Baptism Decision When Parents Are Different Religions

M., our family is Jewish and my daughter-in-law and her family is Catholic. They were lucky to find a place where families raise their children in both religions.

The children are now 5, 8, and 10. They are not confused. They embraced both religions but the older one has announced that he wants to be Jewish and the middle one told everyone that he wants to be Catholic.

The middle one was just Babtized and is going to have his 1st communion in a week. The older one is going to Hebrew School And the middle child wants to go to Hebrew School also. And they are all happy.

Where is it written that your child cannot be raised in a home with two religions, raised in 2 religions and given the freedom to make a choice if they choose to?

As long as your home is filled with love and respect for each other's beliefs, anything is possible. You just have to ignore all outside family pressures.

Good luck M.
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I am Lutherana dn my husband is catholic and the only reason why we decied to raise the kids catholic is because our pastro at my church suggersted something. he siad that if we raise the kids catholic and tey want to become lutheran or any other religion later it is very easy to do so, just pretty much join the church and they have a ceremony for you. If you become Lutheran and want to become Catholic later you have to take tons of classes and jump though hoops etc to become catholic. i was still against it since you know I will end up taking the kids to church even thouh my husband says he will. But it is me involved in the bible studies and takes to religion class etc not him and I am stuck doing all this in the catholic faith. I just know that I have made it easier for them to choose when the time comes what they want to do. hope this helps??
good luck
J.

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I would encourage you to use this time to explore these faiths with your husband, and decide together about what you two can embrace together.

(I read a book called A Severe Mercy, by Sheldan VanAuken -- and it was such a beautiful story about a couple learning their faith together, and how it transformed their love that they thought could never get stronger than it already was.)

Our priest has explained to us that marriage (and raising your family) is a path to salvation. It's a life-long journey of growing more faithful, more patient, more kind, more generous... A church will give you tools to accomplish those goals (teachers, sacraments, disciplines, volunteer opportunities, etc). Deciding where to baptize your child isn't just a cultural "thing to do" -- this is the first step in his path toward heaven.

Do your homework - treat this at least as seriously as you did choosing a pediatrician, a sleep method, vaccines, etc. What a beautiful opportunity to become of one mind with your husband about the most important area of your life.

God bless your journey!
T.

ps I personally am Orthodox Christian, a faith I highly recommend. Similar to Catholic, but with a stronger emphasis (I would say) on developing both discipline and love, and a more 'traditional' way of worship (most of the services date back more than a thousand years!). Anyhow, I am happy to share resources about Orthodoxy, if you're interested.

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My husband is Catholic and I am Methodist. We decided to have both of our children christened at his church, but have some sort of blessing at my church. Apparently, if you are baptized outside of the Catholic church and later decide to become Catholic, there are a lot of classes that need to be taken. We decided to just christen them from the get go and the children can decide on their religion when they are older. In the mean time, we take them with us to both churches. We go to my husbands on Sat, and mine on Sun. We are both very active in our churches. As soon as they are old enough, I plan to take them to Sunday school at my church.

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Hi M., let me start by asking, do you guy's attend church regularly. If yes which church do you attend and how often?

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Hi M. -

I know you've gotten a lot of responses already, but I felt it important to respond myself because we're going through the same decision-making process right now too. My husband was raised and is a practicing Catholic. His religious tradition is important to him and he is active because of what it does for him, not because of any outside expectations. He also volunteers as an assistant with the church's high school youth group. We recently moved and are now starting to establish new church homes near our new house, but he's finishing out the year with the youth group at the old church (we're not that far away that it's impossible, but too far to do this forever). At one point, he considered the priesthood. I was raised United Methodist and am practicing my religious tradition as well. I have always been active in the church in some way, was most recently a member of the choir, and am also trying to establish myself in the church community in our new area. At one point, I considered the ministry as well... So you see that we're both highly involved and dedicated in our respective traditions. We have been married for two-and-a-half years and just had our first baby (a boy) in January.

Of course from the time we were dating, we knew that the religious tradition of our child(ren) would be an issue we would have to deal with. In fact, it brought me to tears just thinking about it even back then because I grew up with parents who grew apart in their religious traditions about the time that we were in jr. high and their ensuing arguements about it really hurt. However, I was drawn to my husband because of who he is and part of that is his dedication to his tradition. I am GLAD he has a strong faith life. My husband and I respect each other and each other's traditions, but have no intention of changing ourselves. When it was just us, we were fine and attended our churches individually and went with each other about once a month to have some shared experiences. My husband places a high level of importance on attending his church every week, so on the weeks that he comes to my church, he is attending two services. While I attend my church all of the other weeks, when I go with him, I skip my service.

To us, one of the most important things is to establish our own traditions within our home. We plan to share our meals together with the baby in the highchair from the beginning, praying before each meal. We will be doing bedtime prayers and talking about God in our home.

We have also clarified for ourselves some additional related things. The thought that baptism was necessary to "save" the child's soul existed in a previous portion of the Catholic church and is not current doctrine, so there is not a need to rush into this decision before we are ready; we see baptism as a promise to God that we raise our son as a Christian. A second topis is that only the Catholic partner going through a Catholic-sanctioned wedding promises to try "to the best of their ability" to raise the children Catholic. We were married in the UM Church, but went through the Catholic pre-marriage experience, which is where we learned this. At the time, my husband's reaction was, "What if my wife's faith asks the same kind of promise of her?" Finally, both Catholicism and the United Methodist Church believe in ONE baptism, so either church recognizes baptism within the other church.

Our thinking at this point is to decide which tradition we intend to raise him in and baptize that way. (There is not a parochial school in our future, so that is not a decision-maker.) Yes, he'll be a Christian either way, but there are some things that will end up excluding one of the parents at some point. The prime example is Communion. If we raise him in the Catholic Church, our son and my husband will share communion there, and will not partake with me at my church. If we raise him UM, he will share with me in the UM church and my husband will not. (Even though UM communion is "open," the Catholic view is that it is not the same as Catholic Communion and Catholics are not supposed to partake, and non-Catholics are not supposed to partake at Catholic churches.) I know this feeling of exclusion for one parent might seem a bit selfish, but having been raised in a segmented religious family, I had been hoping to have a more inclusive experience for my own family and neither of us wants that exclusion for the other. No matter what, we do intend to attend both churches as a family on some sort of regular basis. The most important thing to us as well, is the faith life within our home.

I did like the response that drew attention to the fact that no matter what we do, our children as adults will be making their own faith decisions. Maybe what we should look at is the path that would set them up the best to make that decision, but I don't really know which way that would take us either. So far, I've had no "strikes of lightening" to help with this decision; I'm only sharing this long diatribe (!) so that maybe someting in our thought process might help you. If others have ideas for us to think about as well, I'd welcome them.

Thanks for bringing up the topic, best wishes, and please let me know if you'd like to "talk" further.
K..

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