Update on Daughter married to a Catholic

Desert Reign

LIFETIME MEMBER
LIFETIME MEMBER
You don't need to find positive things to believe about the Catholic church. When you decided to have children, it was so as to bring up adults who were capable of making their own decisions and being a valuable part of the world. You need, more than anything, to let them go and be the adults they want to be. You have to respect your children. Finding reasons to respect them, such as positive things to say about Roman Catholicism, as if to validate your respect for them, is not what helps there. If I were this Bryan, I would not be impressed if you tried to say something positive through gritted teeth about his religion. I would be more impressed if you were honest about your dislike of it in a positive and non-judgemental way. You need to let them go and be themselves. If you don't, like most children who become adults and their parents have serious disagreements with them, they will distance themselves from you and you will lose potential friends and new opportunities to show love to them and their children.
 

heir

TOL Subscriber
Bryan is a better person than me.

They want four children.

I must find more real positives about the Roman Catholic Church. (This is a hard exercise for me but everyone needs a second chance sometime.)
You will compromise what you know to be true about the RCC (2 Corinthians 11:13-15 KJV) instead of standing on truth? We are not called to compromise!

2 Timothy 1:7 For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

2 Timothy 1:8 Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner: but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God;

2 Timothy 1:9 Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began,
 

User Name

Greatest poster ever
Banned
You will compromise what you know to be true about the RCC (2 Corinthians 11:13-15 KJV) instead of standing on truth? We are not called to compromise!

Oh, so you think salvation is works-based? Got it.
 

Stuu

New member
Bryan is a better person than me.

They want four children.

I must find more real positives about the Roman Catholic Church. (This is a hard exercise for me but everyone needs a second chance sometime.)
I think your situation depends very much on the attitude of the Catholic in question to the Roman church.

For example, the overwhelming majority of US Catholics (can I assume you are Amercan?) ignore the Vatican's teaching on contraception. So four children is going to be possible to plan with contraception.

The pope complains loudly about causes of poverty in the world but remains silent on the most significant one: keeping women enslaved to their reproductive cycles, and he remains silent of course because the teachings of his church make that problem significantly worse. And don't get me started on the evil "Mother Theresa", who was not a champion for the impoverished, but a promoter of poverty for it's own noble sake. Nasty.

So, not off to a good start with seeing the Catholic church in a good light. If your Catholic is only a token Catholic then it'll probably be fine. The kids will be sent to Catholic schools, which have higher rates of conversion to atheism amongst their former students than other kinds of school. At least the boys won't have their genitals mutilated in a bizarre ritual as they would in the other Abrahamist faiths. Their knees will eventually recover from all the kneeling, although their souls probably will never get over the guilt.

My suggestion, having read a reasonable amount about the Catholic church, is to try and stay as ignorant of it as you can. It can look friendly on the outside but the more you read the more evil it turns out to be, sadly.

Good luck, and remember, humans are humans first, and not Catholics first, despite what the nasty church might say.

Stuart
 

Lon

Well-known member
A little long, so a minute or two longer than I normally intend another to read a response I give (skip to #6 if it is more convenient):

Bryan is a better person than me.

They want four children.

I must find more real positives about the Roman Catholic Church. (This is a hard exercise for me but everyone needs a second chance sometime.)
My kids have not found mates being young yet.

1) I pray they find Godly mates.
2) I will have to live with the degree they understand the gospel of grace, being unequally (or perhaps equally) yoked.
3) I will continue praying for them and my grandkids, to love the Lord God
4) I don't know what I'd 'do' when/if it came to one marrying a Catholic.
It carries a large chasm and that alone carries grave consequences to the seriousness of what grandkids will hear concerning the Scriptures and importantly the gospel of Grace. Both the Catholic AND the Protestant compromised or weren't grounded or neither could have married the other.
5) Grace God may yet use the union to bring His purposes. I worry for a couple that have lost their life-driving purpose, both the Catholic, and the Protestant. Compromise means both of them have other things on their minds and other goals. Especially your grandkids will need to hear grace, and so I'd pray for opportunities to grace your grandkids as well as grace your daughter and husband. In my family, it is ever my prayer to grace the unbelieving, and bring them to the throne of God, and grace of Jesus Christ. I also pray often for the Love that covers a multitude of sins and doing it wrong, that Christ will shine beyond both my obvious rejection/disappointments and that He may be seen. I very much resist going to a Catholic church for baptisms, funerals and some marriages, but that's the stance I have chosen. I think it important, again, to fight the battles against the gospel that you believe God has called you to personally fight, and to allow Him to fight other ones while loving and gracing them. We worship God in spirit AND truth, thus you will tend to choose based on that spirit/love/truth tension. I don't think, if you are ever conscious of uncompromising God's truth, loving as deeply as you can, and walking not in your own strength, but His, that you can make a mistake. My prayers are with you.

6) I pray for me, and my continual contacts. I have to be about Christ's business and I stand up against lies and mistruth but I try to ensure that I fight the battles Christ brings me and not pick others, to pray often for myself to be whom I need to be, and that they will encounter Christ more often in their daily lives. I try to remember Christ is Sovereign, and to do only the part I've been called to play while allowing Him to be Sovereign. Paul said he planted, another watered but only God gave increase. I don't always know my gifts, but I've tried to learn to do that which I've been called to do.

I had to learn to trust Christ for my step-father. He was Seventh day Adventist. In my youth, I tried sharing Christ often with him until the day he told me "don't ever share this with me again." My 'part' in the gospel was diminished to prayer, and being a light. Almost 30 years later, my father made a profession of faith and was a changed man. Someone else was part of that, I had to be satisfied and content that my part was limited and to know more specifically what part I was supposed to play and to realize it wasn't the part I had thought. I prayed often, and prayed too my life was a light and reflection. I am humbled and praise God often that He cared for my step-father and brought him to salvation.

I pray some small service and or meaningful conveyance finds you in these words and my story. I do not know my part in your life that will be played, but it too is a very very small part, and so I've prayed and will pray more for you and your family. His presence, comfort, and blessings -Lonnie
 

dialm

BANNED
Banned
As a kid Bryan went to the Roman Catholic school, first thru twelfth grade. Then to Purdue. He is intelligent. And polite. She seems to be happy. What more can I as a dad ask for?

I'm a Protestant. Have been taught that the Roman Church failed to educate. Was it a Pope Gregory who said 'images are the books of the uneducated'? Maybe I need to revisit and see exactly what this pope was saying?

(Don't worry, while I like my son-in-law I am very skidish when it comes to popes as they are like kings.)
 
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