Lafayette, La., Dec 24, 2019 / 06:45 am (CNA).- When Mary Rose Verret first welcomed Douglas and Elizabeth into her home, Douglas’ boots squished with the sewage he worked with, and Elizabeth smelled of french fries from her fast food job. Douglas was also just a few years of out jail.
Burnt out after years of ministry, Mary Rose didn’t think she would have anything in common with this couple, whom her pastor had asked Mary Rose and her husband, Ryan, to mentor through a process to convalidate their marriage in the Church.
“It was a difficult, complex situation that on paper didn’t look like it was going to go well,” Mary Rose recalled. Often, she saw couples like Douglas and Elizabeth disappear from the Church as soon as their marriage was blessed.
But when Douglas opened up about how he found Jesus in prison, and about their desire for a sacramental marriage in the Church, Mary Rose was humbled.
“On my end, working with this couple, I thought I was going to teach and I was going to form, and Ryan and I thought we were going to give everything to them,” she told CNA.
“But when we started listening to them and the husband’s experience of getting to know Jesus at a bible study while he was in jail, and the relationship he had with Jesus, and how he wanted to make things right with God, and how he wanted to have a marriage in the Church and he wanted Jesus to be part of their marriage, it was very humbling…and it really changed the way Ryan and I lived our ministry and lived our faith and lived our marriage,” she said.
The Verrets founded Witness to Love, a Catholic marriage prep renewal ministry, several years ago with the intent to give newly-engaged couples an older mentor couple of their choosing in the Church that could walk with them through marriage preparation and beyond.
Now, they are launching a Witness to Love track specifically for couples who are seeking to have their civil marriages blessed by, or convalidated in, the Catholic Church.
“We saw that with Witness to Love, in the parish where we started this, engaged couples were benefitting so much, but we were seeing couples who were having their marriage blessed who didn’t go through Witness to Love, they met with Father a few times…they were getting divorced quickly, some of them even a month after having their marriage blessed,” she said.
Couples seeking to convalidate their marriage in the Church make up a significant percentage of sacramental marriages in the Church each year – roughly 20 percent, Mary Rose said. In 2017, the total number of sacramental marriages in the U.S. was 144,000 – meaning approximately 28,800 of them were convalidations.
In response to this growing need, the Verrets tweaked their marriage prep program to offer a track specifically fitted to couples seeking convalidations in the Church. They interviewed couples seeking convalidations and looked at best practices throughout the country for bringing them into the Church. Many couples seeking convalidation would do so around the time their children needed sacraments – baptism or communion or confirmation. It was a time they could reconnect with the Church and felt they needed to “get right with God,” Mary Rose said.
But old approaches of bringing these couples into the Church weren’t working – couples would fail to connect with the Church community and drop off, or even divorce, shortly after they received the sacrament. That’s where Mary Rose thought the Witness to Love mentorship model could work.
What’s different?
What sets Witness to Love apart in marriage convalidation preparation “is every other mentor model out there says: the Church is going to choose and train and assign mentor couples to you. You don’t know them, you didn’t pick them, you don’t know how old they are or their background,” she said.
“And we’re telling this to a generation that doesn’t trust the Church, many of whom have been abused, have a pornography addiction, haven’t been to church in 15 or more years. And we’re asking them to talk to complete strangers, who are like uber Catholics, about their faith life and sex life and we wonder why it doesn’t work out.”
The choice in mentor couples provides the “skin in the game” for the marriage prep couple and the room for the Holy Spirit to work, Mary Rose said.
Beyond that, the program is tweaked to match the language that civilly married couples use, and to emphasize how the grace of the sacrament builds on the natural goods of a civil marriage.
“There are two ways of looking at marriage. One is just on the natural level – you’re living together, balancing a checkbook, you have kids, you share groceries – you know, life,” Mary Rose said.
“And there’s a lot of natural goodness there, but there’s also a lot of natural challenges and we have fallen nature. So the grace of the sacrament helps you get through some of those things, love through things, grow through things, work through things, offer things up, pray for your spouse,” she said.
“The reason that we have the grace of the sacrament is that it’s impossible, on a human level, to love completely, totally, freely and fruitfully. It is impossible,” she noted.
“With the grace of the sacrament, you just have to ask God everyday to please help me keep my wedding vows,” she said, which also differ in wording and intent between civil and sacramental marriages.
Often, couples who have convalidated their marriages become the best witnesses of the grace of the sacrament of marriage, Mary Rose noted, because they know what it’s like to live without it.
“When they have their marriage blessed, if they are formed, then it’s a whole different experience, because if they just have one or two quick meetings and then never really understand this grace they receive, they can’t really tap into it.”
Going through the process
Meghan Reily and her husband Brendon were high school sweethearts who met in middle school, dated through college and got married civilly in 2016 – Meghan was Catholic, Brendon was not.
Once Meghan discovered that her marital situation was keeping her from the sacraments, she talked to Brendon about having their marriage blessed in the Church.
“After much discussion and prayer, we decided to go through the process. I think that shows a true testament to Brendon’s character,” Meghan told CNA.
“I could tell that this was something that was important to her and for the Church,” Brendon added, though he admitted to being “a little apprehensive at first.”
“Opening up about your relationship is something that is very personal to me,” he said. “But going through this, I have never felt closer to Meghan than I do now. Same with our mentor couple. I’ve known them for several years, but I feel like they are family now too. They will always be someone who we can call on for anything.”
For their mentor couple, the Reily’s chose a couple that Meghan had known since childhood.
“We were in the same parish and I grew up with their daughter. We became best friends and her family was like a second family to me. Since I was always so close to them, Brendon got to get to know them when we were dating,” Meghan said.
“When asked who to choose as a mentor couple, it was a no-brainer for us. Their love for God and putting Him right at the center of their family is exactly the type of environment we want to have for our family.”
Meghan said the mentorship and the program of Witness to Love brought a “self-awareness” to their marriage that they hadn’t had before. It gave them tools to know and love their spouse better, and to work on virtues together.
“It was both challenging and rewarding. It in a way forced you to have those difficult conversations you don’t necessarily want to have,” she said.
“While we have been civilly married for two years, we are nowhere close to having it all figured out! The workbook provided great tools to give you insight on how you are wired and how your spouse is wired so you can better understand each other and how to handle situations, or discover what things you need to work on that you didn’t think was even an issue,” she added.
Brendon said the program changed their relationship by emphasizing that “it takes three to get married” – the couple and God.
“We are much more open in sharing what’s on our hearts so that we can pray for each other and build each other up,” he said.
Much of the content of Witness to Love is virtue-based. It encourages couples to examine different virtues – love, honor, courage, respect, humility, and so on – and how those virtues can best be lived out in a marriage.
“By learning the virtues, you are growing closer to God and understanding fully how much He loves you and how you need to love your spouse in return, because God loves your spouse that much and He put you together by His grace,” Meghan said. “Doing that, well, that’s what gets you closer to Heaven – knowing how to love and accept someone for all of who they are.”
Meghan and Brendon’s marriage will be blessed in the Church this March. Meghan said she would “absolutely” recommend the Witness to Love mentorship program to other couples in similar situations.
“It’s definitely something I’ll want to reference going forward in our marriage,” she said.
Responding to the needs of the Church
When Bishop Joseph Strickland was first made bishop of the Diocese of Tyler, Texas in 2012, strengthening marriage and family life was one of his top priorities.
“I wanted to really focus on marriage formation because in some ways I think we find ourselves needing to rebuild Christian society, and the stronger the marriages are, the stronger the families will be, the stronger (the faith of) the children will be, and I think that’s where we can begin of a joyful revolution of deeper faith,” Strickland told CNA.
About a year ago, the Diocese of Tyler began using Witness to Love’s marriage prep program – “I liked the solid theology on marriage and the beautiful presentation of what the sacrament of marriage is about for us as Catholics,” Strickland said.
Located in a minority-Catholic area, Strickland said he sees the need for good convalidation formation continuing to grow, as more couples delay marriage, or decide to come back to the Church later in life.
“There are so many couples that need convalidation, and we’re really encouraging and wanting to support those couples,” he said.
Having worked on a marriage tribunal for years, Strickland said what appealed to him about Witness to Love, besides being theologically sound, was that it didn’t feel as “bureaucratic” as some other marriage and convalidation programs.
“You’re having to talk about this very personal information with a priest that you don’t know, maybe you don’t feel you’re that comfortable with them, maybe you’re not Catholic or haven’t been practicing your Catholic faith for a long time,” he said.
“So I think to have the mentor couple, who would be someone who is faithfully living their Catholic faith, to help them feel like they’re welcome and to navigate any issues they might have…would be important especially for couples who may have been married civilly for quite some time and have had a number of kids and are having to negotiate some significant complexities.”
Mary Rose said the mentor couple relationship is so key to Witness to Love because it works both ways – the convalidating couple receives formation, but the mentoring couple is also challenged to examine their marriage and “step it up”, so to speak, in order to be a good example. She said some mentor couples have told her that being asked to mentor another couple is what saved their own marriage.
“It’s kind of a dead end if you don’t open at least a crack for the Holy Spirit, and in Witness to Love that risk has always been allowing the couples to choose their own mentor,” she said.
“But it’s that invitation, that personal relationship – it’s a two-for-one evangelization effort that has made all the difference and transformed parish communities, because instead of a couple coming through the Church and never seeing them again, their mentor’s marriage is renewed, the community is renewed.”
This article was originally published on CNA Feb. 10, 2019.
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These Bishops did not learn their sciences as CO2 is essential to plant growth and the development of humis that improves the tilth of the soils. Interesting that the Bishops are so interested in Climate Change while their churches burn and are desecrated by the left with their union between climate change and abortion.
This story absolutely *defies* belief.
I am appalled at our bishops’ fatuousness and arrogance. I mean, what in heaven’s name do they know about climate science as they issue their deep and weighty climactic pronunciamento?
Climate change? Are you kidding me?
A few brief points about climate change.
• The earth’s climate is changing. Duh. It has always changed. And life on earth has always adjusted. That’s what life does. Devastating the economies of entire nations in an impossible quest for an unchanging climate is needlessly imposing misery on humanity. It’s almost as if the left were purposely bringing about poverty. (Raises one eyebrow tellingly.)
• A 1.5-degree warming of the climate in a century is hardly the “existential threat” that the warmists claim. Think of the people now living 60 miles south of your home. That’s what your hometown will be like after a century of warming. Do they “exist” now, even with a climate that’s 1.5 degree warmer than yours? Is their town an uninhabitable hell-on-earth? Are they bursting into flames atop thousand-foot-high sand dunes? No? That’s good information to ponder.
• Carbon dioxide is not a poison. It’s not a pollutant. It’s a necessity for life on earth. Indeed, carbon is the molecule of life. Remember when, in one of the early episodes of ‘Star Trek’, humans were called “carbon units” by the aliens because we are composed to a large degree of carbon? In eons past, the earth did experience significantly higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than we have now. The difference then? Plants thrived, food was plentiful and large mammals literally covered the earth, from pole to pole. In sum, more carbon dioxide equals more plants equals more animals equals a better, less stressful life for all.
• The “scientists” we keep hearing about who are sounding the climate alarm are meteorologists — weathermen. Their climate hysteria is based on computer programs that are not validated. They are closed loops with no way to account for all of the parameters that determine climate now, let alone decades from now. (Such as solar activity, the earth’s magnetic field, etc.) These are the same types of computer programs that predicted that the deaths from COVID-19 would be exponentially higher than what actually came to pass. Lowering all of humanity’s living standards based on such flimsy computer modeling is not just irresponsible. It’s diabolical.
• There are indications that the sun may be entering a period of relative dormancy, as it did for a few hundred years, starting in the fourteenth century. The inactive sun meant less energy released, which led to the Little Ice Age in America and Europe. Rivers and canals in northern Europe froze, vineyards were destroyed, cereal production in Ireland was devastated, and famine hit France. (Interestingly, the cold also caused hardwood trees to grow denser and harder, leading to the remarkable tone of Stradivarius’ string instruments.)
I could go on and on. And on.
For example, about the indications that the earth’s magnetic field may now be in the process of flipping. This will affect how much of the sun’s energy strikes the earth. The problem is, the last time such a thing took place — an event known as the Laschamp excursion — was more than 40,000 years ago. So information on how earth’s climate was affected is hard to come by.
Anyway, it is hard to conclude that our bishops are anything but utter morons, to be wandering so far afield from their area of familiarity.
On the other hand, I wonder if they would be able to advise me on how best to treat my tinnitus. Or what kind of tires to buy. Or a really good recipe for chicken marsala.
Meanwhile, the irrepressible Nancy Pelosi, who is as responsible as anyone for the killing of scores and scores of millions of children around the world, continues to bait her bishop and encourage Catholics to oppose the Church’s teachings, by presenting herself to receive the Eucharist — at the Vatican, of all places. Think our brainiac American bishops would have anything to say about her?
Nah. Why would they.
Do I sound a tad irritated at our bishops? Bitter even?
So be it.
Brineyman – I couldn’t put it ANY better, so I’ll have to suffice with
Ditto
P.S. – We’ll get through this
Excellent, brineyman. Thank you.
Our good bishops are towing the Party line that includes the Dem Party and the Vatican policy on the environment [basically Green]. We never hear the USCCB complain about the open border policy and the multiple travesties of injustice, human suffering, deaths,rapes, child exploitation, the monumental influx of drugs literally murdering our youth [drugs laced with Fentanyl]. Where is the moral admonition to this coming out of this hierarchal forum?
If they decided to candidly assess these issues without bowing to the Party and the Vatican [what can the Vatican do with justice, although unfortunately the pontiff has acted with injustice toward singular bishops in Puerto Rico and elsewhere? However not with a bishops conference, Germany and the Synodal Way is more of a promotion].
The bishops missed the point that the ruling against EPA simply means that legislating must be done by the Congress and not by administrative agencies or the courts. (The celebrated Dobbs decision re-establishes this principle.) This line of demarcation can be a tough one to figure out, given the clumsiness of legal drafting, on the one hand, and on the other hand the complexity and intricacy of the scientific world.
I also concur with Fr. Morello that the bishops have a history of selectivity as to which public policy areas (prudential judgment, not doctrines of the faith or belief) they choose to notice.
But, to help retain the reputation of CWR as partly a credible forum on such lively matters…
I invite readers to supplement Brineyman’s exposition of what “absolutely defies belief” on the meaning of 1.5 degrees Centigrade. In general, yes, natural systems are resilient and not well-modeled, but resilient only within boundary conditions and tipping points which merit informed consideration and forethought. https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2865/a-degree-of-concern-why-global-temperatures-matter/
The historic issue might be less one of sunspot cycles than whether the bourgeois model (another imperfect “model”!) of economic development can be forever extended across the face of the earth and into the future, all in an attempt to materially outrun human appetites and conflicts. OR whether Nature, as our silent partner, is actually the last slave culture—which now is signaling to the plantation owners that enough is enough.
In one of his hundreds of letters, St. Augustine sixteen centuries ago, connected in a Christian way our unlimited bucket list and our finite bucket: “the passions are more easily mortified finally in those who love God, than satisfied, even for a time, in those who love the world.”
What, really, should a viable post-modern world really look like?
Peter, your point certainly merits consideration.
But you’re talking about boundaries that are not apparent yet and are, in the end, impossible to pinpoint ahead of time.
I say we should trust to God and human ingenuity to deal with whatever problems arise in the future — that is, if they do arise at all.
In the meantime, we should avoid ruining economies and starving masses of people in a vain attempt to stabilize inherently unstable global climate conditions.
Yes, six of one, half-dozen of the other…
But, rather than the hubris of allegedly attempting to “stabilize inherently unstable global climate conditions,” might the better question be largely one of (a) adapting fundamentally (but not “ruining”), AND (b) earlier rather than later, BECAUSE boundaries “hard to pinpoint ahead of time,” AND (c) possibly not aggravating things along the way (established restraints on over-harvesting, for example, which are not entirely new or “beyond belief”)?
I would agree that the bishops are not climatologists. Always difficult to raise the moral dimension of solidarity in a technical world, while also respecting–what’s that word again, oh yes–boundaries. Especially when abandoned by the likely more expert laity (e.g., the Land O’ Lakes Declaration).
Perhaps, if framed properly, the Church is arguing for, yes, imperfect but responsible prudential judgment, with sufficient lead time? This call is well within the bounds of Catholic Social Teaching (CST) and the moral virtues on which the CST is based (temperance, courage, fortitude—and prudence), not ideology.
As for your “human ingenuity,” St. John Paul II celebrates this part of the equation with you (!), in Centesimus Annus (1991):
“In our time, in particular, there exists another form of ownership which is becoming no less important than land: the possession of know-how, technological skill [italics]. The wealth of the industrialized nations is based much more on this kind of ownership than on natural resources”; “Man himself, that is, his knowledge, especially his scientific knowledge, his capacity for interrelated and compact organization, as well as his ability to perceive the needs [not market demands?] of others and to satisfy them” (n. 32), [involving an “interdisciplinary” conversation where] “humanity today must be conscious of its duties and obligations toward future generations” (n. 37), etc.
But, again, ingenuity is not hubris or unquestioned momentum. Just how ‘interrelated and compact” are things, really? A good question even if it is raised by morons. The Dust Bowl happened.
I appreciate your thoughtful comments, Peter, and I largely agree with you. You are certainly better versed in theology than I.
And I think you realize I’m not advocating for untrammeled, abusive exploitation of resources.
I’m just pointing out that the climate change argument is badly flawed and that the draconian measures that warmists are calling for would be onerous to humanity — especially the poor — and would very likely serve no purpose other than to further consolidate political power in the hands of a few.