When my wife (raised Methodist) and I (raised Catholic) had kids, we agreed to raise them Catholic but with an understanding and respect for other religions. Religion didn’t play as prominent a role in her life growing up as it did in mine, and while I rebelled for a few years in my teens and early 20’s by not going to church, I found myself interested again and have been practicing regularly for over ten years. We now attend Catholic mass each week with our two young kids (2 and 4), whom we baptized Catholic. My siblings are godparents to both kids.
We are finally going through the process of writing a will, and have come to the issue of choosing a guardian. We feel that in the event of our death, our kids would feel most comfortable with my wife’s sister’s family. She and her husband live nearby, and their two kids and ours see each other several times each week. My SIL’s husand is Jewish. I think they attend a Methodist church with some regularity. For many reasons, they would make great guardians to our kids. My sibs live out of state (about 2 hours away) and our families only get together a few times a year.
However, if we die, I still want our kids to continue to be raised Catholic. My wife feels it’s unfair to ask a guardian of a different religion to honor that, since it’s already an enormous responsibility to assume guardianship of someone else’s children; making sure the kids attend a different church than their own each week is a real burden and is unrealistic. I feel that if you’re going to agree to be a guardian, you have a responsibility to the parents of the children to respect their wishes for how you want the children raised, and that includes religious teachings. Otherwise, the religion that they’ve practiced up until that point just sort of fizzles.
I realize it would be a struggle for them to raise two children as a different religion than what they practice, which is why I want to ask them to use their best efforts to respect our wishes, and to the extent that the godparents can exert some influence, hopefully between them our kids can at least get to adulthood with a single religious upbringing.
So I guess my question is, am I being unrealistic/unfair/too demanding? Does anyone know how a legal guardian and a godparent work together in this type of situation?
In my opinion, the important part is to give the kids a warm, loving family, which it sounds from your account like your BIL and SIL are most apt to do. Your own siblings as godparents are responsible under the vows they made at the kids’ baptism to help “raise the kids as Catholics” – although to what extent they’d be able to do this from out of state is debatable.
My own suggestion would be for you and your wife to have a heart-to-heart talk with your BIL and SIL regarding your concerns. I suspect reasonable accommodations can be made without major problems, if you’re all “playing from the same page” regarding the issue.
Here’s hoping, though, that the issue never comes up as a real-life concern!
But IMHO the most important thing is that they be raised with love and discipline. Ensure they are raised Christian second, and worry about the particular sect third.
Besides, do you really think that God worries about the nuances of religion?
I do think it is asking quite a bit of your guardians. While we all sincerely hope nothing happens to you, making a will with guardianship provisions is a stark reminder that it could, and while your children are still young. Not would it only be sort of unrealistic to ask that the kids attend a different church each week, but what happens if the kids are still young? Are the potential guardians well-educated enough to answer questions? Or is simply “going to church on Sunday” enough? For the devout Catholics I know it is not.
Do have a heart to heart with the potential guardians about this, and examine your own heart. Is the happiness and security of your children more important than which Christian “walk” they walk? I do know of people to whom it would be unthinkable that their children live with a family of another religion, and of others to whom the happy and moral upbringing of the kids is much more important than what label is put on it.
Why don’t you ask the potential guardians if they would accept the responsibility of raising your kids Catholic? It’s important to let them know ahead of time what your wishes are. I would hope if they love and respect you, they would seriously consider it, even if there is some work involved.
Perhaps making sure there’s money in the estate for Catholic school would help make it easier.