It's highly unlikely this woman would leave her OK living situation, with her husband supporting her, unless she has something "better" lined up. Despite any threats of divorce uttered in the heat of an argument...

However bad she thinks she has it now, imagine doing it all on your own as a single mom. She would have less money and free time.

And let's be candid. She's a middle-aged southeast Asian immigrant. She probably doesn't have a lot of friends and family in the USA (possibly as little as zero), and probably not independently wealthy either. She's not going anywhere.

Much good advice has been tendered.

Allow me to make a small contribution—Find an authentic ("trad") Catholic priest that is a native speaker of her language, then let him counsel her in her native tongue.

That's a great thought!

Please talk to the sedevacantist priest.

You should not marry unless your wife sincerely converts and won't leave you.

You're in a very tough situation, I recommend praying the 15 decades of the rosary each day if you can.

I talked with him today over the phone. He recommended I don't move too quickly and to ease up on the rules. And to find out if she really wants to convert to the faith. I suppose I took her resistance to the rules as her not wanting to convert. I asked her this evening now that things have cooled between us. She said she believes God exists and that she has no problems with the Catholic Church. She says she doesn't know much and wants to know what to do next. She even suggested we fly to Ohio to talk to the priest in person.

He also said that we should talk to the visiting priest next time they're in town. I have mixed feelings about this. I'm nervous that if we do this, we get locked into the sedevacantist route, which like I mentioned earlier I'd rather not dig any deeper into at the moment. I don't have an issue with attending the mass though so I guess I'll just be upfront with the priest that we're not so sure about sedevacantism and that we attend the SSPX mass. I wasn't upfront over the phone because I didn't know how to bring it up tactfully.

C

OP were you raised Catholic? And what about your wife? Baptised/raised religious at all?

I was raised Catholic. Went to Catholic schools. My mom made sure we went on obligatory days and didn't eat meat on Fridays during Lent. My dad didn't always attend. I dropped from the faith around 20. Tried to come back in my late 20s by talking with the priest I grew up with. That lasted about a month. I found it too hard to give up sinful behavior and was demoralized by it. The feel good Catholicism wasn't resonating with me like the fear of eternal damnation has.

She's from a Buddhist country. Very little Catholicism. Although she did go to a school run by nuns oddly enough. And her aunt had converted to Catholicism.

C

Also, who is current Protestant friend?  Is this  friend same nationality of your wife? Is she divorced?  Is she single. Sometimes misery likes company and cause problems in marriages.  Girls night out and boys night out is not of God. 

Married people shouldn’t hang out with single or divorced people.  It can cause problems in a marriage. 

Put God first in your family. 
Many times happily married couples with children will hang out outside of mass.  I know many various families getting together for meals, prayer, hikes. Etc.

The Protestant friend is a foreigner but of different nationality (Eastern European). I asked an SSPX priest in front of my wife what he thinks of her doing bible study with a Protestant and he said "it's probably not a good idea". So my wife told her friend that she could not continue bible study with her. I was impressed she had the resolve to risk offending her only friend here. The friend is very traditional. The kids do not watch tv or movies, trick or treat, eat processed foods. So I think it's a healthy relationship for her. It helps because there's someone else in her life that rejects modernity that isn't just me. I'm less crazy.

C

If the various "rules" you mentioned are the big problem, prudence might suggest easing up on them.  Rebuking the sinner is only required when you think it will be well received and will actually correct the sin.  Maybe you can strike a compromise where she dresses modestly at Mass and she could have a TV, even if you don't watch it and don't let your son watch it.  If she doesn't have the faith and doesn't have the right motivation to comply with those rules, imposing them first, before she's persuaded of the faith might cause her to rebel, and if those are the only things standing in the way of creating a stable situation for your son, you might consider easing up on these things.  You could think that you're responsible for any of the effects of her immodest dress, for instance, but if you break up, she's going to do that anyway.  Lots of prudential judgment calls that you need God's help her to navigate.

Just think about being a worldling and then suddenly going from 0 to 60, as it were ... and feeling like you're now having to start living like an Amish person.  That can be a shock to one's system, and might suggest a very gradual introduction of things, prioritized.  As I said, maybe start with a couple things and ease into them.  Once she gets used to one or two rules, it'll be easier to introduce another one, then another one, and over time (with patience), she might get there ... whereas abruptly imposing all these rules might cause her to snap.

Yes, this is where a lot of strife is coming from. These rules are required for keeping me in line but they aren't doing much good for her. I should ease up on the comments too when she's watching some questionable media by herself. I'm probably just being annoying.

C

Based on this, it's unclear whether she has or can form the requisite intention to validly marry you.  Reluctantly willing to "go along" would give me some pause.

I also question whether she should be baptized if she's not "enthusiastic" about it either.  This may just end up being a sacrilegious Baptism that she's doing just for social reasons, i.e. just to "go along".

I might have misrepresented her feelings on converting, sorry. I know she wants God in her life. She had wanted this before meeting her Protestant friend, having gone to Protestant services in the city we met. She was turned off by them because they kept trying to matchmake her. She's the reason I am now back trying to amend my life in the Church. When I first mentioned converting and marriage she was open to it, mostly neutral. She doesn't know enough about it. She bought a Catholic book for moms but it was totally modern and I told her that that's not the true faith. I didn't spend time to try to steer her correctly because I was so busy myself trying to figure out sspx v resistance vs sedevantism. Along with just understanding the basics of the faith.

The reason I used the phrase "go along" though is that the last few times I brought up marriage, she's been more combative. But this might just be a reaction to the rules. And it's also been months now and the only progress we've made is having our son baptized.

Is this your first marriage?

Yes.

I think this one should be an easier question. Even if they both wanted to normalize their situation in the Church, she doesn't have to be baptized first. There's no urgency on her conversion process.

I plan to slow things down here and just introduce her to the faith properly. I told her she doesn't have to convert but I think it would be great for her. And that there are other options.

If catechism for her is going to take a year, then I might consider normalizing the situation before she is baptized if things are going well.

It's highly unlikely this woman would leave her OK living situation, with her husband supporting her, unless she has something "better" lined up. Despite any threats of divorce uttered in the heat of an argument...

However bad she thinks she has it now, imagine doing it all on your own as a single mom. She would have less money and free time.

And let's be candid. She's a middle-aged southeast Asian immigrant. She probably doesn't have a lot of friends and family in the USA (possibly as little as zero), and probably not independently wealthy either. She's not going anywhere.

This is exactly right. I pushed her on answering where she would go if she left and she said worst case would be to go back to her home country and live with her father.

Much good advice has been tendered.

Allow me to make a small contribution—Find an authentic ("trad") Catholic priest that is a native speaker of her language, then let him counsel her in her native tongue.

Yes, thank you everyone for your kindness.

I don't know if there are trad priests in her country. Might be hard to find.

C

Do you have a book you could recommend her? She's not a native English speaker so anything with archaic sounding English might be too difficult. Or any other recommendations like a podcast? I'm probably not the best apologist for her.

I've been thinking about this and think that maybe a book initially aimed at youth might be a good idea. Older books that were written for young people are really not very "childish" at all by our current standards. There's a book called My Catholic Faith: A Catechism in Pictures that includes lots of information and very nice pictures. You can find it several places. Here's a link to the one carried by Angelus Press.
https://angeluspress.org/products/my-catholic-faith


Don't forget to get some good books for your son, too. Fr. Lovasik made lots of picture books for young children. A few of them have been "updated", but you can usually identify the newer ones just by the cover art.
https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=598740777&sxsrf=ACQVn0-NQco977i3sm3TTbi5vbx-GRQm_A:1705393309716&q=lawrence+lovasik+books&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj5xLWTveGDAxVlmmoFHePdDmQQ0pQJegQIDRAB&biw=1745&bih=967&dpr=1.1