Christendom’s Most Eligible Bachelor: Traditional Catholic Looking for Wife Blog

[Red Hair, Black Dress]

When Mr Dress and I married in the Catholic church he was still a Protestant, but had readily agreed to be married by a priest in my faith.  FF 8 years and he has gone through RCIA on his own initiative and been confirmed a Catholic.  He asked our priest to reaffirm our vows because he felt that he really wanted to be married by the Catholic Church because he was Catholic.

Our priest said, well you know you're already married in the eyes of the Church. Mr. Dress said yes -- but think of this as belt and suspenders.  They both laughed and we ended up having a small ceremony with a few friends as witnesses and afterward drinks and apps at the bar just down the street (priest came too).

But sadly according to Trad Man I'm not really married at all no many how many times we've said vows. [snerk]

[Palimpsest]

4 hours ago, ViolaSebastian said:

Forgive my ignorance on the subject, but do Catholics (TLM or NO) believe that attending a religious service of a different faith to be putting their souls at risk?

Well, they used to.  Even NO Catholics.  Mr. P is as lapsed as you can get but I married into a very devout Catholic family.

My late (very devout) MIL had to do a huge penance in the mid 1940s because her BFF eloped.  My MIL was her bridesmaid in a Protestant ceremony and had to confess this sin.  She was fine with NO and Vatican II but that shook her up so much that in order for them to attend our COE wedding in 1979 we had to jump through hoops to get a Dispensation for Mr. P to marry in a Prod church so she could be there.  We also had to get a separate dispensation so a priest friend of ours could say a prayer during the ceremony without getting disciplined.

23 minutes ago, Hane said:

 The ex’s mother made a big shebang about having to get her priest’s permission to attend. (I can picture him struggling not to roll his eyes at her.)

When was this?  Was she Trad or just a PITA?

On another note, we had a family funeral this week.  One of Mr. P's uncles.  The last of that generation, a devout NO Catholic, and a very sweet man.  He was late stage Alzheimer's, may he rest in peace.

The funeral Mass went quite quickly.  The NO but apparently stick-up-the-rear priest declared that only Catholics (heavy stress) in a state of grace (more heavy stress) should come up for communion.  

Well, apparently that ruled out three quarters of the mourners, two out of three of the deceased's children, all but one of his grandchildren, and 5 out of 6 of the pall bearers, of whom Mr. P was one.

It saved a lot of time but it didn't seem terribly Christian and was definitely not in line with what the deceased would have wanted.  

2 hours ago, Joyleaf said:

I can see it in the "Finding a Catholic wife is very difficult" video.
I tried to take screenshots of moments where it is visible but it was difficult because the blurring increases when he turns his head.

You are right.  That does look very like a hearing aid.  @Gobsmacked, I stand corrected.

Edited December 7, 2017 by Palimpsest

[Hane]

@Palimpsest , she was just a PITA and a drama queen. It was in 1985. 

Re the big darn deal about Only Catholics in a State of Grace going to communion:  A few years ago, when my BIL’s dad passed away, he asked me to be the lector at the funeral Mass. It turned out the priest knew me—he’d been the chaplain of the Divorced and Separated Catholics group I’d belonged to in the early ‘80s. He *didn’t* know I’d become a UU, and I didn’t volunteer the info. He told me to read the Good Catholics Only text at the Mass. I conveniently forgot, and even went so far as to swap in gender-inclusive language in place of the He/Him/His sexist stuff in the lectionary when I did the readings.* Nobody noticed.

*Back circa 1990, the lectionary used gender-inclusive language for a while, then went back to the sexist wording.

 

[PennySycamore]

@Palimpsest and @Hane, about a week after my daughter died, a La Leche League Leader friend's husband was killed in a car crash.  Many of the Leaders in South Carolina knew Tom as he'd spoken at our conferences and workshops.  (He was a family physician.)  So we, the LLL Leaders of SC, gathered for another funeral, both Catholic.  At my daughter's funeral, the priest said nothing about how only Catholics could receive communion.  However, at Tom's funeral, the priest did say that only Catholics in a state of grace were welcome to receive the Eucharist.  I was sitting next to my dear friend, Janet, who was Episcopalian.  She went forward for communion anyway.  As Janet said to me "Tom would have wanted me to." and I agreed wholeheartedly.

[feministxtian]

At my mother's funeral mass, the kids and I did the readings...priest knew that we were all non-practicing Catholics and didn't bat an eyelash. We chose not to go to communion, that would have been just a bit too much. 

[ViolaSebastian]

Thank you, everyone, for answering my question. I’m some what befuddled by all this, because my very Catholic BFF was the matron of honor in my big heretical Episcopalian wedding, and it never came up as an issue. Likewise, I was a bridesmaid in her ceremony, and it wasn’t an issue then, either. 

Edited December 8, 2017 by ViolaSebastian

[WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?]

7 hours ago, Hane said:

I may not be a practicing Catholic anymore, but his denigrating the consecration and Eucharist as a “cookie ceremony” makes me LIVID.

I sometimes feel that way when my mother-in-law refers to infant baptism (like my Presbyterian parents had done for me as a baby) as "sprinkling". I may have chosen to leave the Presbyterian church and have an immersion baptism as an adult, but I see no reason to disparage their beliefs. 

Edited December 8, 2017 by WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?
missing bit

[Foudeb]

14 hours ago, Cleopatra7 said:

I know that in the pre-Vatican II era, it was a sin for a Catholic to attend a mixed marriage (ie a Catholic and someone of another religion) or be in such a union oneself. Joe and Rose Kennedy disowned their daughter Kathleen when she got involved with a divorced Anglican nobleman in the late 1940s. Kathleen was already estranged because her first husband, who died in service during WWII, had been Anglican as well, but a divorced non-Catholic was too much for Rose to bear. She and her would-be husband were killed in a plane crash in 1948 and Joe Sr was the only member of her big family to attend her funeral. That’s how mixed marriages used to be treated back in the day.

As for Catholics attending Protestant services, in the pre-Vatican II era it was forbidden. Today Catholics can attend Protestant services but they cannot take communion or use said service as fulfilling their Sunday obligation to attend mass.

I think that depends on where you lived - I know of plenty of mixed marriages. The Church's stance is that converting your fiancé is better but if that fails, they can still get married by a Catholic priest as long as they promise to bring up any children Catholic (how they expected non-Catholics to keep their promise is a mystery to me - most didn't. It was the main cause of strife between my Catholic grandmother and atheist grandfather*). Admiral Horthy (who ruled Hungary between the two world wars) was a protestant (who had a Catholic mother himself) who married a Catholic and together they raised protestant sons and catholic daughters. And there was nothing unusual in that scenario.

I suspect it's because in countries where Catholics are the majority (or near majority) they don't feel threatened and marrying non-Catholics from religious minorities is the best way to get rid of said religious minorities, long-term, assuming the children of mixed marriages do indeed end up Catholic themselves.

* side note: when she went to complain to her priest, he told her to submit and obey her husband in all things. The joys of the self-defeating religious patriarchy - submitting to that particular order meant only one of their children ended up Catholic in the long run.

[smittykins]

My cousin converted to Catholicism in the 80s, and at her wedding Mass, her parents and our grandmother, all Presbyterian, received Communion(I assumed they obtained a dispensation).  As I recall, this was just before the notice that "We welcome those not united with us to worship, but they must not receive Communion" appeared in the missalettes).

[keen23]

21 hours ago, Cleopatra7 said:

I know that in the pre-Vatican II era, it was a sin for a Catholic to attend a mixed marriage (ie a Catholic and someone of another religion) or be in such a union oneself. Joe and Rose Kennedy disowned their daughter Kathleen when she got involved with a divorced Anglican nobleman in the late 1940s. Kathleen was already estranged because her first husband, who died in service during WWII, had been Anglican as well, but a divorced non-Catholic was too much for Rose to bear. She and her would-be husband were killed in a plane crash in 1948 and Joe Sr was the only member of her big family to attend her funeral. That’s how mixed marriages used to be treated back in the day.

As for Catholics attending Protestant services, in the pre-Vatican II era it was forbidden. Today Catholics can attend Protestant services but they cannot take communion or use said service as fulfilling their Sunday obligation to attend mass.

My husband's grandmother would not attend our year 2000 wedding, because it "wasn't a real wedding" as we weren't getting married in a Catholic church. And, I was raised Protestant to boot.

[PennySycamore]

@WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?, your post reminded me of something that happened several years ago:  My nephew had married a Methodist, but they had started going to a Presbyterian church, of a more conservative denomination, I'm sure.  Anyway, around the time that he and his wife had their first baby, nephew was going to go to the pastor of his church and tell him just how wrong infant baptism was.  I thought that was a real dick move on his part.  If you objected to infant baptism, why the hell did you join a Presbyterian church?  And did you require your wife to get re-baptized by immersion before you got married?  GAH!

[Hane]

@Foudeb, when my Episcopalian friend was attending premarital counseling with her Catholic fiancé in 1981, the priest told them that, while the Church preferred that their kids be raised Catholic, the health of the marriage was more important, and that, if insisting on raising the children Catholic would cause an obstacle between them, it would be fine to raise the kids in a different religion.

[fundiefun]

Pope Francis apparently wants to change the words to "The Lord's Prayer" I wonder how long it will take for Whittle's head to explode over this because the Pope is the Holy Father in his faith and the head honcho. I wonder if he respects the Pope or is going the direction of SSPX who in some circles they think the pope should be dead. 

[EmiGirl]

34 minutes ago, fundiefun said:

Pope Francis apparently wants to change the words to "The Lord's Prayer"

How can he change the words when it's actually in the Bible?

[fundiefun]

2 minutes ago, EmiGirl said:

How can he change the words when it's actually in the Bible?

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42279427

 

The current wording that says "lead us not into temptation" is not a good translation because God does not lead humans to sin, he says.

His suggestion is to use "do not let us fall into temptation" instead, he told Italian TV on Wednesday night.

The Lord's Prayer is the best-known prayer in Christianity.

The pontiff said France's Roman Catholic Church was now using the new wording "do not let us fall into temptation" as an alternative, and something similar should be used worldwide.

"Do not let me fall into temptation because it is I who fall, it is not God who throws me into temptation and then sees how I fell," he told TV2000, an Italian Catholic TV channel.

"A father does not do that, a father helps you to get up immediately."

It is a translation from the Latin Vulgate, a 4th-Century Latin translation of the Bible, which itself was translated from ancient Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic.

Since the beginning of his papacy, Pope Francis has not shied away from controversy and has tackled some issues head-on, Vatican observers say.

[keen23]

1 hour ago, fundiefun said:

Pope Francis apparently wants to change the words to "The Lord's Prayer" I wonder how long it will take for Whittle's head to explode over this because the Pope is the Holy Father in his faith and the head honcho. I wonder if he respects the Pope or is going the direction of SSPX who in some circles they think the pope should be dead. 

There are multiple versions of the Lord's Prayer

and please forgive us our sins

as we forgive those who sin against us.

vs

and please forgive us our trespasses

as we forgive those who trespass against us.

I've even seen:

and please forgive us our wrongs

as we forgive those who wrong against us.

 

[Foudeb]

3 hours ago, Hane said:

@Foudeb, when my Episcopalian friend was attending premarital counseling with her Catholic fiancé in 1981, the priest told them that, while the Church preferred that their kids be raised Catholic, the health of the marriage was more important, and that, if insisting on raising the children Catholic would cause an obstacle between them, it would be fine to raise the kids in a different religion.

Sounds like a sensible view! 

[TeddyBonkers]

Family legend has it that Dad's grandmother wept all through Mom and Dad's wedding because he had left the Catholic church and was marrying a heathen Lutheran.

She'd spin in her grave if she knew I married a Baptist....

[hoipolloi]

2 hours ago, fundiefun said:

Since the beginning of his papacy, Pope Francis has not shied away from controversy and has tackled some issues head-on, Vatican observers say.

Not a Catholic and not likely to ever be one, but will admit that tears came to my eyes when I read Pope Francis' pronouncement that our pets will be in heaven with us.

IF anything were ever likely to make me think about converting, it would be the prospect of seeing my beloved dogs & cats in the afterlife.

[Red Hair, Black Dress]

My MIL is virulently anti-Catholic; she threatened to boycott our wedding because we were being married in Church.   She was not happy in the least when she found out he had converted. He never told her; she caught sight of his saint's medal about 4 years after the fact.

His paternal grandparents were also a mixed marriage.  Grandpa was a staunch Presbyterian - Calvinist/ John Knox type. Grandmother was a Catholic from a long line of faithful devout Catholics.  They eloped in 1925 and were married by an Episcopal minister.  Grandpa adamantly refused to be married in the Church.

Grandpa told his parents 6 months later (in a letter) he married and a Catholic at that, His parents seem to have reacted so badly (an ugly nasty letter in reply) Grandpa didn't speak to them for 4 years.  Detente was reach when my FIL was born in 1929. 

However,  Grandpa refused to let the children be Catholic.  My FIL and his siblings were all baptized and raised Presbyterian. All of the cousins from Grandmother's siblings were /are Catholic. As you can imagine there are lots.

Mr Dress told me his grandmother never once went to church with Grandpa and her children. I asked if she secretly went to Mass but he doesn't know for sure but suspects.  He's pretty sure if she did Grandpa knew as they were crazy in love their entire life together.  I understand that back when they were married the Church considered them "living in sin" because they weren't married by a Catholic priest.

About a year ago we were going through his grandfather papers (he kept everything).  We found literally 100s of cards from grandmother's friends and relatives sent after her death to Grandpa indicating that Masses in perpetuity were going to be said for her. 

I really think she was a practicing (albeit in semi secret) Catholic all her life and believe she is smiling down on Mr Dress for continuing in her faith.

 

Edited December 8, 2017 by Red Hair, Black Dress

[smittykins]

3 hours ago, keen23 said:

There are multiple versions of the Lord's Prayer

and please forgive us our sins

as we forgive those who sin against us.

vs

and please forgive us our trespasses

as we forgive those who trespass against us.

I've even seen:

and please forgive us our wrongs

as we forgive those who wrong against us.

 

And forgive us our debts

As we forgive our debtors

IME, the liturgical churches tend to use "trespasses" while non-liturgical ones use "debts."

[ViolaSebastian]

2 hours ago, hoipolloi said:

Not a Catholic and not likely to ever be one, but will admit that tears came to my eyes when I read Pope Francis' pronouncement that our pets will be in heaven with us.

IF anything were ever likely to make me think about converting, it would be the prospect of seeing my beloved dogs & cats in the afterlife.

My boyfriend once had a philosophical conversation with a priest on this very topic. The priest told him that since animals were always in a state of grace, that they would go to heaven. I thought that was a lovely way of looking at it. 

[Hane]

In 2946, when my dad insisted on converting to Catholicism before marrying my mom, his entire Baptist family boycotted the wedding, except for Cousin Romeo, a painfully shy guy who insisted on standing up for what he thought was right.

[Quiver Full of Kittens]

23 minutes ago, ViolaSebastian said:

My boyfriend once had a philosophical conversation with a priest on this very topic. The priest told him that since animals were always in a state of grace, that they would go to heaven. I thought that was a lovely way of looking at it. 

A teacher in my parochial school once told me that since Heaven will be perfect, of course animals will be there. There is no way it could be perfect without them. 

I loved that sentiment and still firmly stand by it, Pope endorsement or no.

[bjr70]

My boyfriend once had a philosophical conversation with a priest on this very topic. The priest told him that since animals were always in a state of grace, that they would go to heaven. I thought that was a lovely way of looking at it. 

My mom had words with a Sunday school teacher after I ended up sobbing one day. The teacher told me animals don't have souls, and wouldn't go to heaven. I was devastated that my dog wouldn't go to heaven. The pastor had to calm me down and tell me that of course my dog would be in heaven waiting for me.

That lady never taught Sunday school again while I was there. Funny enough I ended up converting to Judaism as an adult. Trauma, I tell you. This was a United Methodist church, too.