Weddingbee Blog

Note: This (long) post is specific to Catholic-NonCatholic interfaith weddings. Actually, it might be specific only to a Catholic-Jewish interfaith wedding, but my hope is that this will be helpful for a Catholic-Anything interfaith wedding as a starting point. It is also based only on my experiences, which does not make me an expert. A while ago I promised to post about my experiences finding a priest and a rabbi to co-officiate, so here goes!

So, you’re marrying outside the Catholic Faith. OR you are not Catholic, but your fiance is, and you’ve decided to go the equal representation of religions route rather than choosing one or nixing religion and using a Justice of the Peace. It may seem impossible at first, but knowledge is power when it comes to finding a Catholic Priest to co-officiate, so lets go over what Mr. Thimble and I needed to do and maybe it can help some of you.

I was really nervous and I’ve never been very active at church. I avoided asking our local parish priest and I hesitated to email a priest I knew from college (a Catholic university). Lucky for me, before I worked up the nerve to contact either of them, my aunt (and Godmother) worked some magic and emailed her cousin, the graduate chaplain at Harvard, who has performed countless interfaith ceremonies and knows exactly what he’s doing. And, he’s super smart and can explain why we have to do what we’re doing and where it comes from. Which is what I need.

Mr. Thimble and I hopped on a Bolt Bus to Boston, and then to Cambridge, one weekend in April 2009 for a Pre-Cana adventure. (Pre-Cana is Catholic pre-marital preparation. It can be a series of shorter classes or one intense weekend. I highly recommend the weekend route—it’s not bad at all and it’s done in one shot). Pre-Cana is required prep work for any Catholic marriage. We got our certificate, and then we met with my uncle (once removed?) priest—we’ll call him Father G.—who hooked us up with petitions for the following two dispensations from the Philadelphia Archdiocese. (Dispensation is Catholic for permission, or forgiveness for doing something out of the ordinary, sorta).

1. Permission to marry outside of the cult (”Cult” being the language used in old Canon Law)
2. Permission for a Rabbi (or other religious minister) to accept our vows.

Number 1 is obvious, but number 2 is KEY. Number 2 is the only way to get around marrying in a Catholic church, because if the Rabbi is marrying us (receiving the vows) he/she cannot do that in a Catholic church. If the priest is accepting the vows (actually marrying us), then it would have to be on Catholic ground. And that’s not cool for my Jewish family-to-be. We wanted neutral ground.

After filling out other routine paperwork, and committing to the statement that I will, to the the best of my ability, raise my children Catholic… and he stressed the part of the statement to the best of my ability... (loophole if you’re not comfortable committing to raising your half-Jewish children Catholic before you’ve even considered children)…

Father G. sent us home and we waited to hear if permission was granted. About a month later we got a frantic phone call (he fires on all cylinders all the time), that Father G. had the official dispensations in hand—where should he send them?, and that we should get moving to find a priest to perform the ceremony.

Big bummer—because Father G. is in academics, so he’s too busy in October to commit in advance to a trip to Philly. But he assured me that with this paperwork in hand, no priest should turn us down.

This proved to be an emotional roller coaster as I was indeed turned down by my first choice, a priest from college, an Oblate (an academic and generally open-minded order of priests—the same order of priests my uncle/cousin priest is in… actually, he’s on the board at my college, but string pulling never works for me). I cried my face off. This process is a rough one. You are taught to be respectful (for me that translates to shy and a little frightened) of clergy as a little Catholic kid, and then you go in as an adult with knowledge and life experience, hard copy proof that everything is in order, asking for help, and you get belittled and condescended to… anyway I digress. It was bad. But I didn’t want to give up after dragging Mr. T. through pre-cana.

So I contacted my local parish after all, where I attended CCD for only 3 years as a kid, where my parents aren’t particularly active, held my breath, and I got a positive response!! What?? It was that easy? We could have stayed local the whole time? Lesson learned: Ask everyone. Don’t avoid your home parish on the assumption that they aren’t liberal enough to condone and interfaith marriage—it’s 2010. Maybe they get it, maybe they don’t.

We had it easy on the Jewish side. Mr. Thimble’s family belongs to a Reconstructionist synagogue. If you are looking for a rabbi to perform and interfaith ceremony, you want to try Reform and Reconstructionist rabbis. They’re a bit more liberal. They all have their own stance on the issue, so again you may have to ask around a lot. Go through family members and friends and recommendations.

Rabbi C. from Mr. T.’s synagogue has done many interfaith ceremonies, they have a diverse and vibrant congregation with several active interfaith families, and he has been wonderful teaching me about the Jewish wedding ceremony.

The best piece of advice I can give you for this process is to be open about your reasons for wanting to represent both religions, and express your desire to learn about your partner’s religion. If you didn’t care about your religious faith or your family’s culture and your future family’s culture, you wouldn’t be doing all this work in the first place. Your interest in your partners religion will reassure each officiant that you are making an educated decision when it comes to raising your children, and what sort of religious life you will celebrate as a couple. This is the fun part that makes it all worth it for me. Mr. Thimble and I waver on agnostic, but our cultures are an important part of us. We want that reflected in our wedding ceremony and we know our upbringings will inform how we raise our future children.

Another option, that involves less legwork, is Rabbi Rentals, and Rent a Priest. I know couples who have had good experiences with renting a rabbi- I know less about renting a priest. It’s a shortcut, but after all this work I would consider it in hind-sight. Interfaith Family is another great resource for Interfaith-Jewish couples for many stages of a family’s life-cycle.

Are you part of an interfaith couple? Are you going the co-officiant route?