Marriage of Catholics with the people of other Religion

In my personal experience as a pastor for last 14 years and as a judicial vicar who judges the marriage cases in the tribunal, I have two points to defend strongly.

(1) I very strongly feel that religion and same faith is to be a main factor for a believer while getting married.

(2) I have found cases miserably failed love marriages where the only pillar to support the marriage is love where religion was not at all a point.

Now a days, the youngsters fall in love like that. They insist for marriage only because they have fallen in love. There is only emotion involved and the reason has no place there. I do not claim that all such cases are failures. But proportionately, the failure rate is high there.

On the other hand if you are sure that you can not love the person whom you are going to marry, then do not marry that person. Let there be love even in all arranged marriages. Let no one marry, only because they fell in love but no other aspect is matching.

The marriage is not for happiness and understanding only. One can not sideline the aim of the marriage as per catholic understanding.

General Observation:

1. I cannot imagine of a Catholic partner getting married to a non-baptized who is never able to pray to the Trinitarian God together or not able to go to the Church together.

2. It makes me sad to see the children born for them are not able to see the parents who are praying together, do not have any family prayer; fight on the baptism and Catholic upbringing.

3. It is discouraging to see the couple comes to fight on getting married both in the Church and in the temple to satisfy everyone. Where one party insist on a Thali with a cross where the other party is not ready for that. Where the solemn oath cannot taken touching on Bible, etc, etc.

Justifying love marriages we say it just happened to fall in love. I am certain that even in falling in love you have selection. For eg: you still consider the age, gender, external beauty, character, smartness and any many other qualities in falling in love. Now my question is why do not we consider religiosity is a serious matter in the selection?

God has given us the use of reason. Marriage is a an act of intellect and will. Emotions can not only be the driving forces to get married but also reason in the light of Divine providence.