(OSV News) – When Adriana Vasquez was working in marriage ministry for the Archdiocese of New York two decades ago, she helped enrich the theology expressed in its materials and workshops for Spanish-speaking Catholics.

She later discovered, however, that excellent content was not enough.

“I was dismayed years later to find out that some of those couples who attended those workshops were later divorced,” she told OSV News.

As she has continued working in marriage ministry in several other dioceses, Vasquez has identified an approach that does make a powerful difference for engaged couples: evangelisation through personal accompaniment.

Ahead of Valentine’s Day – the most popular day for couples to get engaged, according to the wedding planning website WeddingWire – marriage ministry experts say that the practice of personal accompaniment could become a worldwide trend in Catholic marriage preparation, due to a renewed vision for marriage formation introduced last year in a document from the Holy See’s Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life.

First issued in Italian in June with an English translation published in October, “Catechumenal Pathways for Married Life” presents a three-stage approach to preparing men and women for Catholic marriage. It also addresses the wedding celebration and pastoral accompaniment for the couple’s first married years.

The approach aims not only to transmit doctrine, but also to “let the mystery of sacramental grace resonate among the spouses” ,the document states.

In an introduction to “Catechumenal Pathways”, Pope Francis frames “accompaniment” as an important action of the Catholic Church as a whole, writing that “we have a primary duty to responsibly accompany those who manifest their intention to be united in marriage, so that they may be preserved from the trauma of separation and never lose faith in love”.

The document shares a vision of accompaniment tailored to each couple by their parish’s priests, pastoral workers and other married couples. It states that “it is not so much a matter of sharing notions or imparting skills. Rather, it is about guiding, assisting, and being close to couples along a path to walk together”.

The idea of a “marriage catechumenate” has roots in St John Paul II’s writings about family life, and the language draws a connection to the Church’s process for welcoming new members.

That is appropriate, because it allows an engaged couple to rediscover the mystery of the faith, said Julia Dezelski, assistant director of marriage and family life for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth.

The breakdown of marriages in the United States and worldwide, and its implication for children and family life, indicates that the Church should be investing more in engaged couples, she said.

According to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University in Washington, the number of annual Catholic weddings in the United States fell 65 per cent from 426,309 in 1969 to 148,134 in 2014 – with a dramatic drop to 97,200 weddings in 2020 (the next available year of captured data). Between 1969-2020, the self-identified Catholic population grew from 54.1 million to 73.2 million.

A 2015 Pew Research study found that among Catholics who have ever been married, 34 per cent have obtained a divorce. Meanwhile, 44 per cent of Catholics report having cohabitated with a romantic partner outside of marriage.

“It’s crucial that we build stronger families and stronger marriages, starting with stronger marriages,” Dezelski said.

The current marriage preparation landscape among US dioceses “varies somewhat drastically”, she said. However, Dezelski has observed that more dioceses and parishes are incorporating mentor couples for personal accompaniment in marriage formation. Several widely used marriage preparation programmes require them. Mentor couples are also recommended in the USCCB’s 2021 document “Called to the Joy of Love: National Pastoral Framework for Marriage and Family Life Ministry”.

Under many of these models, a pastor or parish marriage ministry coordinator assigns a married, programme-trained mentor couple to an engaged couple.

One popular marriage-formation apostolate, Witness to Love, has flipped that approach, encouraging the engaged couple themselves to choose a couple to mentor them so long as they meet certain criteria, such as regularly attending church, actively practising their faith, and being married five years or more.

The hope is that, by connecting with mentors they already trust and respect, the engaged couple will discuss their faith authentically, be more attracted to the church and open to personal conversion, and continue their relationship with their mentors beyond their wedding day. It also gives mentor couples an opportunity to evangelise, experience deeper conversion and strengthen their marriages.

Witness to Love contains many aspects of what the “Catechumenal Pathways” document envisions for a marriage catechumenate, said Mary-Rose Verret, who founded the apostolate in 2011 with her husband, Ryan.

The marriage catechumenate “isn’t an invitation (for dioceses and parishes) to fit something new into their existing process,” she said. “It’s a plea to completely rethink the way that they’re approaching forming couples getting married today. It’s obvious that the best content that’s ever been created in the history of church isn’t doing the trick. It’s not because it isn’t great content. It’s because ultimately evangelisation moves at the pace of relationships.”

Disappointed by a dearth of young couples in the pews and reports of divorces among recently married couples in their own Louisiana parish, Mary-Rose – who has worked in marriage preparation on both diocesan and parish levels – and Ryan began interviewing couples in 2008 about their marriage preparation. The testimonies of more than 400 couples convinced them that conventional marriage formation approaches are insufficient, and that trust and relationships are key factors missing from most couples’ marriage preparation experiences. That led the Verrets to make chosen mentor couples a hallmark of Witness to Love.

“This is calling people back to the basics of what we’ve always known as a church,” Verret said. “Friends bring friends to Christ.”

More than 80 US dioceses use Witness to Love in their parishes. It’s among marriage preparation options in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, where Vasquez is now managing director of marriage and family in its Center for the New Evangelisation. She said the marriage catechumenate’s emphasis on accompaniment reflects a trend she sees in parish ministries across the board.

“It’s that encounter with Christ that the couple is desperately starved for: not just content about the sacrament, not just information, but the actual conversion experience – to meet each couple where they are, in their own particular journey, individually and as a couple,” she said.

Photo: Julio Prendergast and Christina MacDougall exit St. John the Baptist Church in Wading River, N.Y., following their wedding Mass in 2021. (CNS file/OSV News photo, Gregory A. Shemitz)

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In an online seminar titled “Transformation and Our Missionary Impulse”, hosted by theologian Dr Rocio Figueroa on behalf of the theological college, Mr Bergin based his talk on paragraph 27 of Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium.

In that paragraph, Pope Francis stated, “I dream of a ‘missionary option’ that is a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures, can be suitably channelled for the evangelisation of today’s world, rather than her (the Church’s) self-preservation”.

Mr Bergin said that he was drawn to these words because of the way they put evangelisation in the context of transformation.

“Pope Francis seems to be suggesting that there is, in fact, a precursor for evangelising practices that announce good news . . . that evangelisation is not some romantic or nostalgic exercise that’s aimed at self-preservation or preserving the Church and her structure, but as a requirement for us to transform pastoral realities and the needs of those on the margins,” Mr Bergin said.

Mr Bergin said that a recent statement made by Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge also challenged him (Mr Bergin) to think about his (Mr Bergin’s) contribution to the Church.

“Archbishop Coleridge . . . mentioned this challenge recently, that the Church is hovering between life and death. That’s quite a confronting statement,” he said.

“That challenges us to think about the health of the Church, and how I am contributing in terms of my ministry, my work toward that evangelising imperative.”

Mr Bergin also drew on the thoughts of different Catholic theologians to look at different synodal approaches to evangelisation.

He said that Fr Jos Moons, SJ, a systematic theology professor at Tilburg University, explained synodality in three simple points.

“[The points] really crystallise for me our missionary impulse: we are church together, we are on the way, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Jos reminds us of the need for collaboration, a focus beyond ourselves linked to a common purpose in the hands of the Holy Spirit,” he said.

Fr Moons also referred to three attitudes that are important, he said. These attitudes are a spiritual attitude of boldness, an attitude of intentional listening, and discernment.

“He refers to an attitude of listening, but very intentional listening, because it’s clear that we’re able to arrange meetings and say that we’re listening to people, but are we genuinely curious about what other people think, or are we more reactive?,” Mr Bergin continued.

He went on to call the participants to go back to the “idea of transformation, which is really at the heart of how we channel our ideas and our resources to proclaim God’s Word”.

“I think that’s what we’re seeking in this synodal process as well. It takes us deeper and deeper into our personal depths,” he said.

“If we are open to conversion, it aligns us with the Paschal mystery of Christ, the death and Resurrection of Jesus. We have to face our own limitations, our personal sinfulness. Yes, I am sinful, but I am loved by God. It also involves a letting go of what I am not able to do, a surrender, in effect being able to surrender.”

Mr Bergin said that there is hope and excitement, as well as fear, associated with change when surrendering to God to be transformed.

“Joan Chittister, a religious sister from the (United) States, described conversion as a surrender when we realise that it’s time to become something new,” he said. “But surrender is not about giving up. It’s all about moving on.”

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“Let us remember that the Church always has difficulties, always is in crisis, because she’s alive. Living things go through crises. Only the dead don’t have crises,” he said.

In a video message released by the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network on August 3, the Pope offered his prayer intention for the month of August, which is dedicated to the Church’s mission of evangelisation.

At the start of each month, the network posts a short video of the Pope offering his specific prayer intention.

The Church’s call to evangelise and not proselytise, he said, is more than just a vocation; it is a part of the Catholic Church’s identity.

“We can only renew the Church by discerning God’s will in our daily life and embarking on a transformation guided by the Holy Spirit. Our own reform as persons is that transformation. Allowing the Holy Spirit, the gift of God, in our hearts reminds us what Jesus taught, and helps us put it into practice,” the Pope said.

Catholics can renew the Church only by “discerning God’s will in our daily life” and putting Jesus’ teaching into practice, he added.

“Let us begin reforming the Church with a reform of ourselves, without prefabricated ideas, without ideological prejudices, without rigidity, but rather by moving forward based on spiritual experience – an experience of prayer, an experience of charity, an experience of service,” the Pope said.

Before reciting his prayer intention, Pope Francis expressed his hope for “an even more missionary option” that “goes out to meet others without proselytism”.

“Let us pray for the Church, that she may receive from the Holy Spirit the grace and strength to reform herself in the light of the Gospel,” he said.

The Pope Video was first launched in 2016 to encourage people to join an estimated 50 million Catholics who already had a more formal relationship with the prayer network – better known by its former title, the Apostleship of Prayer.

The prayer network is more than 170 years old.

Photo: CNS

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The December 1 edition of NZ Catholic had an interesting article reporting on an address given by Bishop Robert Barron to the Fall 2019 meeting of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. Bishop Barron is well known as the presenter of the “Catholicism” programme and for informative YouTube videos.

He is well aware of the numbers of people leaving the Church in the United States through the rising number who enter “none” to the census question
asking about religious affiliation. He is of the firm belief that the Church needs to embark on a vigorous programme of evangelisation to bring these people back into the fold.

I suspect that the situation in New Zealand is not much different; people drift away or leave as they are disillusioned at the revelations of sexual abuse and inept handling of this scourge. Bishop Barron outlines his strategy: (i). Getting young people involved in social justice work should be an attractive starting point for them. (Agreed, but I am surprised that he did not mention that care for the environment would also be attractive to young people.) (ii). He recommends that the Church encourages its artists and writers. (Pope Benedict said some time back that looking at the lives
of saints and work of great artists reveals much about Christianity.) (iii). Bishop Barron says we have to stop dumbing down the faith. (I am not sure to what extent practice in the US relates to NZ.) (iv). He also says our parishes need to be seen as mission grounds. (An important point as parishioners might need evangelising to keep them within the fold.) These four are clearly worthy suggestions.

I have recently participated in viewing the bishop’s “Catholicism” programme. Bishop Barron is the narrator in a series of visually and musically engaging videos shot on location in many parts of the world. The programmes present the past glories of the Church and leave one wondering where to next; but his thrust is that an important strength of Catholicism is the intellectual manner in which faith has come to be
understood. My take on this is that the “Catholicism” programme is directed more at providing “head” knowledge than “heart” knowledge.

If I ask myself, a cradle Catholic, why I am still with the Church, I have to respond by saying that what keeps me here is not a system of intellectual assent, but something deeper.

At the beginning of Pope Benedict’s 2005 encyclical God is Love he states: “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.”

Searching the writings of Pope St John Paul II unearths several similar comments. Pope Francis also refers frequently to the importance of our personal relationship with Jesus.

The Leaders Manual for Life in the Spirit Seminars (1971 – 1978) gives, as the first goal of the seminars, “to establish or re-establish or deepen a personal relationship with Christ”. So what Popes St John Paul II, Benedict, and Francis emphasise has been with the Catholic Charismatic Renewal since shortly after the closing of the Second Vatican Council.

The question is — how are we to develop this personal relationship? It is very clear from Pope Francis in Christ is Alive that God seeks human beings with a passionate love; Bishop Barron makes the same point in the “Catholicism” episode on “Prayer and the Life of the Spirit”.

Pope Francis in his 2013 document The Joy of the Gospel emphasises that the initiative lies with us. In paragraph 264, he says: “The primary reason for evangelising is the love of Jesus which we have received, the experience of salvation which urges us to ever greater love of him. What kind of love would not feel the need to speak of the beloved, to point him out, to make him known? If we do not feel an intense desire to share this love, we need to pray insistently that he will once more touch our hearts. We need to implore his grace daily, asking him to open our cold hearts and shake up our lukewarm and superficial existence . . . .”

Perhaps we can say that the personal relationship with Jesus, discussed by the three popes, develops “heart” knowledge and complements the head knowledge of the “Catholicism” programme.

Would people drift away from the Church if they had developed this personal relationship with Jesus?

Pope Francis spells out the content of the first steps of evangelisation
in Christ is Alive; what he presents is simple and not dependent on intellectual gifts.

At core there are just three statements: A God who is love; Christ saves you; and He is alive. (The explanatory text is in paragraphs 112, 118 and 124 of the document.)

Fr Ken Barker, of Brisbane, in his 2018 book “Go set the world on fire” also promotes the above three-step approach to evangelisation.

Comments on the Synod for the Amazon, held in Rome in October last year, from Cardinal Kurt Koch, the President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, were reported in UK Catholic weekly The Tablet (November 9). He noted that many of those at the synod explained that the rapidly growing Pentecostal communities in the Amazon region were attracting converts from Catholicism. (The situation in New Zealand is similar.) He said: “We must ask ourselves where we have gone wrong and what we can learn from the Pentecostals . . . faith is far more spontaneous in Pentecostal communities and quite naturally a part of life, which means that the Holy Spirit is directly experienced, whereas our Western mentality is somewhat highbrow, too overly intellectual.”

With more than one approach to evangelisation, and there are more than the two above, it is a matter of choice. Personally, I think Cardinal Koch’s observation is telling.

Professor Michael Pender is a professor of geotechnical engineering at the University of Auckland. He is a member of St Michael’s parish, Remuera.

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Professor O’Loughlin, an academic who came from Ireland and who is also a priest of the diocese of Arundel and Brighton in the United Kingdom, gave a talk on what constitutes good liturgy.

Contrary to what some Catholics might think, this is a vitally important question, he said.

This is because, as distinct from traditional societies, our modern society is very weak on “the carrying effect of societal memory” and “we actually have to evangelise each generation afresh”.

“In that evangelisation, liturgy not only becomes our shop window, but it also becomes our weakest link.”

That is because while good liturgy builds up the faith, bad liturgy weakens and even destroys it, Professor O’Loughlin said, citing a US bishops’ document on music from 1972.

So, what makes for good liturgy? Professor O’Loughlin used an analogy with good design, citing the principles of German designer Dieter Rams.

Such principles include “it should be user-friendly, it should be clear what you are doing, it should be intuitive how to go through it”.

Professor O’Loughlin said people are free to disagree with this approach. But he reflected on several aspects he suggested were needed for good liturgy. Among these aspects is the need to try to be as inclusive as possible.

“You go into a club and everyone is there wearing the club tie,” he said. “And immediately, you are the guest there, they turn around to you and they say, are you OK? At one level they are sending a signal to you, we are looking after you, but actually they are patrolling the boundary, by letting you know that you are a guest.

“Thankfully, it is not an experience that many of us have.

“Curiously, it is a very common experience of people who just come and look at our liturgy. They are given all sorts of little cues that there is the in-group who ‘know’, and then there is you — and really you do not belong. No, of course, you can take a hard theological line and say, you don’t belong, because you are not the right make of religion, or the right make of Christian, or the right theology or the right something else.

“But the problem is, we are the community which is supposed to be taking the Gospel to every creature. So if you are getting cues that you really don’t belong, we are really failing in our missionary endeavour, because we should be sending you a cue, if you want to belong, you are very welcome. Because, otherwise we are saying, our religion is our private domain, and our God is our private God. That is incompatible with what we claim about the universality of God, or what in Protestant theology would be known as missio dei — that God is speaking to every human heart.”

Professor O’Loughlin continued: “A specific characteristic of Christian liturgy is that the message of the Christ goes out to all boundaries. That is what Paul spent his entire career saying. There are no boundaries to where God is at work. So being inclusive is something we need to work at in liturgy, again because otherwise we are going to lose people, but also because it is true to our deepest theological roots.”

He went on to advocate for honesty in liturgy, where language and signs don’t clash; for a liturgy that respects creation, recognising that God is in the everydayness of peoples’ lives; for a liturgy that is open to surprises and improvements, because “God is always greater”; for a liturgy in which the gifts of the community are harnessed.

Other aspects that make up good liturgy include genuine concern for the marginalised, avoidance of “clutter”, joyfulness, the building up of community and the facilitation of engagement.

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