Married to a Catholic: What could possibly go wrong? |
The furor started with a statement by America’s vice president.
“Do I hope that eventually she is somehow moved by what I was moved by in church?” J.D. Vance responded to a question regarding his Hindu wife. “Yeah,” the VP—a Catholic convert—said, “because I believe in the Christian Gospel…”
And so the floodgates came crashing open.
Vance’s sentiments “are reflective of a belief that there is only one true path to salvation,” grumbled The Hindu American Foundation. Warned author Susan Katz Miller: “To respect your partner and everything they bring…is [what] you need…in a marriage.”
Interfaith marriage is a subject dear to my heart. My mother, a Jewish Holocaust survivor from Germany, married an agnostic Methodist from Montana, who became my father. And yet I was raised Jewish.
My former wife, a Catholic, converted to Judaism following the birth of our first child. And now I’m married to another Catholic, a Filipina with whom I live in her predominantly Catholic native country, raising our children in their mother’s faith. And yet my son wears a mezuzah, and my daughter sports a Star of David. All of which is to say, hey, it’s complicated.
But only a little. Because we respect each other’s faiths and don’t see them as........