Whle I have been divorced from my first husband for nearly 20 years now, I am still bothered by the "near miss" I experienced during before, during and after our relationship ended. My husband was not a practicing Mormon, he was, as he called it, a "Jack Mormon"...one who belongs to the church but does not actively participate. His Mother, however, was a different story. A zealous Mormon, she lived and breathed her faith. Not that I had a problem with that; I'm not one to ask other people to change their beliefs to suit mine. I was brought up a strict Roman Catholic, a religion that contains its own share of cult-like traditions and expectations. By the time I met my husband, however, I had stopped going to church and really had no connection whatsoever with the Catholic faith, with one exception, as I will write about later. Because neither of us were strong church activists, and because my family was 1200 miles away in South Dakota, we agreed to have our wedding in the local "stake" (is that what you call it?). Not a temple, but a small "church". My first of many red flags, which is unfortunately subsequently ignored, was being made to go to speak to the local bishop in order to be able to be married at the chapel. This meeting consisted of 4 straight hours of the bishop telling me how horrible my [former] religion was and how I would not be able to go to heaven and how I was going to shame the good name of the family into which I was marrying. I am happy to say that I resisted his demands. I explained to him that I felt like I "was" catholic, like it was part of my racial/cultural makeup much like Jewish people call themselves Jews, and that I didn't think that would change.
On the day of the wedding, my family and his were all present at the "ceremony" which was odd and strangely non-ceremonial compared with other weddings I had attended in various religious houses. After the "ceremony", my husband and I were led into an adjacent large room, where I discovered that all of my weddings gifts had been opened, categorized and journaled, and laid out on tables throughout the room so that everyone could go from one table to the next and read about the gift and who had given it and worst of all, of it's approximate value! I was astonished, ashamed and most of all angry! Because of the day, I didn't make an obvious demonstration of my displeasure to the guests or the church members (there were at least 100 people at the ceremony whom I had never met and were members of the church), however I did keep the memory alive and it was a catalyst to future wariness about the church and its practices. Interestingly, my husband's father was not a member of the church either, he was a Presbyterian, and played no part in his wife's church activities or beliefs. On our wedding day, he came to me and told me that when we had children, it would be my call as to which religion he or she would be baptised into. When I discussed it further with him, he told me that it was the one concilliation he had given his wife when they married (hence the 3 sons who had been baptized Morman). This gave me hope. When our first [and only] son was born, I decided to have him baptized into the Catholic faith - I'm not proud of it because I was not a believer by this time, but I think it was done more out of challenge and/or spite. My mother-in-law would not attend the service (red flag #43). I do have to say that she was an excellent grandmother in all but the religious aspects of my son's life. When our son was 8 years old, however, my mother-in-law asked that he be baptized a Morman. I refused, saying that he had already gone through that process in the Catholic church. She actually came to our house and attempted to kidnap our son to take him to be baptized - it created a rift between the family that was never to be healed.
I realize that this story doesn't come close to what most of the participants to this website have gone through, but the Morman church's reach, as you all know, is wide, and when my mother told me it would be problematic to mix religions in marriage and I discounted that, I was incorrect in not clarifying this extensively with my future family.