WHen my wife, Sarah and I got engaged, one thing that was very important to her and her family was that our marriage be blessed in the Catholic church. Being both Jewish and divorced I thought this might be a problem, but it turned out I was only half right.
I called the Archdiocese of Baltimore and made an appointment with the priest who handles these sorts of things. He seemed like a nice guy on the phone, so on the day of my appointment I wore my Jewish tie (it has Jewish letters on it).
When I walked in he looked at it and said, "Oh, you're Jewish. We don't get too many Jews in here." My comeback: "Well, you started with one." He started laughing and took me back to his office.
"You have two options," he told me. "The first takes a few months, is relatively easy, and costs $350. The second can take a year or more and, depending upon your circumstances, cost thousands of dollars. Which would you like to hear about first?"
I told him I was pretty sure I knew which way I was going to go, but he had me intrigued and I wanted to hear about both. He gave me the breakdown:
1) The faster, cheaper approach was called In Favor of the Faith. Basically, the church investigates my background a bit, my wife and I agree that any children we have will be baptized Catholic, and the church blesses our marriage. The cost would be $350; most of which, the priest assured me, went to the Vatican.
2) The second one was more like a divorce case, where I presented my side and my ex-wife could oppose me if she wished. Lawyers were optional, but common, the priest said. Having not spoken to my ex-wife in many years at that point, I doubted she'd have an opinion on my second marriage one way or another, but I decided on #1 anyway.
Sarah and I each had to fill out a lengthy questionnaire, as did my parents and a friend who knew me when I was married to my first wife. I could tell the document hadn't been updated in a while, because Sarah's had questions like, "Are you embarrassed to tell your friends that you're marrying a divorced man?"
Many of the questions on mine had to do with sex, asking if infidelity or homosexuality had been factors in our divorce. The church wanted to know if I had abused my ex-wife though not, interestingly, whether or not she had abused me.
The issue, as it turned out, wasn't my being Jewish, but my being divorced. The priest interviewed us (separately) and, after we'd passed muster, sent the paperwork off to Rome.
For months every time I saw the Pope on TV I'd look to see if there was a desk or a table in the background with my paperwork on it. I never saw it, but a few months later I got a letter on Vatican stationery in Latin — an English translation was helpfully stapled to it — saying the Pope had bee apprised of our situation and had decided that our marriage could be blessed in the Catholic church.
I called the archdiocese and asked if we had to take "those classes" (I didn't know what they were called at the time), and the priest said it was up to the priest who married us. We made arrangements to have our wedding blessed in the church where Sarah's family had been members for many years — invite the priest over for Sunday dinner once a month members — and we met, together and separately, with Father Wayne, a huge bear of a man.
He shook my hand, gestured to me to sit, and asked if I had any questions. "Let me be honest with you," I told him. "My goal is to get out of having to take those pre-cana classes. What do I have to do to get out of the classes?"
"You have to convince me that you're mature enough not to need them."
"How am I doing so far?"
He laughed and we spent the next half hour discussing current events. A few weeks later Sarah and I along with her parents and one sister, went o church one Sunday after a regular service and had our own wedding ceremony, our second (we'd had a civil service months before) for those who are keeping score.
Father Wayne, a kind and gentle man, died a few weeks ago, which saddened me. One of my favorite photos of myself is the two of us posing outside the restaurant where we went (and invited him) for lunch after our Catholic wedding which, with his 10 inch and 100 pound advantage over me, is very Mutt and Jeff.
And I have a letter from the Vatican on Vatican stationery. Bet you're jealous.
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