The furor started with a statement by America’s vice president.
“Do I hope that eventually she is somehow moved by what I was moved by in church?” J.D. Vance responded to a question regarding his Hindu wife. “Yeah,” the VP—a Catholic convert—said, “because I believe in the Christian Gospel…”
And so the floodgates came crashing open.
Vance’s sentiments “are reflective of a belief that there is only one true path to salvation,” grumbled The Hindu American Foundation. Warned author Susan Katz Miller: “To respect your partner and everything they bring…is [what] you need…in a marriage.”
Interfaith marriage is a subject dear to my heart. My mother, a Jewish Holocaust survivor from Germany, married an agnostic Methodist from Montana, who became my father. And yet I was raised Jewish.
My former wife, a Catholic, converted to Judaism following the birth of our first child. And now I’m married to another Catholic, a Filipina with whom I live in her predominantly Catholic native country, raising our children in their mother’s faith. And yet my son wears a mezuzah, and my daughter sports a Star of David. All of which is to say, hey, it’s complicated.
But only a little. Because we respect each other’s faiths and don’t see them as conflicting. Which certainly hasn’t always been true of Judaism and Catholicism. “For centuries,” Catholic historian Stephen A. Allen has written, “Catholics persecuted Jews, crowding them into ghettos, forcing them to convert to Christianity, and frequently killing them. For centuries, Catholics accused Jews of ritually murdering Christian children, engaging in sorcery, poisoning wells and desecrating images of Christ. For centuries, Catholics were taught that Jews—all Jews—were cursed because they killed Christ…”
All that changed in 1965 when the Second Vatican Council adopted Nostra Aetate. Promulgated by then-Pope Paul VI, it called for dialogue and respect between Christianity and other religions, especially Judaism. “This luminous document,” current Pope Leo XIV said during an October recognition of the proclamation’s 60th anniversary, “teaches us to meet the followers of other religions not as outsiders, but as traveling companions on the path of truth.”
Which is why I traveled all the way to Manila from my home in Northern Mindanao for an event celebrating that anniversary. Organized by the Philippine chapter of B’nai B’rith, it was a day of religious dialogue at the Catholic University of Santo Tomas featuring, among others, a rabbi, priests, professors, and Israel’s ambassador to the Philippines. “This conference,” the program proclaimed, “seeks to build bridges of hope, promote peace, and cultivate a culture of healing in a fractured world.”
And indeed, some of those fractures had recently grown into chasms. Especially following the Oct. 7 attack when now-deceased Pope Francis practically accused Israel of committing “genocide” in Gaza. Then posed for pictures with a baby Jesus wrapped in a Palestinian keffiyeh.
His action “ignores and twists beyond all recognition a small, often-overlooked fact underlying the whole Middle East conflict,” I fumed in a subsequent column. Namely, “that Jesus was a Jew.” Who, not surprisingly, inspired a new religion based largely on Jewish values. Two weeks later I wrote another piece slamming Filipino Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David for delivering a Christmas homily bemoaning the Gazan refugees “displaced from their lands that Israel has occupied.”
Ah, but none of it has affected relations with my lovely Catholic wife. Because—based on those aforementioned shared values—we actually do respect each other’s religions. Which was quite clear during our family’s recent observance of Hanukkah, attended by several Filipino relatives, some of whom had never seen a menorah.
“Baruch atah Adonai,” I dutifully recited after briefing them on the origins and significance of the holiday. Mostly I was met with polite but oh-so-blank stares. Until, lighting the candles, I spoke of the value of light. “Just as it lights up this night,” I explained, “so should it light up the world.”
And just like that, it lit up their faces with smiles. “Dear God,” my dear wife intoned in a dear little Hanukkah prayer of her own, “please may you light up our lives.”
The same spirit lit up our Christmas celebration a few days later. “O star of wonder, star of light, Star with royal beauty bright…” my family sang with the light literally sparkling in their eyes.
I wasn’t always as confident of that sparkle as I am now. I’ll never forget the day several years ago when we indulged in the Philippine tradition of having our newly constructed home blessed. My God, I wondered as a priest sprinkled holy water on the mezuzah at its front door, would it hiss and explode? Would hot steam fill the room as the flames of Hell burned the new building to the ground?
Fortunately, that didn’t happen. Instead, a super typhoon showed up several months later to blow the roof off our house and scatter its contents to the wind. Divine retribution? I’ll let you decide.
