Joining faiths

Susan and David DiStefano know they are an unusual couple. “I’m a Catholic CPA married to a Jewish social worker,” he said.

Married for 23 years and having dated since high school, the DiStefanos and their three children — ages 20, 17 and 14 — live in a dual-faith home. They attend both Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church and Mizpah Congregation. Their children have attended Notre Dame High School and gone to Sunday school at the temple. He abstains for Lent. She does not. She fasts for Yom Kippur. He does not.

“We understood early on that I was very well-rooted and happy with my religious choice. I understood that she was happy and well-grounded in her religion. There was not going to be a conversion,” Mr. DiStefano said.

Communication up front, said Sandra Kilpatrick, director of Optimal Health Institute, is key. Discuss what is important, what you’re willing to compromise on and what you’re not. Never ridicule or put down your partner’s belief. She recommends each partner learn about the other’s religion.

“A lot of time people realize they don’t know much about their own faith, and they can learn together. Ask ‘how do you view your God?’,” she said. “Discuss how you pray.”

Open-mindedness has its benefits, said Dr. Kilpatrick.

“We would all benefit from ... (raising) children to have respect for a variety of world faiths,” she said. “The problem arises when a certain faith believes they are going to be the only faith that goes to heaven.”

The DiStefanos acknowledge that raising an interfaith family presents its own set of challenges, both inside and outside the home. Keeping the holidays of both religions, Mrs. DiStefano said, can be a chore.

And while they have not faced problems from friends or neighbors, stepping into a more public arena can be a different story. “Then there are folks who are willing to say: ‘You’re not part of the mainstream ... and we don’t want that kind of person,’ ” Mr. DiStefano said. Amid the challenges, they say honesty and openness from the beginning has kept them close. “In some ways, it’s made us stronger in our own faith,” Mrs. DiStefano said. “Because we have to live it and demonstrate it for our children,” her husband concluded.

SUSAN DISTEFANO: We’re probably not a very typical interfaith family. When (our former rabbi) spoke to us several years ago about our family dynamic, he said ‘in all my years of being a rabbi, I don’t think I’ve ever run across a family quite like yours.’

DAVID DISTEFANO: We understood early on that I was very well-rooted and happy with my religious choice. I understood that she was happy and well-grounded in her religion. There was not going to be a conversion. It wasn’t going to be one of us doesn’t really care about our religion, there wasn’t any discussion about would you consider converting. We went through instruction by the priest and the rabbi. They both talked to us about how we would raise ours children We both love each other, we both respect the other’s religion. We understand that it’s important to us. We’re not going to have a fight for the souls of our children. We’re going to show them through our examples and through exposure to both what these religions are and what they teach, and they’re ultimately going to have to decide for themselves where their beliefs come down. We’ve taken them to church on Sunday. I don’t make them go every Sunday because they have not accepted that religion. We don’t go to temple every Friday,

TIMES FREE PRESS (to Mrs.DiStefano): Do you feel welcome in the church?

MRS. DISTEFANO: Oh yeah. I know the priest, he knows us, he knows our family…

TIMES FREE PRESS (to Mrs.DiStefano): Do you feel comfortable?

MRS. DISTEFANO: Absolutely. “I think of it as time of respite.I may not be listening to what’s going on, really tuned in, but I try to use that time as quiet reflection time with my family, with my husband. Depending on the sermon, I might have discussions about it, but really it’s quiet reflection time at the end of a busy week.

TIMES FREE PRESS (to Mrs.DiStefano): How have you been enriched by having the element of Catholicism in your life?

MRS. DISTEFANO: It isn’t so much me personally because my religion is already set and defined for me. But I think my kids have been affected tremendously. They’re not in a situation where they automatically accept what is happening around them. They ask questions, they think about the way they feel about things. It’s not a given. I think it makes them more reflective about people in general and more accepting of people with differences. Especially my girls. (My son) is still 14 so he’s a little bit young but the girls are very tuned into diversity. It is a very big issue for both of them. They seem more inclusive with other kids. It really makes them think about religiously what they think.

TIMES FREE PRESS (to Mr.DiStefano): How do you feel in temple?

MR. DISTEFANO: from my perspective, Christ was a Jew; he was brought up in that religion. Nothing he did or said contradicts that religion. It’s more a fulfillment of some of the prophecies of that religion. So to be in a Jewish environment is to worship God as Christ worshipped God. So it doesn’t offend me in any way.

TIMES FREE PRESS (to Mr.DiStefano): How have you been affected by the presence of Judaism in your life?

MR. DISTEFANO: In many ways. To some degree, Susan is the outgoing member of our couple, so her interests and her affiliations bring me into things…a lot of our social interactions come from other couples we’ve met at the temple. I interact with those folks more than anyone else I’ve met in a single goup.

TIMES FREE PRESS: How have your families been?

MR. DISTEFANO: My mother-in-law insists that if we ever get a divorce, she’s keeping me. My parents - We started dating when we started high school. Susan was around the house with us, she went on vacations with us. My parents are as comfortable having Susan around as having me around. She’s been one of their kids, if you will, for 20-30 years now. They even get a kick out of it when Hannukah and Christmas overlap and Susan whips out the menorah early in the evening on Christmas Eve before we sit down and exchange gifts. Just to remind everybody that this is part of her holy days as well.

MRS. DISTEFANO: I think one of the challenge is that there’s a lot of holidays. When you combine Judaism and Catholicism, it has been a chore to keep up with having special family celebrations for each of those.

MR. DISTEFANO: Both of my children (at home) are observing Lent in a personal sense.

TIMES FREE PRESS (to Mr. DiStefano): Do you give up something for Lent?

MR. DISTEFANO: I try to.

TIMES FREE PRESS (to Mrs. DiStefano: Do you?

MRS. DISTEFANO: No.

TIMES FREE PRESS (to Mr. DiStefano): Do you fast for Yom Kippur?

MR. DISTEFANO: No.

MRS. DISTEFANO: That is the challenge, to celebrate every holiday in a meaningful way for your kids. You really have to make the effort to do that.

TIMES FREE PRESS: If somebody asks your children what their religion is, do you know what they say?

MR. DISTEFANO: My daughter has decided she’s a Cashew – a Catholic Jew. We’ve had this discussion many times. We’ve said, “you’re really not. You’re not Catholic or Jewish because you really haven’t committed to either one. So your heritage is both, but they say they’re Catholic and Jewish. I realize that fundamentally that is not possible, but we don’t try to split those hairs just yet.

MRS. DISTEFANO: My oldest daughter would say she’s a Buddhist.

TIMES FREE PRESS: Other than holidays, what challenges have you faced? Any controversy?

MRS. DISTEFANO: Well…not really. I’d say sometimes there’s some confusion. When all my kids’ friends were being bat mitzvahed, it was a little strange for them when all the kids asked when (theirs) were, and actually my kids decided not to have a (bat/bar) mitzvah, because they felt like that was making a commitment they might not be ready to make yet.

TIMES FREE PRESS: Were they baptized?

MRS. DISTEFANO: No

TIMES FREE PRESS: Did you have a bris for your son?

MR. DISTEFANO: (No). I will say to your question of acceptance in the larger community…we live in St.Elmo, we know our neighbors very well, we’ve been friends with them for years. There’s never been any ‘we don’t like you because you’re Catholic, or we don’t like you because you’re Jewish.’ They get to know you as people, they understand you have different religious preferences, and you go on. So there’s never been any prejudice from folks that get to know us. But there’s no doubt that when you choose to step outside your private circle (into) the public arena, then there are folks who are willing to say 'you're not part of mainstream...and we don't want that kind of person." I was on City Council in the early 90s and I one term. One of the factors in not succeeding my re-election bid is I had a lot of Protestant members of the community who wanted another Protestant in that seat instead of a Catholic. There were some very vocal people who said “Catholics just don’t represent us.”

TIMES FREE PRESS: Any qualms about you being married to a Jewish woman?

MRS. DISTEFANO: They didn’t know that. We didn’t publicize it, it wasn’t like we kept it a secret…

MR. DISTEFANO:…but it wasn’t a qualification for office, asking the religion of your spouse. They just assumed that she was the same as you.

TIMES FREE PRESS: At any point, has the difference in religion caused any difficulties in your relationship between the two of you?

MR. DISTEFANO: No. We argue over money, we argue over our kids, we don’t argue about who should be what.

MRS. DISTEFANO: Maybe politics.

TIMES FREE PRESS: Your wedding – rabbi, priest, justice of the peace, shaman on a hill?

MRS. DISTEFANO: Shaman on a hill is close, actually. We were married on top of a hill, but we were married by a rabbi. We took instruction by a rabbi and a priest because David wanted to get the sacrament of marriage, so we had to go through instruction for that. But it would have been a lot harder for my family…

MR. DISTEFANO: …to sit at a Catholic service. We asked the priest, ‘what are the implications of you doing it?’ He said, ‘if I do it, I do a Catholic ceremony.” And I said, you don’t know how it would be for my Jewish in-laws to take.’ By the same token , when I told my parents…I said ‘when they say prayers, the only thing they don’t say is ‘In Jesus Christ we pray.’ They still say Lord Our God… you feel like you’re praying…Susan wanted to get married by a rabbi, I had no objection to that, and the rabbi was willing to do it.

TIMES FREE PRESS: If you’d wanted to have representatives from both faiths, how would you have felt if one (refused) to co-officiate?

MR. DISTEFANO: You have to respect the fact that whether it’s the priest or the rabbi, it’s not his job, this is truly what he is. He is a representative of God. So you can’t ask him to do things that he feels are against his sworn, sacred responsibility. So if the priest says, “I can only perform a Catholic ceremony, and co-officiating with a Jewish rabbi would be nonsensical,” and the rabbi would say the same thing....(you have to respect that).

MRS. DISTEFANO: I don't underestimate the fact that I feel like David not marrying somebody Catholic was difficult on his parents. I think he kind of glosses over that a little bit but the truth is I'm very conscientious of the fact that there are things that my kids say or do that are probably not the most comfortable (for my in-laws).

MR. DISTEFANO: I think the fact that my children aren’t baptized concerns my parents. By Catholic teaching, it is a parent’s responsibility to see that their children have that basic protection, if you will, through baptism for their souls. That I have allowed that not to happen for so long is a concern (to them) because they feel it’s part of the responsibility.

TIMES FREE PRESS (to Mr. DiStefano): How do you feel about your kids not being baptized?

MR. DISTEFANO: If I had my druthers I'd rather them be baptized. I truly feel like it's helpful, but I have to accept the compromise that says my children are a part of this family which has a multi-religion aspect. I cannot insist upon something to satisfy me that is counterproductive to (my wife). I have to compromise.

TIMES FREE PRESS: Are you uncomfortable with the concept of baptism?

MRS. DISTEFANO: Absolutely. I think if you baptize your child, you’re making a commitment to raise them Christian. If my daughter was to come to me today and say “I’ve decided I want to be baptized,” I would say “that’s your choice.” But as a baby, I was not willing to make that kind of commitment. A baptism is commitment if you take it seriously. I would have been agreeing to raise my child (exclusively) Catholic and I wasn’t willing to do that. We look at the meaning of things a lot because we think it sends a message to our children. Same thing with a bar or bat mitzvah. If they have a bar or bat mitzvah, they’re basically committing to follow Jewish tradition and my kids aren’t at that position where they would (commit yet).