The Catholic Standard & Times - Archdiocese unveils new Marriage Preparation Policy

Archdiocese unveils new Marriage Preparation Policy

Policy will help pastors and engaged couples grapple with today’s hot button issues

By NADIA POZO
CS&T Staff Writer

In today’s culture, marriage often seems to have lost its meaning and significance, but the Catholic Church continues to call couples back to the true meaning of the marriage vocation.

Helping couples understand the profound vocation of their marriage is a top priority for the Church. That’s why Cardinal Justin Rigali has sent out a personal letter to pastors explaining how the Archdiocese’s new Marriage Preparation Policy can assist them in carrying out their work with engaged couples.

“The most fundamental community is the family,” said Dominic Lombardi, the director of the archdiocesan Family Life Office, which is charged with implementing the policy and offering support to pastors and their marriage preparation teams. “It’s within the family that the faith is passed on. Parents give both physical and spiritual life to their children, but we take the family for granted.”

The new policy establishes guidelines for priests to work with engaged couples, taking into consideration the pastoral issues confronting Catholics today. Those issues include premarital sex, cohabitation, ecumenical and interfaith marriages, and second marriages.

“Cohabitation is the social phenomena of today,” Lombardi said. “Over 50 percent of couples who come to our Marriage Preparation Program share the same address. … The contemporary vision for marriage prep is that you cohabit first, so that you get a chance to test out your compatibility with your partner. So, when they come to our first night of marriage prep, they have no idea that there is an issue with this.”

In addition, he said, “Eighty to 90 percent of couples are not living chastely. When we talk about marital intimacy, responsible parenthood, natural family planning, we are coming to them with a message they’ve never heard before.”

Such couples have a nominal relationship with the Church, with no real understanding of the Church’s teaching about human sexuality or the vocation of marriage.

According to the archdiocesan policy, the proper priestly response is neither to ignore the issues nor to alienate the engaged couple.

“They have a right to know what the Church teaches,” Lombardi said of the couples who come for marriage preparation.

For instance, he said, “in light of what love really means, why is cohabitation a contradiction to that? The couple has to grapple with that question, as opposed to us addressing it legalistically. ...

“We really want the couples to encounter the person of Jesus Christ. Marriage prep is fundamentally about that — about Christ and His love for them, which is at the heart of their relationship. In that encounter with Christ all kinds of good things can happen.”

Through marriage prep programs, couples come to understand that real love is the selfless and complete giving one to the other and that marriage is a sacrament, which Christ elevated to be a sign of His spousal union with the Church.

“The very preparation for Christian marriage is itself a journey of faith,” Pope John Paul II explained in his apostolic exhortation, Familiaris Consortio, which the Cardinal cited in his letter to pastors. “It is a special opportunity for the engaged to rediscover and deepen the faith received in baptism and nourished by their Christian upbringing. In this way, they come to recognize and freely accept their vocation to follow Christ and to serve the kingdom of God in the married state.”

Lombardi said that couples have a role in the mission of the Church. “They are called to take God’s love to the world by their witness of love for one another — to espouse God’s love in the world. That’s a new vision for many couples.”

The goal of the program is to help couples truly embrace Christ’s vision for marriage, and their role as ‘domestic churches’ in society.

With the new policy, and the help of the Family Life Office and dedicated pastors and parish teams, engaged couples can find the courage to live as God has called them to do.

Said Lombardi: “As Pope Benedict XVI says, ‘We need to transform the world through the family.’”

To view the Marriage Preparation Policy visit: http://archdiocese-phl.org/evangelization/famlife/mppolicy.htm or call the Family Life Office at 215-587-5639.

CS&T staff writer Nadia Pozo can be reached at npozo@adphila.org or (215) 965-4614.