Marriage Prep

Fantastic! Go Bishop DiLorenzo! Our diocese has a strong NFP program and I'm happy to see it fully incorporated into our marriage prep. The Theology of the Body component is amazing. My only question is, who will teach this? And does it recommend a full course or mandate one? Our parish moved to mandating a full course (instead of the 20-min overview talk), which is necessary to even have a chance at opening people to NFP who aren't already interested.

NFP will be mandatory. The diocese will be recruiting couples to teach the TOB component. It is a very large diocese and most churches west of Richmond (with the exception of Charlottesville and Roanoke) are small parishes, most either with one priest or clustered, sharing priests. So the areas in the west should be interesting to cover, but the team that worked on this thought about every possible scenario and had contingencies for it all. It is a great leap for the Diocese of Richmond!

Thank you, Your Excellency, for your example!

"The information gleaned from the God’s Plan program will prepare couples for another new marriage prep component: natural family planning (NFP) instruction."
I thought NFP instruction had been mandatory for the last decade or so...
The "Theology of the Body" component is a super idea!

We still miss him here in HI.

This is similar to the marriage prep my wife and I had. The priest who we did our prep with happened to lead a seminar on the Theology of the Body at the same time as we were going through the process, so that was a happy coincidence for us. I am very happy to hear about the NFP instruction. It was a part of the group class we had, but only a part, and we would have loved to have had a more thorough introduction.

I was so thrilled to see this in our Catholic Virginian. My husband and I had such awful marriage prep a couple of years ago that we wrote a letter of complaint to Bishop DiLorenzo. We were the ONLY couple who were not openly living together and NOTHING was said about that by our instructor. Living a sacramental marriage was not discussed AT ALL and NFP was barely mentioned as in "IF you are interested in NFP, there are some classes around." It was atrocious. Thank you, Bishop DiLorenzo for this news!!

I love to see bishops requiring engaged couples to learn what intercourse and marriage are! Our marriage prep was eminently forgettable, but the food was good.

Ok, maybe I'm missing something here, but it looks like you have to be engaged in order to attend these Marriage Prep classes...right? I realize that engagement is a period of learning and growing, and that you haven't made a vow when you get engaged. However...

Isn't some of what is offered in Marriage Prep coming a bit late in the process? My concern is that Marriage Prep is the first time many couples actually do an inventory and are assisted by someone else to consider how compatible they really are. You've popped the question / said yes, bought/given/accepted the ring, set a date, perhaps gotten a hall, probably a church...and *then* you go through Marriage Prep and find out that you're not as compatible as you thought. Sure, maybe it's not so serious, and you can work through it, and there's no reason for alarm or for cancelling any arrangements you've made for getting married.

But I find it hard to believe that this is usually the case; I'll bet more than a few couples hit some serious compatibility questions, after they've made a monetary, emotional, and social investment in getting married. Why do I think this? Because the divorce rate for Catholics isn't a whole lot different than the divorce rate for the general populus: 50%, no?

So what's happening? More to the point, what's *not* happening? Why do we have a situation / process which doesn't adequately warn Catholic couples with red lights and loud noises, "Take a good hard look at this area, because there's a good chance it could annoy you so much you choose divorce over staying married to this person." ?

What's not happening, imoh, is good formation among Catholic *singles*, so that before they even get as far as engagement -- when they even begin dating / courtship -- they (as Joe Michalak put it so well) a) know what marriage is, and b)know to aim for figuring out "Can I live what marriage is with *this* person?" .

Some families still teach/reinforce this with their kids, but few, as far as I can tell. We need to offer those headed for marriage something BETTER than letting *half* of them go through x years of a marriage that will end in divorce. I am not discounting the power of God's grace -- folks who marry in the Church have the sacramental graces of Baptism, Confession, the Eucharist and Matrimony going for them. But that divorce rate is still 50%. We've GOT to catch them before they say "I do," and give them every chance to make good on those words.

Margo-- that's exactly why I'd like to see the US Bishops require completion of Pre-Cana before allowing a couple to "book" the church for the wedding. Once the caterer has his deposit check, it takes tremendous strength to stop what begins to look like an ill-advised marriage...

The full NFP course should help with the divorce rate. Couples who practice NFP in their marriage have a divorce rate a lot lower than 50%.

This is great.

However, Richmond has a long way to go to recover its Catholic identity. They're having a real hard time getting new men to enter formation, which is why some priests have four parishes to serve.

(keying off beez's comment) ....which is why better formation of the laity is needed in most American parishes. New men aren't entering formation for any # of reasons, among them a) formation and discipline aimed at particular lifestyle is somewhat foreign to them (as a thing to consciously choose), b) they aren't familiar with serious prayer and discernment, or lack encouragement to keep going with those, and c) they don't have a close enough relationship with Jesus to hear Him speaking to them.

I'm not saying these are the only reasons, but they are factors, and more to the point, they are factors we can do something about -- one aspect of the New Evangelization!

Actually, most people will probably just get civily married then show up at the rectory asking for the marriage to be "blessed" later.

Actually, I *strongly* disagree with mandatory NFP class. Why? Because it seems to ignore the possibility of couples choosing not to use any form of birth control ... i.e. to let God plan their family. When marriage prep classes and the overall Catholic attitude tell young couples that if they're not using NFP, they're necessarily going to be using artificial birth control, they miss out on ever hearing of the idea (one with a long Catholic history) of accepting each child as he comes, without feeling they have to interfere in the planning of each.

Not that NFP might not be necessary if health or other problems arise later in the marriage, but can't it be learned when those problems actually arise? I think it's expecting too little to say that couples couldn't abstain for awhile while they learn, so that everyone is *required* to learn it before they're even married.

I am a baptist from Virginia and my fiance is a catholic from Maryland. We have been together for 5 years and together we parent 3 beautiful girl. We are just starting to plan our wedding but we are having a hard time finding someone that will marry us. I know that there is a different in beleifs but that has never become a problem. She has attended my church with me but I haven't attended her church because she hasn't been since we've been together. I'm not completely familiar with the catholic religion but I'm willing to learn. My thing is according to the church we are already sinning, right? So why not back us up on our decision I mean even if nonne marries us guess wat we'll still be together sinning. So why not encourage us to go down the right path. I'm so blown right now.