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Married to a catholic... Please Help!

Discussion in 'General Baptist Discussions' started by brucebaptist, Jun 2, 2008.

  1. I Am Blessed 24

    I Am Blessed 24 Active Member

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    If it's any consolation, my father was a catholic and my mother was a presbyterian (neither was serious about God).

    When they were married by a priest, my mother had to swear an oath that the children would be raised catholic.

    I was baptized, received my first communion, and was confirmed. I attended a catholic grade school and went to mass every morning.

    When I was old enough to understand and started seeking who God really was and why I needed to be 'saved', God was waiting for me.

    I became a Baptist and never looked back. I said all that to say this: It would be better for your kids if they did not attend the catholic church, but it's not worth getting a divorce or arguing about all the time. God will find your children and answer your prayers and they WILL be saved.

    Your kids will see God in you and your actions and some day they will want what you have!

    §ue
     
  2. pinoybaptist

    pinoybaptist Active Member
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    brucebaptist:

    way I look at it, it seems to me your wife's aversion to anything not Catholic runs a little deeper than skin-deep.
    She may have had some very negative experiences when she was Methodist.
    Or she could have been a little idealistic and was looking for a little more sincerity in the people and the churches she had associated with before she converted to Catholicism.
    Some people seem to find a sense of piety and "saintliness" in the rituals, atmosphere, and sights and sounds in a Catholic church, and so they feel like this is THE church for them.
    I think you need to "draw" your wife out some more, if you know what I mean, instead of being adversarial (is this the right word ?) or antagonistic (seems like the same word.....oh, well).
    God bless.
     
  3. brucebaptist

    brucebaptist New Member

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    Thanks, but I am not sure by what you mean by drawing her out...
     
  4. brucebaptist

    brucebaptist New Member

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    Thank all of you for your responses. I appreciate you taking the time to reply...

    I was catholic my whole life when my wife and I met. About 5 years later, the Lord opened my eyes whith His grace and Holy Spirit. When I was catholic I was NOT a Christian... i was catholic. When God opened my eyes, I left the catholic church and joined the best Baptist Church that I could find in the Atlanta area. I was baptized as a believer because when i was sprinkled at 30 days old, it was not a baptism at all.

    My wife did the exact opposite. She was born methodist and was supposedly "born again"... She tried Baptist, Pentecostal and Methodist and felt "un-moved" in all of them. She said she prayed and the HS guided here into the roman catholic church.

    I did not know her then. By the time i met her, she was catholic. We were married by a catholic priest (which I am now concerned if God even recognizes my marriage since I was wed in the roma church...). So i agree with those of you who said I should not have married her b/c of being "unequally yoked..." but at the time, i was a lost catholic myself.

    So she feels "betrayed" that she is no longer married to a "catholic". She HATES fundamental Bible Christianity. When I was baptized, her and the kids came to the service at my church and she hated it. She was a fish out of water just being inside this awesome Bible loving Church. My pastor taught on Revelation and she hated it. My wife is "religious" and anything that is not "religious" does not sit well with her. She basically said she would not visit my church again.

    Currently our 3 small children (3, 5 and 6) go with her to her church but I want them in my church, not because its MY church but b/c its a "Bible Believing Church". She HATES the fact that I want them to go with me instead of with her. She thinks the kids should be raised catholic, including 1) praying to mary (the co-savior) 2) submitting to the popes 3) NOT reading the Word of God b/c "only the pope can interpret the Scriptures and then pass along to the lay person
    4) eat a "cracker" EVERY sunday at the mass THAT IS JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF (so they say...) 5) teach them that they will spend millions of years in purgatory before ever reaching heaven 6) pray to 7000 dead "saints" (St. Gerard, St. Christopher, St Thomas Aquinas (who was quoted saying that all Bible believing Christians should be burned at the stake...). God called praying to dead people "necromancy" and forbids it 7) pray using rosary beads which God forbids b/c He called it "praying like the pagans for their many words..." 8) believing that we must go thru the catholic priest, then the bishop, then archbishop, then cardinals, then the pope, then the saints, then to Mary and then to Jesus and then to God... instead of going directly to Jesus first, like God commanded.
    9) confessing their sins to a priest b/c ONLY the priest can forgive sins, even tho God says to confess our sins directly to Jesus... 10) abstain from meats on special days, even tho God said not to do that... 11) tell the kids that they will spend millions of years in purgatory being "purged" when the blood of Jesus has already purged them and God says, "to be absent from the body is to present with the Lord..." and the list goes on and on of the things that are totally unbiblical, that she wants to do and have the kids do...

    I cannot allow my kids to be raised in a church that does hundreds of unbiblical things. They need to be Baptist and here's why. The Bible said Jesus had 4 brothers and at least 2 sisters. The catholic church teaches zero siblings. How can I teach them the Bible when she is gonna turn around and tell the kids that Jesus had no siblings? How can I teach them, Mary was a sinner, when she is gonna tell them was Mary was sinless? How can I teach them that Jesus is the Head of the Church, when she is gonna teach them that all believers MUST believe that the pope is the head of the hurch? How can I teach them that Grace thru Jesus by Faith and His shed blood will save them, and she is gonna teach them that they MUST also 1) follow the unbiblical catholic sacraments 2) submit to the authority of the pope 3) eat a "jesus wafer" every week to have their sins forgiven 4) pray to dead people instead of Jesus directly, etc, etc.

    To those of you who are not REALLY familiar with ROMAN catholicism, most ( I said most...) Bible believing pastors whether protestant or Baptist (they are not the same... listen to Jeff Arthur's sermons on sermonaudio.com on why Baptists are NOT protestants... Great stuff, although a totally different issue.) consider the papacy to be the antichrist. I dont know if the Roman church is the anti-christ or not but you can see from the link below that most reformers did....

    http://www.christiantrumpetsounding....tion_views.htm

    Anyway, I just cannot allow my beautiful little children go to a church that is so far off from the Bible.... to the person that suggested I need to let them go to the catholic mass... I just can't do it. The catholic mass (according to the catholic catechism) is the RECRUCIFIXION OF CHRIST or A RESACRIFICE OF CHRIST...
    see the link below...

    www.catholic.net/RCC/Catechism/3/l24.html

    God said that Jesus was crucified ONCE and should NEVER be sacrificed again.. Read Heb 6: 4-9. If anyone participates in re-crucifying Jesus again and again, the are putting Him to a public shame. read below...

    Hebrews 6:4-10 (New International Reader's Version)

    4 "What if some people fall away from the faith? It won't be possible to bring them back. It is true that they have seen the light. They have tasted the heavenly gift. They have shared in the Holy Spirit. 5 They have tasted the good things of God's word. They have tasted the powers of the age to come. 6 But they have fallen away from the faith. So it won't be possible to bring them back. They won't be able to turn away from their sins. They are losing everything. That's because they are nailing the Son of God to the cross all over again. They are bringing shame on him in front of everyone.

    7 Some land drinks the rain that falls on it. It produces a crop that is useful to those who farm the land. That land receives God's blessing. 8 But other land produces only thorns and weeds. That land isn't worth anything. It is in danger of coming under God's curse. In the end, it will be burned."

    This verse describes my wife perfectly. She was once saved (so she tells me) but now she brings shame to Christ each time she attends the mass and recrucifies Jesus... I have had several Baptist teachers tell me that that is what this means...

    Some quick facts about the Roman church that can be found in the history books:
    1) Peter was never in Rome (at least according to the Bible). He was the apostle selected to go and spread the Word to the Jews. The Bible depicts him going all thru Isareal but never to Rome. It was Paul who was the evangelist for the Gentiles and traveled to Rome.

    2) According to the history books, the church of Rome has killed MORE innocent people (Christians) than any other institution, army, gov't or anyone that has ever existed. I have seen estimates from 5,000,000 to 500,000,000 murders. Even if they only killed 1,000,000 Christians, that is evil and nothing like that can come from God but only satan...

    3) the papacy says that they are Jesus Christ on earth! see link below

    www.lightministries.com/id521.htm

    4) the papacy has always said (up till recent) that all of us Bible Believing Christians are lost and going to hell just b/c we don't submit to the pope.

    5) the Roman church changed the 10 Commandments... see below
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments

    Rev 22:18 says that if anyone changes the Word of God they are accursed.

    The Roman catholic church thruoughout the history has banned the Bible... see below. They used to burn people at the stake if they tried to own a Bible

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banned_books

    How can I allow my wife to teach Roman catholicism to our kids? Even if the Roman church is NOT the anti-christ, they teach another Gospel...

    Gal 1:8, 9 says that if anyone preaches a gospel that they (Apostles) have not preached they are accursed....

    How can I allow my kids to go to the mass and be part of a re-crucifixion of Christ that God hates? or eat a Jesus wafer to have sins removed? or pray to dead saints and a dead Mary? I feel like the HS telling me to keep them away from that church but my wife is gonna hate me for it... At this point divorce ie NO option. Jesus says in Revelation many times that those "who overcome" will be special and in heaven... I want to "overcome" this issue some how.
     
  5. Thinkingstuff

    Thinkingstuff Active Member

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    I understand what you're saying. An ex Catholic is like an ex-smoker in many respects. You really want to instill a respect for scriptures and a personal relationship with Jesus for you children. I understand that. You have strong feelings about this subject and I hesitate to really give you an answer. I don't think it would satisfy you. Only because Jesus was peaceable and led people to himself by his example and charity. By the way is it the same archer that wrote encyclopedia of bible difficulties?
     
  6. queenbee

    queenbee Member

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    LOL - oh really?? Come back in 30 years time when your wife has mellowed you and tell us this!! I almost hate to say this - your youth really is showing on this one!
     
  7. seraphim79

    seraphim79 New Member

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    I think "I am Blessed 18" speaks truly. I was also raised a catholic and went through the whole thing, mass every Sunday, CCD on Wednesday, catholic school ect. But when I was a teenager I met a girl who is a Baptist. We had lot's of conversations together and we became the BEST of friends, I finally left the catholic church (12years after I met her). If she had thrown me out when we first met 1st we would never be best friends today and second I would never have left the catholic church. It IS by example that we learn and I assure you it does not happen overnight. You have a long road ahead of you but don't get stressed or worried about it. Give the whole thing to God and He will handle the situation. Live your life as a baptist and don't argue about your differences, communicate about you life as a baptist but don't allow it to turn into an argument.
     
  8. pinoybaptist

    pinoybaptist Active Member
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    I mean ask more probing questions.
    Find out something about her experiences growing up as a Methodist.
    My experience is the reverse.
    I was born, raised, bred and grew up a Catholic.
    My father was not "devout", neither was my grandfather, but my grandmother was, and so was an uncle. The last two practically raised me.
    I can still see my grandmother wiping the feet of a Jesus statue and kissing the handkerchief or whatever it was she used, and I still have memories of her walking on her knees from the church door to whichever church altar her particular "saint" was in.
    I can still remember the "visita iglesias" (church visits) during Lent when the whole family went visiting nearby churches and going thru the "way of the cross" in each church after ash wednesday when everybody has ash on their foreheads.

    The thing is that for all the religiousness and "devoutness", their lives were inconsistent with the examples they were trying to show us, until most of us young 'uns thought "well, as long as we've done what we're supposed to do......"

    My uncle, a military man, was a member of every imaginable Catholic group and "devotional clubs". He woke me up every morning at 4 am (whenever I was staying with him) so we could go to confession and receive "holy communion", and then the rest of the day he would either go playing mahjong (a chinese gambling game) or something else.
    What struck me most was when one day he came home, he didn't have money, and enrollment time was around the corner, and he had three kids he needed to enroll at school.
    Going up his house by the stairs, when one reaches the top, one would look up and see these statues of St. Jude, and St. Martin de Porres, and the Virgin Mary.
    Well, that day, he picked up those statues and smashed them to pieces and my cousins and I were watching and we were all scared and waiting for "something bad" to happen to him, but nothing did happen, and when he calmed down, he ordered us to get some glue and piece the statues together and while we were working at it a cousin told me "if this were God, or saints of God, I don't want anything to do with them, because the God I will worship is one who throws me around, not one I throw around", in a joking manner.

    But he really got to me, then, that cousin of mine, and got me to thinking, "yeah, he's right. if God were truly powerful, then the creature cannot just throw him around", and from then on, I ceased to believe ...IN ANYTHING.

    So that when the late 60's rolled in and "teach-ins" became the in thing, it wasn't hard for communism and atheism to gain a foothold in my thought processes. I would mock my mom whenever she mentioned about "looking to God for our needs", and tell her, "what, your Jesus is going to appear and set a table full of food for you" ?

    My conversion to the real God of the Bible is another story.

    At any rate, these are experiences which I had as a Roman Catholic in a predominantly Roman Catholic country.

    Your wife may have her own experiences which made her conclude that Roman Catholicism is the real thing, being raised in a non-predominantly Roman Catholic country.
     
  9. JerryL

    JerryL New Member

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    Make no mistake, there are born again Christians in the Catholic church. We baptist don't have a monopoly on salvation.
     
  10. Brother Shane

    Brother Shane New Member

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    Are you saying that in 30 years time I won't have a saved wife or I won't be saved myself? I hated it you did say it "queen bee," but what I can conclude by your user name, you probably "run the house" around your house and am referring to my wife trampling all over me. Thankfully, the Lord would lead me to one that was sent by Him and fulfills all her biblical motherly roles and not a rebellious woman.
     
  11. David Lamb

    David Lamb Active Member

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    I don't doubt it, but that doesn't make the official teachings of Roman Catholicism any less unbiblical.
     
  12. Brother Shane

    Brother Shane New Member

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    Well, if it's not in the Bible David Lamb, then it's nothing more than unbiblical, regardless of our opinions or "official teachings". As a favourite by Sue, "God said it, that settles it!"
     
  13. pinoybaptist

    pinoybaptist Active Member
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    Agreed 100%, for both statements.
    Eternal salvation (please note the qualifying word "eternal") is all OF God. The Lord Jesus Christ owns it, and He gave it to whom He will (again, please note that past tense).
    However, salvation from dead works here in time is another thing, and God has His people still caught up in it as members of dead religion.
    brucebaptist and his wife is a perfect example or illustration of Paul's discourse in Romans 10 about Israel.
    His wife is in a dead religion and has faith in all save the One on whom she should have faith in.
    if she is God's child, then she should know about Jesus' finished work for her.
    If she is God's child, then her knowing about Jesus here in time, and trusting Him instead of another here in time, does not result in eternal salvation for her, but in timely salvation.
    Her eternal salvation is a done deal, no thanks to anyone but Christ.
    Anyway, we digress.
    But you are absolutely correct.
     
  14. David Lamb

    David Lamb Active Member

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    Sorry, Shane, but I don't get your point. I was replying to the point made by JerryL, when he said, "There are born again Christians in the Catholic church." I agreed with that statement - after all, Martin Luther was converted while still in the RCC - but I added that this (the possibility of there being some genuine Christians in the Roman Catholic set-up) did nothing to make RC teaching any less unbiblical than it is. I am not sure what you are disagreeing with - we are both saying that Roman Catholic teaching is unbiblical. Perhaps I have misunderstood.
     
  15. JerryL

    JerryL New Member

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    100% agree.
     
  16. Brother Shane

    Brother Shane New Member

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    I misunderstood; I apologize. Now that's HAS to be my youth showing, lol. :laugh:
     
  17. David Lamb

    David Lamb Active Member

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    Your youth? I thought that sort of thing was called a "senior moment". :laugh: No need to apologise - I'm just glad it's clear now. Thanks anyway!
     
  18. Brother Shane

    Brother Shane New Member

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    Come on David Lamb, you can't tell me you don't know of any teenager that has "misunderstood"! You start of naive, you learn it all, then you forget it all.

    Reminds me of a joke... "An elderly man went to the doctor for a check-up. The doctor informed the man, 'I have bad news and good news.' The patient said, 'lay the bad news on me.' The doctor replied, 'you have alzheimer's disease.' The patient said 'oh my! What's the good news?' The doctor smiled, 'You can go home and forget I told you!'"

    Have a good day ya'll! :laugh:
     
  19. Magnetic Poles

    Magnetic Poles New Member

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    Bruce, remember they are not just YOUR children..they are hers also. She has as much right to raise them Catholic as you do to raise them Baptist. I believe that if the two of you are not able to find common ground, your marriage is doomed.
     
  20. JerryL

    JerryL New Member

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    The common ground just might be to figure out if she trusts Jesus for salvation and the catholic traditions are just part of her worship. Bruce seems to have the idea that she definitely isn't saved. Take your "baptist hat" off and work together to raise "Saved" kids. This marriage can work if you don't stress her over the denomination thing. Make sure you let the kids know that only Jesus can save them and don't down you wifes religion in front of her or them. Just make sure these kids know in who salvation comes, Jesus alone. You will get tons of opinions here and some will even lead you to leave your wife. Pray for guidance and realize that your wife just might not be lost(as you are hearing some say) if she trust Jesus as her saviour.
     
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