It’s
wedding season; May through August are the most popular months for marriage
ceremonies. While planning a wedding, depending on the elaborateness of the
ceremony and number of guests attending, can involve months of
preparation---thriving in a marriage is a lifelong project, filled with
challenges. Somebody said in marriage there are three rings: engagement ring, wedding ring, and suffering.
One
of the most important aspects of a successful marriage is often overlooked and
that is the role religion plays in a marriage, or to be more accurate, the
dynamic of spirituality in loving relationships.
The
recent split between Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise, with his commitment to the Church
of Scientology supposedly having a role in her decision to divorce, is a stark
reminder that in marriage, religion does matter.
The
reason religion matters is because we are not only physical and emotional
beings but spiritual ones as well. When we disregard that aspect of ourselves,
we neglect something real and vital to our wholeness and wellness. As the
French Jesuit priest and philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin put it, “We are
not physical beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings
having a physical experience.”
Physical,
emotional, and spiritual intimacy are all essential to a fulfilling relationship
where two people become one while maintaining their unique identities.
In
Couples who Pray, authors Squire
Rushnell and Louis DuArt challenge couples to pray together aloud for five
minutes a day for 40 days, promising that the deeper level of spiritual intimacy
will lead to a more fulfilling sex life. The authors maintain that love making,
romance, and conversation increase 20-30% when couples practice praying aloud together
and fear of divorce diminishes to 0%.
I’m
not interested in the quality of Holmes’ and Cruise’s intimate life. However,
Cruise’s commitment to his faith and Holmes’ apparent lack of the same appears
to have created a rift.
Holmes
was raised a Roman Catholic. Whether her conversion to Scientology was sincere
and deliberate or a cavalier decision made in the heat of romance may be argued
by both parties. According to Us Weekly, Holmes is fed up with Scientology’s
rules and its demands of child rearing. The couple has one daughter, six-year
old, Suri.
The
venture of enjoying an intimate spiritual relationship within a marriage when
the couple has totally different religious beliefs requires understanding,
respect, and tolerance on the part of both people. The more convinced one
partner is that his/her religious beliefs are the only legitimate expression of
spirituality, the more problematic any unity becomes and the more likely the
prospects are for a conflicted relationship. It's usually when children come
into the picture that suppressed reservations of the other partner’s beliefs
emerge.
Tom
Cruise is a devout member of Scientology, which maintains that our problems began
75 million years ago when Xenu, dictator of the “Galactic Confederacy,” brought
alien beings to our planet, placed them in volcanoes around the world, then
vaporized them with hydrogen bombs, scattering the beings’ spiritual essences
across the atmosphere until they attached themselves to humans, harming us
spiritually, resulting in a plague of psychological and social problems,
maladies from which only Scientology can free us through a process called
auditing.
When
it comes to religion, you might say Tom is from Galactica; Katie is from Rome.
Mark
Ebner, who has reported on celebrities and Scientology for 15 years, said on
the Today Show, “When it comes to Hollywood couplings within Scientology,
either you’re in or out. There’s no half measures there. If you’re out, the
marriage is as good as over.”
To
be sure, couples of different religions can have fulfilled, intimate marriages.
And couples with identical religious beliefs can have failed ones.
But
all things being equal, the closer a couple is spiritually, the easier it is to
find intimacy at other levels as well, with each strengthening the next.
Until
two unique individuals, one from Mars the other from Venus, find themselves gradually
becoming as one on Earth.
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