ThirdAge: Judaism and Catholicism have been such cementing elements in your life together, beginning with your wedding. I'm wondering how the two of you are growing spiritually now. Cokie, are you still involved with the nuns at your old school? Are you two mentoring interfaith couples?
Cokie: I'm very involved with the nuns at my old school and the whole network of Sacred Heart schools around the country. Actually one of the things that we're dealing with is that there are so few religious women left that those of us who are lay women will have to sort of lay the groundwork for the future and keep the schools and the traditions and the values going if the order dies. So it's very important to me and it's a very big part of my life.
Steve: The school that Cokie went to, Stone Ridge, which is one of the Sacred Heart Schools, I've come to believe, is the place where her faith is most alive and most vibrant.
And Cokie's major charitable endeavors relate to women and particularly to women's education and women's health, and strongly to Catholicism. But I came to understand that a lot of what I most loved about Cokie came from her spiritual training, religious training, from the nuns.
People ask me, "How can you as a Jew, live with and accept a Catholic wife?" But so much of what I most admire in her and most love in her came from that very training, so the fact that she is now so involved with Stone Ridge, her Catholic school, and the Sacred Heart order--I couldn't be more supportive.
Cokie: [To Steve] And in terms of tutoring and mentoring your students...
Steve: I spend a lot of time on this. [laughs]
Cokie: I mean a lot! [laughs]
TA: Do you see that as a spiritual project?
Steve: Very much so.
Cokie: And after they leave, too. I mean, they're still in touch with him ten years later.
Steve: We were talking about a young Catholic-Jewish couple, who in the past have been at our Seders. They have two little girls whom they describe as my "grandstudents." [Cokie laughs] They're one of many couples who are very much part of our lives, at least in part because of the connection to the mixed religious background. I think one of the reasons we wrote the book is because so many young couples came to us, either together or separately, because they wanted reassurance, they wanted help, they wanted models.
TA: Because they were starting out in life or because they were contemplating divorce?
Cokie: Because they were starting out, not because of divorce, this is younger than that. [laughs].
Steve: These were people who wanted encouragement that this was possible. When they got married, I was at the wedding, and they very much did what we had done, which is try to have a ceremony that reflected both of their faiths and both of their traditions. They had a chuppah, which is a Jewish wedding canopy, as we had had and as our children did, but they draped the canopy with an Irish lace tablecloth in symbolism of Collen Connor's background.
So I get sought out by a lot of young people, and one of the things that is changing--this is very interesting--when I started doing this, a lot of this was Christian-Jewish matches. Now, as our student body is getting more and more diverse, the counseling involves a much wider diversity of couples. I even kid with my students and joke at the beginning of the year, "I'm available for counseling." I say, "Jewish-Catholic marriages are my specialty, but I handle others." So we've come to understand that all marriages are mixed marriages. Next: Empty Nest >
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ThirdAge: Judaism and Catholicism have been such cementing elements in your life together, beginning with your wedding. I'm wondering how the two of you are growing spiritually now. Cokie, are you still involved with the nuns at your old school? Are you two mentoring interfaith couples?
