Friday, June 17, 2011

Does a family who pray together REALLY stay together?

Should I have married someone with the same religious views as me? It’s 2011…is religion really still a deal breaker?

As a little girl I always went to mass every Sunday. Our closest friends were all through the church (they still are). I was baptized Catholic, went to catechism as a young girl and was confirmed in the Catholic religion as a teenager. I was raised with the Catholic beliefs and taught the importance of God in your home. My father always says “God is first, your mom is second and you and your brother are third.” It’s easy to see why as I got older, I started to think that my perfect mate would also be Catholic. Needless to say that was not God’s plan. I fell in love with a man who has no religious preference. He believes there is a God, but has a difficult time understanding the theories behind the Bible. I promise you he completely and utterly respects everyone’s religion and is sincerely interested in learning about them all. When I ask him questions about this (and believe me, I ask a lot) I always find it interesting to hear his responses. It makes me realize how literal he sees the world. You see, my husband and his siblings were not raised the way I was. They did not have religion or faith in their everyday life. They were not taught the importance of faith in their home. Not to say that he had a better or worse upbringing, just different.

I knew immediately when I posted this subject on Facebook I would get several responses. Of course, most people said that you should be of the same faith as someone to live a long and happy life. Some even went as far as to say it’s one of the reasons they divorced their spouse. The idea of raising your children together with the same beliefs is important. While I agree with almost everything people said, it didn’t mean it applied to my life. I have to admit, if my husband was a devout practicing Muslim it would be much more difficult. **Not just Muslim, but for the sake of this blog that’s the first religion that came to mind** I say this because it would conflict with my religion and my beliefs, and I believe that could be an issue in a marriage. I’m also wondering, how many couples who are both Jewish, Catholic, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, etc did not end up living a happy life? So I looked it up and it turns out that Christians have a 27% more chance of getting divorced and religiously speaking have the highest divorce rate. I couldn’t find much on inter-mixed religious marriages but I can only assume it doesn’t work in our favor. Religious is a way of recognizing your values and outlook on life in general. If they are different than your spouse, how would that work? I guess I’ll let you know in 10 years when I’m still married to my wonderful non-Catholic husband!

So while my husband and I are not both Catholic, we’re both in agreement with raising our children Catholic. We’re also excited to raise them with high moral standards, values, generosity, kindness, love and many more things that we both believe in.
EMM

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