Letters to the Editor
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This reminds me of my (failed) marriage to a Catholic woman
Yes, once I fell in love with Therese, a svelte brunette with gleaming dark eyes and by so doing I had entered an unfamilar world.
I grew up in a secular household. One of my grandfathers was a jew who went to smoke in Dachau, his wife was an Orthodox Christian woman who did not have much faith left in god after WW2. The other side of the family was a pair of non-practicing protestants. From this mix my parents of atheists had emerged and I grew up in the happiness of celebrating Xmas to the hilt while not having to live in fear of offending humongous beings by craving ham or by not kissing their butts before meals.
But T's entire and quite large family lived catholicism, they prayed often and went to church, kept the fast, things like that. My incredible masculine prowess swept lovely Therese off her feet well enough for her to succumb to the sin of flesh many times before marriage but she just went and confessed it and the whole thing was all forgotten. I was impressed.
But when marriage started to happen, things started to change. She became serious about this flesh business and my access to it became very restricted. I was forced (as in "take it or leave it") to attend bible classes and see some priest for some catholic counseling. I may not be using the right terms here for which I must apologize to all catholics who read this stuff. I had to solemnly swear to this priest that I will not interfere with the Catholic upbringing of my children. Not really knowing what the heck it meant, I said, "sure thing". To the horror of my parents, I had to have a church wedding where I had to utter words i really did not believe.
Unfortunately, my mind was by then hooked on flesh. And you all know what addiction does to people.
Once living together, now as a married couple, other problems started to emerge. These were things that I had not anticipated, given that they had never been part of my universe so they had been true Rumsfeldian Unknown Unknowns until they started to occur. Such as, what to do on Sunday mornings - have sex and then sleep a few more hours or go to church at 7 AM? This was an especially disturbing issue and early on lead to the "compromise" that she (later she + the children) would go to church while I was allowed to stay at home and do "whatever I wanted". Trips and outings had been soured for me by the need to look for churches where mom+kids could go at various godawful times, sometimes as early at 6 AM, or 12 noon if there was no early mass, precluding any other activity by occupying the middle of the day.
Just to make it clear, dear reader, that Sunday morning sex was not the only issue for me, let me add this snippet: After the birth of our first child I checked out the birth certificate, proud and misty eyed as only a new father can be, only to find an additional name on the paper that we had never discussed. "That's his Catholic name," fair Therese said, adding "You're not a Catholic, what do you care?" when she saw my indignation. Her dad was gleaming in the background, holding his hands before his chest piously.
And so on -- my choices, as an outsider, were either to join in or to stay out but there was no, or very little yielding to my ways. My ways which were ultimately conceived only in terms of what they were lacking (their tradition and its rules) and therefore were seen by her entire family, and herself, only in the light of that lacking. As they saw it, thru the uncompromising lens of their faith, when I gave in to something, I did not give up anything that was important to me because, for them, there was nothing there to begin with!
Sadly, especially for the children, this marriage eventually fell apart. As it turned out, the family had warned her not to marry me, an atheist, because is "will never work out". Yes ... it was like warning someone "Don't cross that bridge because you'll never make it to the other side". Then, when the person is in the middle you blow up the bridge and say "See, I told you so!"
Or maybe it was me. I guess I'm a more intransigent individual than Mr Noxon. I started to argue the point that although my traditions lacked many of the restraints of hers, they were nevertheless a coherent and equally valuable tradition. That was not appreciated, not believed, dad and priest became involved in renewed "catholic counseling" efforts, soon I started to see the wisdom in at least one the tenets of Catholic dogma: the existence of Hell.
"Take it or leave it", which remained a chief guiding principle throughout the marriage, sometimes carried in deep undercurrents, sometimes bubbling up in springs, puddles or geysers, eventually forced a response in the form of a choice that had placed me on the path of guilt and self-respect.
Guilt, after now almost 20 years post-decision, has slowly dissipated.