в этом случае нет разницы ни между людьми разной национальности, ни между людьми разной веры.
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