Elder Porphyrios on Nurturing Children:
“What saves and makes for good children is the life of the parents in the home. The parents need to devote themselves to the love of God. They need to become saints in their relations to their children through their mildness, patience, and love. They need to make a new start every day, with a fresh outlook, renewed enthusiasm and love for their children. And the joy that will come to them, the holiness that will visit them, will shower grace on their children. Generally the parents are to blame for the bad behavior of the children. And their behaviour is not improved by reprimands, disciplining, or strictness. If the parents do not pursue a life of holiness and if they don’t engage in spiritual struggle, they make great mistakes and transmit the faults they have within them. If the parents do not live a holy life and do not display love towards each other, the devil torments the parents with the reactions of the children. Love, harmony and understanding between parents are what are required for the children. This provides a great sense of security and certainty.”
It is the relationships that matter. The relationship of parents with each other, the relationship of a child with his parents, and the relationship he has with his Church. As you will read below, the Cult of Kindness is in ascendency.
From lohud.com...
So much has been said and written over the last couple of decades about religious inter-marriage.
It’s been one of the most discussed and debated issues in the Jewish world because of the threat posed to Jewish continuity if too many Jews have children who are not raised Jewish.
In New York, of course, many Catholics marry Protestants, Jews and people of little or no faith, posing all sorts of questions and challenges for families that want their sons and daughters married by the parish priest.
There are so many “minority” religions in town these days that all sorts of inter-marriage combos are now taking place.
But I don’t believe I’ve seen a reference to the relative success of inter-marriages, compared to single-religion marriages, until a recent story in the Washington Post. It noted that the American Religious Identification Survey of 2001—a massive study that I thought had been picked dry at this point—found that “people who had been in mixed-religion marriages were three times more likely to be divorced or separated than those who were in same-religion marriages.”
I would imagine that this finding has been reported, but that I missed it. Still interesting.
The Post article by Naomi Schaefer Riley notes that in our tolerant, inclusive society, inter-marriage can seem almost hip:
*****
The belief among young couples that love will conquer all is not exactly new. But today some young Americans seem to even pride themselves on marrying someone very different from themselves. One woman I spoke to who was raised as a Catholic recalled her thoughts on dating when she went off to college a few years ago: “To limit yourself to only people of your own religion seemed bigoted. . . . There is a whole world of people that I don’t know.” To write them off as potential partners before she even met them “seemed rude,” she said.
Her language is revealing. It’s as if our society’s institutional rules about nondiscrimination in hiring an employee or admitting someone to college have morphed into rules for screening romantic partners.
*****
But for even the most tolerant people, Riley notes, raising children in a foreign faith can push all sorts of buttons that one is not even aware of.
She writes:
*****
Even among those who have tough conversations, says Joshua Coleman, a psychologist and co-chair of the Council on Contemporary Families, a nonpartisan research organization, religion can become a serious point of contention later on. One parent may agree to raise the children in the other’s faith, he says, but then that faith “becomes repellent” to him or her. Coleman doesn’t think that people get married with the intention of deceiving their spouse; “they just have no idea how powerfully unconscious religion can be.”
It’s been one of the most discussed and debated issues in the Jewish world because of the threat posed to Jewish continuity if too many Jews have children who are not raised Jewish.
In New York, of course, many Catholics marry Protestants, Jews and people of little or no faith, posing all sorts of questions and challenges for families that want their sons and daughters married by the parish priest.
There are so many “minority” religions in town these days that all sorts of inter-marriage combos are now taking place.
But I don’t believe I’ve seen a reference to the relative success of inter-marriages, compared to single-religion marriages, until a recent story in the Washington Post. It noted that the American Religious Identification Survey of 2001—a massive study that I thought had been picked dry at this point—found that “people who had been in mixed-religion marriages were three times more likely to be divorced or separated than those who were in same-religion marriages.”
I would imagine that this finding has been reported, but that I missed it. Still interesting.
The Post article by Naomi Schaefer Riley notes that in our tolerant, inclusive society, inter-marriage can seem almost hip:
*****
The belief among young couples that love will conquer all is not exactly new. But today some young Americans seem to even pride themselves on marrying someone very different from themselves. One woman I spoke to who was raised as a Catholic recalled her thoughts on dating when she went off to college a few years ago: “To limit yourself to only people of your own religion seemed bigoted. . . . There is a whole world of people that I don’t know.” To write them off as potential partners before she even met them “seemed rude,” she said.
Her language is revealing. It’s as if our society’s institutional rules about nondiscrimination in hiring an employee or admitting someone to college have morphed into rules for screening romantic partners.
*****
But for even the most tolerant people, Riley notes, raising children in a foreign faith can push all sorts of buttons that one is not even aware of.
She writes:
*****
Even among those who have tough conversations, says Joshua Coleman, a psychologist and co-chair of the Council on Contemporary Families, a nonpartisan research organization, religion can become a serious point of contention later on. One parent may agree to raise the children in the other’s faith, he says, but then that faith “becomes repellent” to him or her. Coleman doesn’t think that people get married with the intention of deceiving their spouse; “they just have no idea how powerfully unconscious religion can be.”
Posts
How much is this issue complicated by the category that includes me: a Protestant when I married an Orthodox woman, supportive of and curious about her Orthodoxy, but with little thought of it ever becoming my home.
ReplyDeleteI was wrong, of course.
I'm not using this as a justification for the behavior. I'm merely saying that it puts me in an awkward position to be too vocal in public about the danger of it.
Further dialogue on the issue is essential for me, however. I teach high school Sunday School. The need for positive influence during formative years can't be understated.
I would say that it is wonderful that marriage brought you into the Church. But, as much as the marriage of an Orthodox person to a non-Orthodox person is an opportunity for conversion, it invites strife and problems where they need not be. That the marriage bore this fruit does not make the choice an optimal one and I certainly wouldn't advise it as a path for anyone.
ReplyDeleteThe Church in its wisdom established canons on the topic:
http://ishmaelite.blogspot.com/2010/06/marriage-with-non-orthodox.html
Question: I myself am Orthodox, but I am going to marry a girl who was Baptized in an Old Believer Church. Now she attends a Protestant non-denominational church, but she has not received Baptism there. After our engagement we’d like to get married, but in the Orthodox church we were refused, inasmuch as they don’t marry Old Believers; in the Old Believer church we were also refused, inasmuch as they don’t marry Orthodox. But the Pentecostalist “church” marries everyone without any question. My future wife said that she doesn’t want to be Baptized Orthodox, and I respect her opinion; in my turn, I also don’t want to be rebaptized.
I want to ask the question: how does the Church look on us being married by Protestants, and is this allowable in principle. And in general may a Protestant perform the Mystery of marriage?
Answer: Canon 72 of the Sixth Ecumenical Council strictly forbids an Orthodox person to marry a heterodox person. The Holy Fathers based themselves on the Christian understanding of the family as the most important life union in the goal of salvation. There is even a definition: the small Church. It is obvious that such a union can be built only on a spiritual foundation. Marriage is possible only under the condition of the sincere conversion of a heterodox person to Orthodoxy.
Then there's the issue that some of us converts face, which is that our spouses have no interest. My husband and I married within the same Protestant faith and shared that for the first 19 or so years. Yes, it has been difficult, but I don't feel that we are trying to get to two different destinations...we are taking two different routes to the same location.
ReplyDeleteI'd love to see the breakdown on the survey. Surely, it is different when non-Christians marry a Christian compared to when a Protestant marries a Catholic (or Orthodox, etc.).