Was I duped to sin by this minister?

[Confused_8888]

I am a Roman Catholic and am planning to get married to my boyfriend who is a Protestant next year. We are due to have an engagement ceremony and he wanted his Protestant pastor to officiate which I agreed with, as he agreed to have our wedding ceremony in a Catholic church.

Before officiating at our engagement , the Protestant pastor said he wanted to speak to both of us, and we went over to his place. I expected him to to speak with us about relationships, commitment, Gods presence, etc. However when I went there he kept asking if I had accepted Jesus as my Saviour , and that he wanted to pray with us. He was also pushing me to get water baptism as God had commanded it.

I told him that as a strong Catholic I had a very personal relationship with Jesus and if he wanted to pray I was fine but I would not agree to water baptism as I had already been baptised as a Catholic. He then started praying and he asked me to repeat after him, which I did.

However after the prayer finished, I realised that what he had prayed was his church's "prayer of salvation" - which is what people joining their church are asked to pray. I was very upset and angry as I felt I had been duped. i went there expecting general prayer and advice and instead he did this.

My concern now is - whether the fact that I repeated the prayer after the pastor was a sin? I listened closely to the words he asked me to repeat - and it was all about asking Jesus forgiveness for sins, and asking him to come into my life which I had no problem with repeating as I believe Jesus already lives in me anyway . At no point did he ask me to renounce or forsake anything. But for some reason I just feel really really guilty that I repeated this prayer and I feel very low and depressed and dont know what to do.


This pastor is officiating at our engagement this weekend, and I told my boyfriend I have a lot of anger and hurt in my heart towards this pastor and I will only go thru with the engagement service for his sake.

Would really appreciate if I could get the Catholic view of this and advice as to what I should do now as I feel very lost. Fromt my point of view - i just prayed a simple prayer, but from their point of view I did what they wanted, and I feel very wrong about this. Please help me with some advice?



Thank you.

[Fr. Vincent Serpa]

Dear friend,

You did not sin. To sin, one has to deliberately choose to sin. However, it is unfortunate that the minister is causing you so much discomfort.

A bigger question: have you both decided to bring the children up as Catholics? You are in our prayers.

Fr. Vincent Serpa, O.P.