A ton of marriage training

by JULIE SOUTH
HAMILTON — Almost 100 marriage educators came together from May 9 to 11 for the 12th National
Marriage Educators Training Weekend.
The biannual training weekends rotate around dioceses, and this year’s was hosted by Hamilton.
The hosting and organising team comprised Anne and John Griffin, Deacon Peter Richardson,
Brenda and Greg Cateley, and Bob and Marie Florence.
Marriage educators seem to be enjoying a workshop at the Hamilton training weekend.
The Catholic Network of Marriage Educators was formed as a charitable trust in 1999 and represents the interests of the volunteer network of Catholic marriage educators and pre-marriage facilitators across New Zealand’s six dioceses.
CNME is recognised and overseen by the New Zealand Catholic Bishops Conference. The network
has four programmes for couples about to enter the sacrament of marriage: “Commit”, “Engaged Encounter”, “Evenings for the Engaged & Love is a Decision” and “Lovers for Life”. For married couples, there is “Marriage Encounter”.
All but Dunedin was represented at the weekend, with Auckland sending 51 participants, Hamilton 14, Palmerston North 12, Wellington 3 and Christchurch 17.
Mrs Griffin was thrilled with the turnout. “As each year passes, we all seem to have more and more calls on our time,” she said. “All our marriage educators are volunteers and we’re therefore extremely grateful that they’re able to commit the energy and resources necessary
to be here with us.”
The training weekend started on Friday night with a powhiri, followed by 45 minutes of learning how to communicate without speaking a word.
Training on Saturday was undertaken by John Cosgrove of the Arbinger Institute, while Sunday
was spent on personal reflection on married life.
The weekend finished at noon on Sunday with Mass.
The Hamilton team was vague with the agenda for the weekend because they wanted educators to
step outside their comfort zones into the unknown. “After all,” said Mrs Griffin, “marriage is not always plain sailing; sometimes we might feel out of our depth. We wanted to be able to give our educators more tools than those they’d had from personal experience — that was important to us.”
The next training weekend will be in Auckland in 2016.

fb-share-icon
Posted in

Michael Otto

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *