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Rabbi Marc Gellman began his studies in 1969 at the University of Wisconsin, and went on to attend the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of ...
Read more about By Rabbi Marc Gellman, Tribune Media Services.
CATHOLIC-JEWISH INTERMARRIAGE: PROCEED WITH CAUTION AND KNOW THE RULES
By Rabbi Marc Gellman, Tribune Media Services
Q: Our family is Roman Catholic and our daughter is a practicing
Catholic. She's getting serious with a Jewish boyfriend. Is it
possible to have a combined Catholic-Jewish wedding with both a priest
and a rabbi officiating? - B., via e-mail
A: Yes, it's possible, but there are conditions. Catholic priests cannot preside over a wedding ceremony in any place other than a Catholic church, or in another church which has granted permission. They can't officiate in a catering hall or hotel ballroom.
Most rabbis will not officiate at intermarriages, and among those who will, only a much smaller number will co-officiate in a church. Assuming you can find such a rabbi, there are conditions that still must be satisfied on the Catholic side.
In the past, before a priest could agree to participate in such a wedding, both the Jewish person and the Catholic person had to sign a promise that they'd do "all in their power" to raise their children as Catholics.
In present church practice, as I'm given to understand it, only the Catholic person has to make such a promise, and it can be done orally rather than in writing. What this means is, you might have Jewish grandchildren and your daughter might have Jewish children if she's unable to keep her promise.
The larger and more important questions about intermarriage focus on the years of marriage, not the 20 minutes of a wedding ceremony. It's hard for people in love to face tough questions about areas of the incompatibility. This seems so negative when they're being swept along by the positive joy of their love for each other. However, if bride and groom can't freely agree before the wedding on how they'll raise their kids, they should wait until they agree, or until they agree that this one difference is important enough to doom their relationship.
The best predictor of your daughter and her boyfriend's ability to reach a compromise is what they do, not what they say. You describe your daughter as a practicing Catholic, so the question is really about the level of her boyfriend's Jewishness. If he's a practicing Jew, then the prospect of raising Catholic children may be as unacceptable to him as the prospect of raising Jewish children is to your daughter.
If your daughter's boyfriend has a rabbi, I'd encourage them to meet with him or her for counseling. They should also meet with your daughter's parish priest. Finally, in their own prayerful, private conversations, they should try to envision how God can enter their marriage in a way that will embrace one faith tradition and welcome the other.
The commonly voiced solution of raising children in both traditions is the most difficult option of all. To be raised in a religious tradition requires prayer, community and religious education. No church or synagogue will admit a child for religious education who's simultaneously being educated in another tradition. Holiday worship and prayer services also affirm very different and conflicting beliefs.
In the end, every child deserves religious roots. Every child deserves to be able to enter a church or a synagogue and feel at home. A child named Jennifer once asked me, "My mother is Christian and my daddy is Jewish but they didn't raise me up to be anything. Do you know how I could be raised up to be something?" I pray there will be no Jennifers in your family.
Q: Is St. Christopher still a saint? -- Anonymous via godsquadquestion@aol.com
A: Yes! He's still a saint. He just lost his feast day. The Catholic Church still approves devotion to St. Christopher on July 25 . The Eastern Orthodox venerates him on May 9 . However, his feast day was removed from the liturgical calendar of the Roman Catholic Church in 1969 by Pope Paul VI.
St. Barbara and St. Catherine of Alexandria were also removed because Vatican hagiographers (saintologists) decided they were not real people but only the stuff of legend. St. Christopher was considered real, but with 400,000 saints and only 365 days in the year, some saints had to give up their days so saints of more contemporary significance to the Church could be venerated.
Since St. James, one of Jesus' apostles, also had his feast day on July 25 , St. Christopher got out-ranked; in the chess game of saints, an apostle takes a martyr. However, parishes where the feast of St. Christopher was an important tradition were still allowed to celebrate it on July 25 . This is true in parishes in Germany, Austria and Northern Italy.
St. Christopher was martyred in the 3rd century during the anti-Christian persecutions of the Emperor Decius (249-251). His name means "Christ bearer" and the famous connection of St. Christopher with travelers comes from the legend of him carrying a child who turned out to be Christ across a river.
My personal and wholly subjective belief, from a Jewish perspective, is that starting in 1969 when St. Christopher was demoted, air travel began to go into the tank. On July 25 I might just sneak in an extra hot dog and borrow Fr. Tom's St. Christopher medal before I check my golf clubs for my next trip!
(Send QUESTIONS ONLY to The God Squad, c/o Tribune Media Services, 2225 Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, NY 14207, or email them to godsquadquestion@aol.com.
(c) 2008 THE GOD SQUAD DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
This news arrived on: 03/27/2008
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