INSTRUCTION FOR NON-CATHOLICS

Question. I am a nonCatholic. engaged to be married to a Catholic, and, while perfectly willing to sign the required promises, I have no intention of joining your faith and so for the life of me I can't see why I am expected to go along, week by week, to a dingy waiting room to listen to a priest giving me a course of instructions. Why is this formality insisted on?
Miss N.L., Liverpool
Answer. If it is any consolation to this week's enquirer or to anyone else similarly baffled by our Catholic rules about the preliminaries to a Mixed Marriage, the question why these instructions should be cornpulsory occurs just as readily to the priests who have to give them as to those who, however unwillingly, are at the receiving end.
While very many of a priest's other pastoral en-. counters are full of absorbing human interest, at least at a natural level these instructions can be the most depressing and uninspiring of duties.
As the talk or talks progress, the priest becomes more and more acutely aware, in many cases, that the non-Catholic is present, not because he is at all interested, but because, if he is to be married in a Catholic church, this ordeal is an unavoidable preparation. Just to clear the air, it is worth pointing out that the purpose of the exercise is not to convert the nonCatholic and the whole business is completely misunderstood if thought of as a surreptitious form of proselytism. These talks are intended as a device for ensuring that the non-Catholic really does understand the promises we are asking him to make; they state both that he will not interfere with the C.atholic's practice and belief and that all children of the marriage will be brought up as Catholics. Further, except in the case of a marriage between a Catholic and a member of one of the separated Eastern Churches, as a condition for its being regarded as valid, the wedding must normally be celebrated before a Catholic priest. Although it is only too true that we priests must sometimes appear insensitive to the rights of a Protestant conscience, in general we are far from unaware that all the foregoing is a tall order indeed. The non-Catholic is being asked to agree to a great deal and so, to put it at its lowest, it is only right that he be clearly conscious of what he is letting himself in for.
In demanding these troublesome instructions. the Church is treating the nonCatholic as a responsible human being who has a right and duty to know what is before him.
Far from being one-sided harangues. these instructions are usually, and properly.
two-sided conversational dialogues for the nonCatholic may have any possible set of beliefs from devout Evangelical Protestantism to cheerful agnostic indifferentism.
The first point the priest will wish to ascertain is just how far the Catholic way of life is from the individual non-Catholic's own position. Then he will need to be told about our belief concerning marriage and he will need a gentle reminder that, contrary to what is often suggested, Catholicism implies far more than simply going to church on Sundays and observing various sexual taboos.
Nowadays. unless he is old-fashioned or has learned caution by hard experience in the Forces, where "sign nothing" is an excellent rule of thumb, urban man is prone to sign all manner of agreements and H.P. documents with a gay abandon.
Too often the only question he asks is, "Where do It sign?"; if before a Mixed Marriage the Church requires this series of conversations between the nonCatholic and the priest, the rule is far from pointless and is intended to go a long way towards ensuring both proper respect for the Protestant conscience and a serious approach to the serious business of marriage.