Human Nature Spring 2002

ARTICLE TOOLS

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We are children of divorce. That happens to be true of our natural families, but it is also true of our Christian families. Karl is an evangelical Protestant, and Elizabeth is a Catholic. Our "parents" divorced hundreds of years ago. We are still trying to cope with the consequences-and perhaps contribute to the divorce's eventual healing.

We had been good friends for seven years when we began dating in 1997. Karl was an evangelical campus minister who was actively involved in a new and growing charismatic church. Elizabeth-after leaving the Catholic Church during college to participate in evangelical campus ministries and a Congregational church-was sensing in prayer God's call to her to return to the Catholic Church.

When Elizabeth shared this call with Karl a few weeks after we began dating, we both knew she was raising a potentially relationship-ending issue. Karl was considering ordained ministry. Having a Catholic wife could make that awkward, if not impossible. What would being in separate churches mean for our marriage and family? Should one of us convert? What if we had children? If we got married in the Catholic Church, wouldn't we have to agree to raise our children as Catholics? Would we go through our whole marriage never able to take communion together?

We certainly shared a deep faith in Jesus. But the more squarely we looked at these questions, the larger they loomed. After some discussion and prayer, we decided to continue dating, but also to tackle the issues head-on by reading and discussing books on theology, and by attending each other's churches every week.

So began a grueling schedule of reading, learning, arguing, crying, praying, and going to four hours of church every Sunday.

Some of our friends couldn't ...

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