Religion is always a touchy subject with most people, but honestly, I think that’s enough reason that it should be discussed openly all the more. I enjoy a good religious debate myself from time to time, given that both sides have the opportunity to speak their case fairly, and sometimes when people are truly honest with themselves as they talk, you can learn some pretty interesting things about them and why they believe what they do. Mind you, we’re not talking about discussions meant to convert someone or win them over, but simply some dialog to help each other to better understand where they’re coming from and all of that.
I guess I should note at this point, just for the record, I don’t personally believe in God myself. Well, actually I tend to bounce back and forth between atheism (not believing in God) and agnosticism (believing that there’s no way to determine if God exists or not) every now and again, but either way, for the purposes of following this story just keep in mind that I’m not a religious man by any stretch of the imagination…
You see, I’m currently neck-deep in the process of planning my wedding with my fiancée, and by planning, I more so mean that she does most of the research and I later go through things that she’s earmarked and give her my opinions on them. And as you can expect, sometimes we agree and sometimes … well, not so much … but regardless, I don’t want to be one of those guys who doesn’t have any involvement in his own wedding other than the fact that he shows up on time, and she doesn’t want that, either. So we go back and forth a lot, and sometimes we have meaningful exchanges where we can come to a compromise without strangling each other, and sometimes just neither person is willing to give on something that they’ve invested a lot of thought in but the other clearly just isn’t seeing, but regardless, it’s still good because we try to keep the lines of communication open no matter what and I honestly couldn’t imagine a relationship going the distance otherwise.
We recently settled on a location and a date and put our deposit down to lock things in, so with the granddaddy of all decisions officially out of the way, we thought we’d welcome a change of pace and talk about the officiant for a while – you know, to give our checkbooks a chance to cool down! Nonetheless, we knew that this wasn’t going to be the easiest of decisions simply because we were both coming to the table wanting very different things for the most important day of our collective lives together. My fiancée is Catholic and very much has always wanted a Catholic wedding, whereas like I explained earlier, I’m not religious at all and would prefer not to have that be the focus of our day. But we’re two relatively level-headed people who take pride in our communication skills with each other – we can work with this, right?
This actually came up in discussion when we first started dating – you might call it testing the water before we let ourselves get too serious – but we made it a point to talk about as many of the important differences that we could encounter between us as possible, and boy, there were some doozies! We talked about everything from abortions and having children to what our expectations were for getting married, and of course, our own religious beliefs or lack thereof. And neither of us ran away screaming, so we figured that we should be able to handle just about anything. While we shared different beliefs about things like religion, we did agree on one fundamental point – that people of differing beliefs should still be able to co-exist and live together happily – and that ultimately, what better example could we set for our children further on down the road than by teaching this early on by showing how Mommy and Daddy might believe different things, but still love each other very much?
It makes sense, but like anything, there are always a few little kinks down the road here and there, such as in the case of our wedding planning fiasco. Our first obstacle came in the form of the ceremony site itself, where she had always wanted to get married in a Catholic Church, while I wouldn’t necessarily be comfortable with that because I’m not religious myself. And granted, it’s not that I just refuse to step foot in any church, temple, or synagogue whatsoever – I have no qualms about going when someone else’s wedding is planned there or even on special occasions where she’d like me to go with her simply for support, but note in those cases I’m going exclusively for her or whoever the wedding is for. I don’t personally take anything out of going to church – to me, it’s just another building with really cool stained-glass windows … nothing more, and because of that, I feel that it wouldn’t be an appropriate site for my own wedding because I think on the most important day of our lives, I should get something out of the ceremony, too. It wouldn’t be right for her to get what she wants and me to just feel alienated and weird the whole time, but luckily living in Florida, it seemed like an easy compromise at the time to simply get married on the beach instead.
But little did we know that choosing the beach would make things more difficult than we thought. Now I don’t really know much about the Catholic Church, except for the stereotypes … even though lately I’m finding more of these to be true than false … and I’ve sort of been learning new things about them as we go, and one of the things I recently learned about was the fact that for the most part, the Catholic Church only supports weddings that take place in one of their churches – read: not the beach. And because of this, we’ve found it very hard to even find a Catholic priest that would give us the time of day because they seem to be very strict about how marriage ceremonies are to take place. Finally we thought that we were in the clear and that everyone would be happy because we found a priest that for some reason which evades me would conduct our ceremony on the beach, so all was right with the world. At least, it was right until I got a glimpse of the actual script for the ceremony…
One of the things that I dread about wedding ceremonies is that while some are quick, quaint and to the point, others are insanely religious and end up feeling more like a mass than a unity of two loving souls. All that standing up and sitting down and singing and eating of the cracker may be fine and well for those who believe in it, but for me it just seems to take away from the actual point of the day itself and that’s the idea that two people have declared their love for each other and are vowing to spend the rest of their days together. It’s because of this that I decided that I want my wedding day to be about love, not God, because although others might deem it necessary to thank the almighty for anything and everything, and cleanse their sins and all of that, I just want the day to be about the love I share with my bride-to-be. I don’t have a problem if people want to bless us or pray to God for our well-being, but I don’t want to feel like everyone around me on my own wedding day thinks I’m a sinner just because I don’t believe in God.
That said, the script that I read was pretty much the polar opposite of what I could’ve hoped for – eight or ten pages loaded with readings and prayers, with the audience reciting things back to the priest in true Sunday church fashion and needless to say, there was simply no way that I could ever be comfortable standing at the alter on the most important day of my life with that particular ceremony transpiring around me. It’s one thing for me to sit on the sidelines in support of someone else who finds religion important for Christmas or Easter, but to ask me to participate in the presentation in a manner that is expected for a wedding ceremony would be akin to asking someone who does believe in God to pretend like they don’t, just for the day…
And I know it’s hard for people who do believe in God to understand, but just because I don’t believe in God doesn’t mean that my life is simply void of beliefs and that likewise, talk about God shouldn’t faze me. My belief is that I don’t believe in God, and just as how you would feel uncomfortable if I were to stand at the alter and shout how I believe that God doesn’t exist, think of how I might feel to stand there and listen to your guy profess that God is responsible for anything and everything, and how thankful we should all be for his blessings, despite the fact that I don’t believe that he even exists. When you’re so fixated on the idea that what you believe is correct and you’re willing to take that to the grave, it’s sadly common to write off any differing ideas as lesser than your own, but consider how you feel when others tell you that your beliefs are wrong.
You don’t have to agree with me, but please respect my choices as you would like me to respect your own.
So after a few nights filled with discussions and arguments and all-out fights, we finally both calmed ourselves and sat down to go over the script together to see where we might be able to compromise. There were some parts that were simply way too preachy for me, but also some that I had no problems with at all, so combined with the few that I was still up in the air about, at the end of the night we both felt like we came away from the table with something that we could work with because we agreed that while I felt uncomfortable with religion playing such a strong part in our wedding, she wouldn’t feel right with it not being present at all. She would take our thoughts back to the priest to get his feedback and see just what kinds of adjustments we could make, and we would go from there. Or at least, we thought we would go from there, but now it seems that we’re back at step one again…
Apparently what I said about the Catholic Church being very strict about wedding ceremonies wasn’t the half of it because after explaining our situation – that I don’t believe in God and that we were looking for some compromise because such a heavy ceremony would make me uncomfortable – he replied stating that he wouldn’t be able to help us because he “wouldn’t feel comfortable turning his back on God to accommodate my lack of faith.” We weren’t asking to toss in phrases like, “If God exists, let us thank him…” or the liking, but simply to tone it down the Gods and Jesuses a bit in light of the fact that I don’t share the same beliefs, but there would be none of that. Naturally, my fiancée is now devastated because she feels that she won’t be able to get what she wants if the church won’t allow any room for change because their existing ceremony wouldn’t be fair to me. You might think that I would be happy because the Catholic ceremony is now out of the question, but it’s not like that at all – I actually feel really bad because although it does make me uncomfortable, I wasn’t at all saying that God couldn’t have any way, shape, or form in the ceremony. I simply asked for a compromise so that we could both enjoy the ceremony without feeling as our own beliefs had been excluded.
And to be honest, I’m a bit angry at the Catholic Church for her because I kind of feel like they’re turning their back on her on the most important day of her life. She wants her religion to be a part of her wedding day, but asks them to understand that her partner doesn’t necessarily share her religious beliefs and they’ve come back saying that it’s either their way or the highway – end of discussion. And that’s one of the reasons that even if I were to one day come to believe in God for myself, I don’t think I could ever be a part of an “organized” religion simply due to the dogma that they want to hold in the strictest accord like this. I honestly had concerns whether or not they would even acknowledge the union because I wasn’t Catholic myself, but apparently that rule is a little more lax than others. But regardless, here’s one of your believers who wants to make God and her church a part of her life on this important day and yet they still want to call all of the shots or they won’t have anything to do with it, as if God himself would look down on her and the wedding for trying to make both members of the marriage feel comfortable.
Everyone has their own interpretation of what God is like, but I’ve put a lot of thought into this myself over the years and if he does exist, I’d like to think that he isn’t as judgmental and rigid as so many of his followers make him out to be. At the end of ones life, it shouldn’t matter what you believed or how you believed it, but how you treated your fellow man throughout the ride and what you did to make the world a better place before you left. An entity so impressive as to create life, the universe, and everything wouldn’t need lip service or strict and consistent praise to know what kind of person you really are. Actions speak louder than words and in the end, it wouldn’t do him any good for you to speak his name in high praise if at the same time you were crass and uncompassionate to all of his other creations along the way anyways. Any religion that can turn its back on someone, whether it be due to biblical interpretation or sexual orientation or even differing beliefs altogether, needs to stop and give a long, hard think as to why their God put us all on this Earth to begin with because if they think it was to exclude people for being different, they’ve clearly missed the point.
If God loves everyone and love knows no bounds, then who’s the Catholic Church to judge my wedding?
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