Question:

I'm one of those RCs who has trouble with some of Rome's views. I'm looking for a faith where my non-practicing Baptist DH & I can worship together. He wants to take our now 4-year-old to both churches, but I wonder if that might confuse her. I've always hoped to worship together with my husband & child(ren) when I got married.

Answer:

My heart went out to you when I saw your story. To have a beautiful marriage is an amazing gift from God. God is, I am convinced, a loving and consistent God who would never expect the Church to put up barriers to your spiritual intimacy. The greatest intimacy within worship is the moment of communion, when we experience our unity within the Body of Christ by participating in the Body and Blood that unites us. How alienating it must be for non-Roman-Catholic spouses to be forcefully reminded, week after week, that their spouse participates in that intimacy with neighbours and casual acquaintances while they are kept away.

Of course, rigid protestant churches do the same thing when they treat our sacramental life as being superficial ritual or idolatry; as if we are "make-believe" Christians. But just as there are heterodox Roman Catholic priests who leave it up to the communicants to decide for themselves whether to commune (my DD10 takes communion when she goes to church with her RC friend, and her friend's priest is perfectly well aware that Anne is Anglican -- he just doesn't tell the Bishop); so there are also Baptist churches that take an insightful and appreciative view of liturgy and sacrament. There's a Baptist pastor on my Liturgics e-list, and I find myself agreeing with him more often than with the Anglicans.

If you could find two such non-legalistic open churches, one Roman Catholic and one Baptist, I doubt that they would end up teaching your child radically different things. I started out in an interdenominational marriage, and I assumed we would alternate one week at Centre Street Evangelical, and the next week at Saint Stephen's. There were three or four families at Saint Stephens that alternated. We knew who they were and what churches they alternated with (one Presbyterian, one Orthodox, one Roman, one United Church). So, in Sunday School and Worship Committee, we were prepared to say "the XXX church interprets things this way, whereas the more usual Anglican view is that". But conflicts are usually pretty trivial. On the important things: Christ, Salvation, the Love of God -- the mainstream churches are largely in agreement. The families that did this alternation had children, and never had much problem with confusion. In fact, the children did develope a quite ecumenical understanding and seemed well-focussed on the essentials where they saw agreement between the churches.

It turned out, though, that Dean's pastor didn't like the idea of us belonging to two communities. So Dean came to mine. He still doesn't agree with everything I believe -- he thinks the Apostolic Succession is a crock, for example, and isn't too sure about the effectiveness of sacrament. But no-one ever told him his heterodoxy made him unworthy to be a full participant in the life of the church. So he did come to Bible Study and worship and receive communion. And I know that has made our marriage stronger.

I wish you all the best in finding a way that your family can be together within the greater family of the Church