Keeping a faith alive
by DesiGal

My daughter's baptism is around the corner. She will be formally accepted into the Catholic Church this Saturday. I have mixed feelings about it. In some ways, I rationalize that I just want her to be a good human being, so it does not matter what faith she is. But then, I worry that she will learn little of the Hindu identity she inherits from me, especially given how glamorous Christmas and Santa Claus can be. I worry than my plain vanilla Gods will pale in front of all that dazzle.

I can already see the effects of being a minority in this country, as she speaks only English, and anglicizes all the Hindi words we teach her. (BTW, 'Hindi' is an official language in India, not to be confused with 'Hindu' - which means practitioner of Hinduism)

Yesterday, the New York Times had a great story about how practitioners of the Zoroastrian faith are trying to keep their alive.

According to the article, there are about 190,000 Parsis (the word derives from Persia, the old name for Iran) around the world. Their numbers are dwindling, mainly because the faith frowns upon conversion, and interreligious marriages and does not consider children born of such marriages to be Parsis. Relative affluence and higher levels of education also contributes to few children being born.

“Survival has become a community obsession,� said Dina McIntyre, an Indian-American lawyer in Chesapeake, Va., who has written and lectured widely on her religion.

Nowhere is this more apparent than the story of Rohena Ullal, a Parsi who married a Hindu.

...before they even became engaged, they talked about her desire to raise their children as Zoroastrians.

“It’s scary; we’re dipping down in numbers,� she said. “I don’t want to hurt his parents, but he doesn’t have the kind of responsibility, whereas I do.�

Maybe the Zoroastrian faith would do good to follow the example of Roman Catholicism. When I married my Catholic husband, I had to sign an affidavit stating that any children born into our marriage would be raised Catholic. It is a stricture I railed against at the time - I felt I was signing away my children's right to choose a religion or none at all. I still signed it, because it mattered to my husband's family.

I've heard that in Judaism, the child follows the faith of the mother. So a child is Jewish if the mother is Jewish. To me, it's a wonderful piece of common wisdom codified into religious law. Children did spend most of their formative years with their mothers and did what their mothers did. So it just makes sense that children will take on the religion of their mothers too. Or does it? I don't know.

Those of you who had mixed religious marriages, how do you cope? What kind of religious education do you give your kids? What identity do they tend towards?

Contributing editor Priya Ramachandran also blogs at Words on Water

Submitted by DesiGal (view blog) on Thu, 09/07/2006 - 13:21

Comments

 

A note about the paper signing

I'm wondering when you got married? I'm a Catholic who got married last year and did a lot of reading up on things. My husband and I are both Catholic, but I came across a lot of info on what one needed to do to have the marriage recognized by the church and several other pieces. I found that it was much more common 10, 20+ years ago to require non-Catholics to sign affidavits regarding the faith of their children. These days, the paperwork is more rare, and instead a promise is sometimes made during the marriage ceremony itself, but even then it is not always included.

I've never been comfortable with making promises about the faith of one's children. My husband is the first man I dated who was of the same faith, so while I don't deal with a mixed religious relationship now, I did previously. I've always thought children should be educated in both and then choose. I'd think it would be difficult to not pass any of my faith onto my children.

And as an aside on the Jewish quesion--I understood to be true what you wrote, that Judaism is passed maternally, but I know of at least one woman who considers herself Jewish despite the fact that her mother is an orthodox christian and her father is the one who is Jewish (and she had never had a bat mitzvah either). I think that were religion and ethnicity mix, things just get more complicated, as in her case.

Very interesting post!
Cass

Patience is a virtue that takes too long

Submitted by Cassandra on Thu, 09/07/2006 - 10:41
 

Catholics and Jews

Hi there,

I am Catholic and my husband is Jewish, so I can understand where you're coming from. We agreed early in our relationship that our children would be raised knowing both religions. We want them to be familiar with and educated about both our traditions, and we understand that at some point, the big differences will confuse them. But for us, that's o.k. That's part of life - figuring out what rings true to you and where your heart wants to follow. Eventually, they may want to pick one religion, or another, or none at all. I feel that our role as parents is to make them both available to them and let them decide when they're ready. I care more that they have a strong spiritual foundation that I do about which particular religion we subscribe to.

When our son was born, we did the traditional Jewish bris; and last month, we baptized him (I know about the Catholic form you have to sign, I just don't adhere to it to the extent that it would exclude my husband's traditions). Actually, this post of mine describes the whole thing. We celebrate the holidays of both faiths and attend both temple and church (though not every single week, because honestly, it's just too much).

Anyway, that's been my experience. But I honestly can't believe you think your kids will find Hinduism boring! I mean, the Hindu gods are anything but plain! And the history of the faith! No way, I think I'd be excited, if I were Hindu, to get my kids all into it with the great stories of the gods, until they were old enough to understand the deeper tenents. And I know you're a minority in that regard, but if you make the stories, traditions and even tokens of the faith familiar in your home, she will grow up knowing those things. So that no matter what she encounters out in the world, that foundation will always be with her.

Good luck!

Submitted by Tere on Thu, 09/07/2006 - 10:53
 

true belief is a choice

Priya,

I am a Christian, not catholic though, and have a few thoughts.

As a non-catholic christian, conversion is looked at as something that can only occur on an individual basis. You can raise your child in the church, take part in ceremonies and try to guide them toward the Lord, but ultimately each person must make the choice about what they truly believe.

We very much want our children to grow into believers and actively teach threm about what we believe and why. Ultimately, they will have to decide what path they will take. While they are in our home we consider it our duty to teach them what we truly believe is right.

I came from a non-christian home and didn't have any true spiritual beliefs until about the time that I was 17. At that point, in a critical time in my life, God reached down and put His finger on my soul. I truly had a life-changing experience.

I don't think you can make someone believe something. You can only provide opportunities for them.

Terri
Earthen Vessel Designs
Earthen Vessel Designs-The Blog-

Submitted by Terri987 on Thu, 09/07/2006 - 10:53
 

Cass, we got married in 2000

Cass, we got married in 2000 in India. My husband is an Indian Catholic, and we were pondering ways we could get married in his church without me converting. I found a 1998 article in a reputed Indian magazine about the Church's stand on non-Catholics marrying Catholics, and we faxed it to his parish, before they agreed to let us wed there. It's interesting you say you heard about this practise 10-20 years ago. Maybe it's late arriving in India or maybe it's enforced more strictly by the church there because it's a minority religion.

Tere, it's wonderful to hear what you are doing with your kids. It's a model we try to follow in our home too. Part of the reason I worry my (kickass :) gods will lose out is because how visually appealing Christianity/Christmas is. Hinduism is very text based. Our film industry has still not managed to churn out something like the Passion. Coming from a software engineer perspective, it's like the difference between Windows and Unix :) A problem I notice with Hindu/Indian kids is how they associate the religion with the poverty of India, and so it automatically must be inferior. Anyways, fingers crossed that I can teach my daughter to respect both our faiths and other great faiths of the world too.

Terri, great to hear your story too. I too agree that religion and faith are very personal things, and you need to live something rather than have someone/something tell you it is so. I know the Catholic baptism is quite different from the adult baptism that other Christian denominations follow. In many ways, adult baptism makes sense to me. For Catholics though, childhood baptism is a sort of insurance against death in infancy, from what I'm told.

Priya Ramachandran
Blogher Contributing Editor - South East Asia
Words on Water

Submitted by DesiGal on Thu, 09/07/2006 - 11:57
 

Priya,

Priya,

That is very, very interesting. Although the Catholic church claims to be "universal," that is definitely not so. Holy days of obligation are one difference that I know of, and now it looks like marriage requirements are different. In the U.S. today, there is no problem at all with a Catholic marrying a non-Catholic (though different priests/bishops might sometimes be discouraging). When Catholics marry non-Catholics, they are encouraged to have the marriage ceremony outside of the mass, but that's pretty much it. Special permission is not needed (at least not anymore). What is difficult is if the couple wants to be married someplace other than a church or if the couple wants a minister of another faith to co-officiate.

Of course, there might be exceptions to this out there, but I'd say this is true the majority of the time today.

I'd say your take on the Catholic view of baptism is pretty much on target with one addition--it is the first of 3 "initiation" sacraments, the first step to becoming a full fledged Catholic. One isn't fully a member of the church until the last of the 3 sacraments, confirmation, is received, and the timing of that sacrament seems to vary from diocese to diocese.

Cass

Patience is a virtue that takes too long

Submitted by Cassandra on Thu, 09/07/2006 - 12:18
 

Maintaining your heritage

I don't have a mixed religion marriage and can't give you advice on that front. I just want to comment on keeping your heritage alive for your daughter.

I would hope that you have a local community you can lean on to maintain your culture. It is so true that the draw of Christmas and Santa Clause is huge. That is an issue with Christians as well - trying to teach our children the true meaning of Christmas.

I would hope that you can find a balance between allowing her to experience life as a Christian while keeping her enveloped in her rich and diverse heritage. She may seem to pull away now, to be more like everyone else, but will appreciate it so much when she gets older.

I am a scrapbooker, so to me lifes problems can be solved there :)

My girls love to look at their scrapbooks. I made them each a book about their ancestral line, very simple, with pictures of the person as a child, and then as an adult and who they married, down the line to them as a child. It is a great way to show geneology that is non threatening and putting faces to names makes it more personal and enjoyable.

Perhaps if you could incorporate pictures and stories that she could turn to on her own, it would help instill some of those traditions and values that you hold dear without causing a rift with the religions.

Linda
Musings of a Domestic Goddess

Submitted by Domestic Goddess on Thu, 09/07/2006 - 17:03
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