Expert: Rhapsody Love - 7/27/2004

Question
Hello. Well i have been dating what i thought was the man on my dreams for a little over 2 years.We have a great relationship. We are very close, the trust is their everything is just right. We recently started talking about getting engaged. A few months after we started dating he finally told me about his religious beliefs. He said it had taken him so long to tell me because he thought we would break up and he didn't want to risk it. I felt a little deceived but it didn't start bothering me until recently. Im Catholic but i dont really practice it. I occasionally attend church. He is a Jehovah's Witness and is very into his religion. The reason i am writing to you is because we have been talking about children in our future but our views differ on how to raise them. I love him and don't want to end this relationship, we have given to much to just let it go. I would like my children to celebrate holidays and his religion doesn't believe in holidays. I am willing to compromise in anyway possible. I don't want my children to be confused and i want them to choose which religion they want to follow. Do you think their is anyway we can make this work. And if not how can we make this break-up less painful and do you think it will still be possible for us to maintain our great friendship? Sorry this is so long the background info is needed to understand the situation. Thanks so much for your time and effort i greatly appreciate it!

LIZ

Answer
Liz,

What a conundrum! I do believe that religion is important. You don't need the exact same beliefs, but you need to find your common ground and decide if you can agree on enough things about what you believe. Also, child raising issues can surely hurt, not only a marriage, but children. If I were you, I'd ask myself a LOT of questions and then discuss them wth him - probably not all at once, but over a period of time & before you get serious about marriage.

I'd first ask, if he's so religious and belongs to a religion that believes in witnessing about his religion then how could he keep it a secret for two years?

If he doesn't believe in witnessing, in what other ways is he not a practicing Jehovah's Witness?

Why does he think he's religious?

What is so important about his religion to him?

Did he grow up Jehovah's Witness and if so, what did he experience in school as a child? Were his childhood experiences good ones that he would want his own children to have?

Is he willing to compromise with you? If you do all the compromising, you'll get tired of it after a while and that'll hurt your relationship and if you have kids, it will hurt them.

If he's willing to compromise, in what ways?

You need to ask yourself the same questions - how religious are you? Do you want your children to study Catholicism? Do you want your children to be raised Catholic? How would you feel about them not taking communion? I believe both religions believe in baptism, but does it matter which religion your children are baptized in? Or does it matter if they're baptized at all?

The biggest problem is that technically both religions say that only believers in their religion is the one that saves - all others are not saved. Do you believe that only Catholics are saved? Does he believe that only Jehovah's Witness are saved? You do want your loved ones to be saved. Universalists, however, believe that all will be saved.

You said you'd like them to grow up making a choice about their religion? Would raising them Unitarian Universalist where people of many religious beliefs worship together and learn about many belief systems be something you could both compromise on?

Or would you both be willing to study religion or at least the two you each say you believe, discuss them, and see if you have enough commonality of belief? Religion is often like family - not a choice, but a birth-right and often has little to do with actual belief. What would the consequences be if you found you believed in his religion or he found he believes in yours? Or you each found you don't really believe totally in either?

As you can see, this is complicated. Most people would not bother even trying to work it out, but I think you really care about him and maybe he really cares about you. If he's willing to explore the options and talk openly about it, then that is a step in the right direction, but I can't expect that it would be easy - you'd both have to be very respectful in your conversations.

There is a lot of information on the internet about religion. Jehovah's Witness's Watch Tower is here. (This site doesn't make links clickable, so you might want to have this message sent to you via email where your email software might make them clickable.):

http://www.watchtower.org/

Watchtower Information Service
http://www.watchtowerinformationservice.org/

New Advent (A good source for Catholicism)
http://www.newadvent.org/

CatholicWeb.com
http://www.catholicweb.com/welcome_page.cfm?

Catholic Online (contemporary Catholicism)
http://www.catholic.org

And if you want to find out the worst criticisms (it could help facilitate meaningful discussion between the two of you) you could try these sites.:

Watchtower Observer
http://watchtower.observer.org/

I couldn't find something similar about Catholics - most anti-Catholic sites are "selling" another religion. There's a site about the history of Protestantism that supposedly shows why it broke off of Catholicism.:

http://www.historicist.com/protestant_history.asp

The Skeptic's Annotated Bible (doubting any literal interpretation)
http://www.SkepticsAnnotatedBible.com

I hope that helps in some way. I don't want to be too pessimistic about it, but it sounds like you both have a lot to explore about your beliefs and how you would like to live religiously and raise children. Good luck!

- Joyce