How can I share communion with my wife?

The biggest spiritual hindrance to our marriage is that we are not able to share communion at the same table. My wife is Roman Catholic and I am not.

I have approached our pastor and asked to receive and was told that if I want to commune with my wife I would have to become Roman Catholic.

So that means, even though we are united in the sacrament of matrimony and we both have faith in Jesus, we cannot share that faith together at the table - the source and summit of our spiritual lives.

A proposed solution:

I could take some bread from the communion table at my Protestant Church with me to mass. And then my wife could take her communion at Catholic Church back to the pew with her, and then both her and I could communion together.

Or maybe I could just eat the "bread" as she goes forward. As far as the Roman Catholic Church is concerned, I'm just having a snack. While of course, I do understand the bread to be the essence of Christ and is thus communion for me.


What do you think?
What do you think? Good idea, bad idea, got a better idea? What are some theological implications of this solution? What are the theological implications of a husband and wife who do/can not share the Eucharist?

Infant Baptism

My Christian tradition, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) practices exclusively believers baptism, that is adult baptism. The Roman Catholic Church baptizes infants of believers.

This is a particularly difficult issue for us, being in an inter-church family. We had to decide what to do with our children regarding baptism. Admittedly at first, I agreed with my wife to baptize our infant children (when the time comes along) because I thought the Catholic Church was more stubborn on this issue than my church. With some further thought and examination I have come to the conclusion that infant baptism should be the preferred method for children of believers.

I anticipate that this decision may cause some controversy within my church, but I hope to spell out here how we arrived at this decision.

Objection 1: Not scriptural.

The number one objection I hear, or read, regarding infant baptism is that there is no example of it found in scripture. And I would have to admit this fact. Some proponents of infant baptism will point to the household baptisms found in Acts. However, this is not an explicit example of infant baptism. As many say in the Disciples of Christ Church: "Where the scriptures speak, we speak. Where the scriptures are silent, we are silent." In other words: if it isn't in scripture, don't do it.

However, there is also not a single example in scripture of a child of Christian parents who receives baptism as an adult. In fact, there is no example of a 2nd generation Christian baptism.

All baptisms in scripture are adult individuals who come to faith from no faith. If we do our job as Christian parents, this is not the pattern that our children will follow. When we postpone baptism for our children, we are saying that they don't belong to the faithful community, that they don't have faith. This is simply not true.

Scripture provides no instruction on what to do with children of the faithful regarding baptism.

Baptism should mark one's entrance into the faith. For adults this happens when they accept Jesus, repent of their sins, and are baptized. But children of Christian parents are trained in the faith from a very young age, maybe even the day they are born.

Objection 2: Faith is necessary for baptism, infants are incapable of faith, therefore infant baptism is invalid.

How much faith is required for one to be baptized? Should we administer a test? Is faith in the head, or in the heart, and how do you measure it? Also, whose faith matters?

I received baptism as an "adult" at the age of 13. (coincidently, everyone else in my church came to faith at the age 13 also) My faith has certainly grown significantly in the past 10 years. I would say that my faith was insufficient at that age, and thats okay. Our faith will never be perfect, and thats why we cannot rely on it. We need to rely on the faith of God. How little control we have on when and how God chooses us to be part of his family.

The Instruction on Infant Baptism By the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith helps explain this question (14):

The fact that infants cannot yet profess personal faith does not prevent the Church from conferring this sacrament on them, since in reality it is in her own faith that she baptizes them. This point of doctrine was clearly defined by Saint Augustine: "When children are presented to be given spiritual grace," he wrote, "it is not so much those holding them in their arms who present them—although, if these people are good Christians, they are included among those who present the children—as the whole company of saints and faithful Christians.... It is done by the whole of Mother Church which is in the saints, since it is as a whole that she gives birth to each and every one of them."[24] This teaching is repeated by St. Thomas Aquinas and all the theologians after him: the child who is baptized believes not on its own account, by a personal act, but through others, "through the Church's faith communicated to it."[25] This same teaching is also expressed in the new Rite of Baptism, when the celebrant asks the parents and godparents to profess the Faith of the Church, the Faith in which the children are baptized.[26]

What do you think? When should children of Christian parents be baptized? Did I miss anything?