Byzantine Catholic Family Matters

For Singles and Those Who Love Them: Part IV

Religious Faith and Marriage

We can look at this issue from two different but related angles. Is your potential marriage partner of your faith? If so, does your potential marriage partner have the same level of commitment and participation in the practice of that faith as you do?

If you can honestly say “No” to either of these questions, you need to look more closely at the potential impact of these differences on marriage over the course of a lifetime. Indeed it’s often far easier to think no further than the wedding.

Marriage is a sacrament. It is a covenant bringing together a man, a woman and God. Do both you and your partner believe this?

Is your partner prepared to have his/her marriage blessed by God in the sacrament of Holy Matrimony?

After the wedding comes the task of building your marriage. What will be the impact on you and your marriage if you and your partner cannot or will not share in the same liturgical and sacramental life? Will you and your partner be sharing a common prayer life at home? Will your home be adorned with icons? Will you raise your children in your faith?

The Center for Marriage and Family at Creighton University conducted a study comparing “inter-church” couples with “same-church” couples; that is couples where each partner is of a different Christian church/denomination with couples where each is of the same church/ denomination. This study did not consider couples where one partner is not Christian. The study found that interchurch couples were more likely to divorce than same-church couples. That two persons are not of the same Christian denomination does not in itself predict divorce – three quarters remained married over the course of the study. What are also critical in contributing to the stability of the marriage are issues such as: disagreements over children and the religious upbringing of children as well as differences between partners in how much each emphasizes religion in raising children. These factors also influence the stability of same-church couples – if one partner is nominally Catholic, for example, and the other is strongly identifies with his/her faith, practices it regularly, the couple are more likely to divorce.

The study finds that these issues are typically not discussed in pre-Cana programs. This is unfortunate, because, the profundity of the sacrament requires this thorough preparation.

In reality, marriage preparation begins in childhood, for ultimately it is the building of a strong identity – a large part of which is a person’s religious identity that prepares us for this sacred bond.

This question of faith and religion in the life of the couple and their children is at least as important as all of the other issues that we have discussed in earlier parts of this series combined. Indeed it is from our faith from which so much else flows.

When we teach our children to be good, to be gentle, to be forgiving (all of these are attributes of God), to be generous, to love their fellow men, to regard this present age as nothing, we instill virtue in their souls, and reveal the image of God within them. St. John Chrysostom, Homily 21