Catholic Marriage Preparation Alienates Potential Church-Goers
By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
As a follow-up to my blog of yesterday, I wanted to thank readers for some of the thoughtful comments on my friends' premarital church counseling experience. I also did some more looking online about what such programs are supposed to entail.
In the 2002 book, Divorce, Annulments, and the Catholic Church by Richard J. Jenks and Craig A Everett, there is some background on this topic. The authors write that couples preparing for marriage normally have several options:
The first is a weekend retreat typically headed by two to three married couples and a priest. During the course of this retreat presentations are given about marriage. Practical matters such as finances and effective marital communication along with religious issues are considered ... The second option, which also consists of a retreat, is less structured and relies more on reflection and individual initiative. The third option involves Pre-Cana counseling. Here, a group of engaged couples meet with a team of married couples and a priest ... A premarital inventory is involved. The inventory measures the compatibility between the two engaged individuals.
My acquaintance must have attended the more free-form retreat, as she was not privy to any of the useful counseling described above. As I mentioned earlier, she and her now-husband, prior to going to counseling, were fallen-away Catholics hoping to be wooed back into the church's fold.
Data show the Catholic Church is losing followers in the United States (and Europe as well). In this country weekly Mass attendance has declined from about 75 percent in the 1950s to about 34 percent in 2005--that according to Dr. Mary Gautier of Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, Georgetown University.
There are lots of reasons for this—shortages of priests, the priest sexual abuse scandal, the increased urbanization of the country, just to name a few. But surely the treatment my friend describes is alienating more potential church adherents than it is wooing. The church should perhaps take note that since the Spanish Inquisition, admonition is out and love and acceptance are in.
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Tags: religion | Catholicism | Christianity | marriage
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Reader Comments
Marriage Prep Need
Since God is love, to leave Him out of a marital covenant (not a contract that can be broken) is somewhat incongruous. The comments posted and the article all limit the view on marriage as a "thing" that a couple does and not a sacred bond that reflects the love that God has for us and allows us to share in that intimacy that allows us a foretaste of heavenly love and bliss. The idea behind the prep is not to give "dos and don'ts" but to stimulate discussion among the couples who spend more time reflecting on their wedding reception which lasts 6-8 hrs.than they do on how they will spend the majority of their lives together. Since we humans don't seem to know how to live our lives well, God gave us some guidelines (commandments) to help us know how to live as He would like so we can spend all eternity with Him. If we truly love Him and each other we would not need rules or commandments or even marriage prep.
Black Legends/Catholic Slurs
Phillip Jenkins, Professor of History and Religious Studies at Pennsylvania State University, wrote a book in 2003 called: The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice. Jenkins, along with numerous other scholars, have noted how polemical terms like "Spanish Inquisition" are used in reference to the Catholic Church. Not only are these terms used in polemics but they are loaded with legend and prejudice. They encapsulate a sentiment: hatred toward the Catholic Church. The Spanish Inquisition was initiated by Spanish Monarchs not the Catholic Church. Also, the Catholic Church, as we know it was much less centralized than it is now and it is anachronistic to assume that we can speak of a Church as a centralized institution as it is in the modern era. The papacy did have influence, but the popes were manipulated by many forces, beyond their own 'sinfulness'. Pope Sixtus IV was against the inquisition but was pressured into 'signing on' because of Ferndinand's threat of withdrawing much needed military protection. Further, in popular culture there is still present an image of the Inquisition that exaggerates its negative aspects to continue, often unknowingly, Protestant-Catholic polemics.
There was no reason for Bonnie Erbe to end the blog entry with a polemical, prejudice reference to a Black Legend perspective of the inquisition. Protestant and Catholic scholars know better. Please do a better job at being more sensitive. Catholics are a people with a rich history and culture, like any culture's history, it is imperfect, but they are none-the-less a people who deserve more than backhanded references that would be unacceptable if aimed toward Jews, Muslims, Native Americans, etc.
seeing through religious control
I've just discovered Bonnie Erbe and her follwoings. How refreshing to read the thoughts of really sane people! Keep up the good work!
Uncle Jim
Kailua, Hawaii
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