Question: Please advise an intermarried couple divorcing over religious differences.
I am a Jewish man who married a Catholic woman. She agreed that the children would be raised as Jews. The ceremony was officiated by both priest and rabbi. Then, three years into the marriage, she decided she could not raise her Jewish children to be Jewish and that Baptism was a must. After meetings with both rabbi's and priests, we sought marital counseling. In the end we decided to divorce. I love this woman, and thus I haven't been able to move forward with others. Please help.
Answer: Thank you for your letter. You wrote about how you and your ex-wife, who is Catholic, decided to divorce after the two of you were unable to resolve your different feelings about how to raise the children you might have had together.
You explain that the two of you had entered the marriage agreeing to raise your children as Jews "with an appreciation of their mother's faith." In my experience, interfaith marriages based on that assumption can be successful if each member of the couple is honest about the commitment and each works hard to make it work. Of course, such marriages also can be successful if both members of the couple make a sincere and committed agreement to raise their children in the non-Jewish spouse's religion.
In your case, however, your wife became uneasy about the arrangement years after you were married and insisted that any children be baptized in the Catholic Church. Now, following the divorce, you are feeling difficulty in moving on from this relationship because you still "hold a torch" for your ex-wife.
I have a great deal of sympathy for your situation, Scott, and understand that this has caused both of you a great deal of pain. It is not an uncommon story, though. In truth, the only thing that makes your story exceptional is that you and your ex-wife discovered the depth of your different feelings about religion before you had children. I know many divorced interfaith couples with children who are now split between two homes and two religions. Many of these families now wish, for their children's sake, that they had confronted their different feelings before having children -- or better, before getting married.
It is not possible for me to say whether you were "too hasty in ending the marriage," as you ask in your letter. I don't know enough about you, your ex-wife, and your situation. In any case, only you and your ex-wife could answer that question ultimately.
You say that you were not prepared to marry your ex-wife until she committed to help raise your children as Jews. That speaks strongly of the importance of Judaism in your life. It also speaks of how betrayed you must have felt when your ex-wife changed her mind. Divorce does not seem like an extreme choice when one partner undermines a foundational assumption of the marriage.
Your experience, and the experience of other like you, is the reason I refuse to co-officiate at weddings with clergy of other faiths. A "two-religion" wedding almost always reflects an ambivalence in the couple about the kind of home that they want to create together. What appeared to have been a compromise at the time of the wedding often proves, actually, to have been denial or postponement of conflict. That is why it is so important for interfaith couples to engage in meaningful counseling together about their religious feelings before marriage.
You will need to answer some tough questions of yourself before you will be ready to move on from your marriage. Was there any way that either or both of you could have changed your feelings about religion enough to maintain the marriage? If you had permitted your children to be baptized, would you have been able to deal with the resentment you would have felt toward your ex-wife? Was there any way that your ex-wife could have dealt with her resentment toward you if your children had not been baptized? If the answers to these questions are "no," then you will have your answer.
Best wishes,
Rabbi Jeffrey W. Goldwasser
