For refusing to go to Church?

[TheGreyPony]

Me and DP have been together for 4 years and are newly engaged.

My family is atheist and DPs family is catholic (DP is not practicing any religion)

DPs family go to church every Sunday and special occasions (Easter, Christmas…)

DP doesn’t go to church expect for on Christmas Eve, which is mother states is extremely important to her.

She has asked me every year if I will go to church at Christmas with them, and I explained me and my family have our own traditions and it’s not something I want to give up.

She keeps asking DP and I to go to church on a Sunday with her. She says how much it would mean to them, and how sad she is that DP doesn’t take his faith seriously.
DP genuinely just can’t be bothered to go, and i genuinely could not care less about Church or anything to do with religion.

I am not “anti-religion” I just don’t believe it in at all and do find the whole thing ridiculous (don’t worry, I’d never say that to his family) I worry she blames me for DPs lack of faith, but I also find myself biting my tongue whenever something good happens (like I get a promotion) and she tells me to thank god - because I think, I did that on own, not God.

AMBU for refusing to go? I know it’s important to her, but I just don’t like religion and I feel like it would be more disrespectful to lie.
Should I pretend, and go to church to keep the peace? Or be true to myself?

Now it’s another Labour bashing thread
wind your necks in

Hey ! Stop throwing stones !

I didn't start it !

🤐

It isn’t about converting OP. It’s about future weddings and grandchildren being Catholic.
There were no depths to which my Catholic parents wouldn’t stoop to manipulate or bully me into pretending not to be atheist for appearances sake. My father told me I wasn’t really married, therefore committing a grave sin in the eyes of god because I had a non religious wedding.

OP, if your partner looks like he won’t stand up to his parent, run like hell!

It cracks me up that your ‘logic’ (which comes up with wearisome regularity on here) seems to be ‘A certain subcategory of fundamentalist Muslim has a tradition of inciting religiously-mandated murder as a response to perceived insults against their beliefs, therefore’ — what, exactly?

— ‘I wish the Archbishop of Canterbury/the Pope would also issue fatwahs, so I could legitimately run out and attack people being flippant about Jesus’?

— ‘I wish Christianity generated as much fear as fundamentalist Islam’?

— ‘I’d love to see Richard Dawkins in hiding for a decade because the parish of St Jude’s is baying for his blood’?

— ‘It’s what Jesus would have wanted’?

Listen to yourself.

And while I am always amused by the fact that people on woo threads always recommend contacting Catholic priests for ‘exorcisms’, apparently labouring under the delusion that they are always available to all comers like some kind of free ghost busting service apparently from having watched The Exorcist, Thetes a certain rightness to it, I suppose. Certainly belief in a curiously incompetent but supposedly omnipotent and benevolent deity requires the same level of superstition, wishful thinking and illogicality as general ‘woo’.

People are derailing the thread. You can be respectful to her beliefs but be firm on your own. You will not be going to church, you will not be getting married in a church, you will not be christening your children. I had all this with my family, they found it hard at first but they got used to it in the end.

It happens because of Hollywood horror films in which an actor in a cassock traditionally shows up to fight the demonically-possessed child with his trusty crucifix, holy water etc. This has passed into the mindset of people who wouldn’t know a Catholic priest from a ninja, who appear to genuinely believe that Catholic priests are waiting for their call to do battle with the Forces of Evil.

Despite the fact that the official Church position is that it’s virtually always a MH issue, and that if a priest does agree to visit your house, it will be for pastoral care of you, not to banish the spirit of Beelzebub from your downstairs loo. With declining numbers and an ageing population of priests, almost none will have done the requisite exorcism training even if they thought it was warranted.

As you say, others. Not everyone. There's also likely to be a fairly high correlation between people who believe in the afterlife and people who think priests somehow have special powers.

I'm an atheist married to an agnostic who was raised Catholic.
I go to church with my mother in law, if we're over, and if she invites me. It's something important to her, that I can do for her. She knows I'm an atheist, and I don't lie to the priest about it, but I am respectful. The faith of her congregation is sincerely held. I cannot prove there is no god; they cannot prove there is one.
I liken it to going to support someone at their sunday-league rugby. I'm not really interested but I do it out of affection for the other person, because it matters to them, and they want to share it.

Yeah this is a running theme, atheists must respect the religious, but the religious don't have to respect atheists.

This. OP, your future MIL won't have "learned her lesson". She never will. As for your fiance, be warned that he's likely to have a sharp change of opinion especially as he gets older and/or when children come along. I've seen it happen particularly with Catholicism and Islam.

Well practising a religion usually means attending a building/place where would a practicing atheist take people that is important to them? In the atheist sense

Relevant to atheism not just their favourite sport evenr, bar, book group etc.

It would mean not going to church, obviously. If its 'respectful' for OP to go sometimes, then it would also be respectful for MiL not to. But neither of these things are actually respect, respect is leaving someone to their own beliefs rather than pushing your own onto others.

With respect this thread was nailed at 9.24 by Eelqueen - all the rest is just 'window dressing'

It is a spineless dh problem

I think maybe you've misunderstood what I meant. She doesn't pressure me to go, and my DH stays at home, no problem. I choose to accompany her because she has always been so welcoming to me - I was pretty much family from the day we were introduced. My atheism is robust enough to sit through a mass every now and then, as a kindness, without it sending me into an existential crisis. Sometimes it's just nice to be nice.

It doesn’t matter how much you like her or that it’s only an hour etc, it’s pointless if you don’t want to go. It’s not like it’s providing her company; there’s no conversation in church, and it’s not like you’re against spending time and chatting with her at any other time. It would be different if she was asking for help with something, or time together, but there’s nothing to be gained from it other than her getting the feeling of getting closer to converting you. It won’t stop if you just do it the know, if anything you’ll have shown that you’re open to it sometimes. Just say no. No thank you, no excuse. No, I won’t be coming.

This!

Tell her one big fat NO and not to ask again. My in-laws asked me if I wanted to visit their local church, I explained the i’m atheist that I have no more interest in going to someone else’s church than I have in stamp collecting! They’ve never asked again.

Your mother-in-law is very disrespectful trying to force her beliefs on to you. It’s okay to ask once but once you’ve made your position clear asking again is offensive in my view. I don’t try to persuade religious people to give up their beliefs so I expect the same in return from them.

Just keep saying No and ask your DH to talk to her to say you don’t appreciate being constantly asked to do something you have made it perfectly clear you don’t want to do.

As for the ‘your DH will revert back to Catholicism when he has children’ comments - I had the opposite experience with my DH. It made him even more determined that his children wouldn’t experience the enormous amount of catholic guilt he was subjected to as a child and the dreary hours and hours of church services he was forced to attend.

Bluntly, there’s nothing particularly nice about encouraging someone else’s delusions, ‘sincere’ though they be.

Well, in both our cases, it was more a matter of ‘Why would I sign up my baby for membership of a notoriously corrupt organisation which disproportionately chose to abuse and mistreat women and children, and which is very far from setting its house in order?’

Please tell her " I respect you too much to make a hypocrite of myself by attending church with you or anyone else "

Then suggest meeting her for a coffee after church or something like that so that she doesn't think you are avoiding her in particular.

People should not be made to feel bad about any religion or lack thereof. Stick to your guns or you'll be on an alpha course before you know it! They have ways of dragging you in.

You just need to talk to her about it.
Say you totally respect her faith and her choices, but that they aren’t for you and so to please respect your choices too. You will NOT be going to church.

I just don't see how it's nice, but fair eough and seeing as you're not being pressured, it's different to OPs situation anyway, where her MiL is clearly not respecting her.

yes, that too! That’s one of the main reasons I have such a problem with organised religion and particularly Catholicism - I think it’s responsible for great evils throughout the ages, some of which continue to this day. I can’t imagine supporting such an organisation.

But given as every other poster had rather sidestepped that issue I decided not to be the one who brought it up!

I would be saying 'no, i will not be going, this is the last time we will discuss this, i will ignore all future church requests'
Polite but firm

I agree with most that say you need to find out where your DH sits on wedding, kids, baptism, schools and all that
He may very well be no now but what happens when the wedding and kids happen?

I hate the notion that the non-religious have to respect religion almost to a 'no matter what' standard
Yet the non-religious are not afforded the same respect in any way
Its always just do it, be nice, it wont hurt you - not a simple respect your choice and give up asking

Ask her to come to a Swinger's party in return.