Álvaro GonzálezGood training helps to prevent marital breakups".Marriage ministry, a key challenge for the Church in the U.S.Why get married? Christian marriage in the 21st centuryChanging the traditional and unidirectional approach to cursillo premarital by a true accompaniment based on trust and admiration before another marriage. This is the basic idea of Witness to Love.
As explained in the well-documented and comprehensive website of Witness to LoveThis project provides local churches with tools to transform marriage preparation programs into sources of dynamic marriage discipleship.
What began as a pilot project in one parish has now been taken to more than 80 dioceses, especially in the United States, and has helped not only the more than 16,000 couples who have taken one of its courses, but also the "mentor" couples for whom the training, accompaniment and challenge of Witness to Love has meant a strengthening of their marriage and a greater commitment in their parishes and communities.
In this interview with Omnes, which will be complemented in the coming weeks by an interview on the task with the Hispanic community Witnesses of loveThe Verret couple points out that "the traditional way of doing the marriage cursillo could work if the couples had really grown up in a Christian family" and how the mentors of this project often occupy "a space that society and their own families had broken".
How and why was Witness to Love born?
- [Mary Rose] I had been working for the diocese, and there I felt we were doing very well: we had great material, very innovative, very solid, and couples were writing positive feedback after coming to the talks, but I didn't know what was happening in the parishes.
When I had my second child, I left my job in the diocese and decided to devote myself to my family. One night the priest of our parish came to me and said: "Sorry, I heard that you have left the diocese and I need help with premarital preparation in the parish. It's a lot of work with no results. If couples aren't going to Mass before the wedding, they're not going to start going after the wedding. You have to invest so much time, hoping that they are going to come to church, and that they are going to stay married, but there is really no way of knowing if they have stayed married, and in church you don't see them. The truth is, I'm really tired, so maybe you could take over."
I was very surprised, because he had done so much work in the diocese... And this particular priest was great, he always sent his couples to the diocesan conferences and I knew he was doing everything, not only retreats, he also had couples mentoring, natural family planning classes....
I told him to let me do some research: who was still married, who was not, which families were going to Church... And he was right. Very few couples were going to Church, and a good number of them were getting divorced; in fact, 23 % of the couples had divorced before five years after the wedding.
So we interviewed some of the couples who had divorced. When we asked them why they hadn't asked for help, they responded: "The parish has given us mentors, but we didn't know them and we didn't have trust with them, so we didn't sit down with them. If we had a problem, they were not the people we would go to. If we had gone to talk to the priest with a problem before the wedding, then maybe he wouldn't have married us. So we went to talk to the friends we felt comfortable with, the ones who wouldn't judge us, the ones who knew what we were going through."
Trust is key, obviously, what kind of "advice" were they getting from those friends or acquaintances?
-[Mary Rose] When asked who they went to, most acknowledged that they talked to their divorced friends and these gave them messages such as: "Do what makes you happy", "You only have one life", "He is an idiot", "She is selfish", "You deserve better", "Leave him and start over", "This was a mistake, start from scratch".
Together with the pastor, the whole pastoral council agreed that we had to do something different. I remember that, when we had not yet made a decision, another couple got divorced. We found out when nothing could be done. So the priest saidThe meeting is over, we are going to have an Adoration and we are going to ask God to help us in our ministry".. And so we did.
After an hour, the priest told us to go to the meeting until a decision was reached. We talked and talked for three hours explaining everything we had learned.
People need a structure, an excuse to have meaningful conversations, especially today when everything is so disconnected.
Mary Rose Verret. Founder Witness to love
How did you come to the idea of this friendship partnership?
- [Mary Rose]I remember, in the diocese, when I would talk to couples and ask them to ask me their questions about communication and conflict resolution, I used to break the ice by saying, "If you woke up now and five years had passed and your marriage was like your parents', would you be happy?" I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of couples who said they wanted a marriage like their parents'.
Most would respond with these kinds of arguments "Oh no, that's not what I want"... "I don't like the way they talk to each other"... "They don't spend enough time together, not even with us". I would then ask them, "If you don't want one like your parents', then what marriage would you like yours to look like? You have to be crazy if you're going to get married and you don't know anyone who is happily married."
In the end they were able to think and came to different conclusions, their coach, a family where one of them worked as a babysitter, their parents' best friends... At this point, they admitted that they would be happy with such a marriage and when I encouraged them to talk to these people they were surprised because it seemed strange to them.
I realized that people need a structure, an excuse to have meaningful conversations, especially today when everything is so disconnected. We also found that you can't "create" trust. You can't say: "In six months you're going to get married and you're going to trust these mentors, you're going to be open and vulnerable with them and it's all going to work out."
You have to build on the real ground, because in six months or a year, or eighteen months, or however long it takes before the wedding, you can't build the kind of relationship of trust and communication that can help you when you have difficult times after the wedding.
Many mentoring programs we know assume that you're going to sit down with an expert partner, whom you barely know, and share your life with them, talk about uncomfortable things, but that's very rarely the case.
After that Holy Hour, speaking in the parish the priest pointed out: "We could try to get them to choose their partner, one they admire. We have to make sure it's a solid match.". I replied that, although we cannot be sure that everything will be perfect, we could create an environment and give guidelines to make this possible.
What are the characteristics of the mentors of Witness to Love?
--[Mary Rose] From the beginning, we agreed that they had to have been married for at least five years. We set this date because the majority of the divorces happen in the first five years and it really takes about five years of marriage to become the couple you are.
So they had to be married in the Catholic Church, at least five years of marriage, active in the parish, attending Mass, engaged. Thirdly, they had to have a healthy marriage, which the engaged couple could admire.
They don't have to know everything about the Church, they don't have to have a master's degree in theology, they don't have to be good lecturers, they don't have to have any of the things you normally have to have to serve in the Church in marriage formation.
Once the characteristics were agreed upon, we began to put it into practice with the first couple that came to the parish to get married.
From that moment on, couples chose their own mentors. They went to mass together, asked them questions, grew in relationship, friendship and responsibility.
It wasn't the bride and groom getting information from strangers, but friends walking together, only one, one step ahead of the other; both couples being vulnerable, both couples growing.
It was a completely different dynamic. We had no idea if it was going to work or if it would become an international movement. It all started with that "Let's take this to prayer." When you open a crack to the Holy Spirit you don't know where it's going to take you.
Obviously, then we polished and added some things, we have an app, videos, books... But everything has been built from that: "What if...?" "What if some friends walk together?" Not just talking to the priest or a stranger, but integrating into the community, participating in the parish.
Mentors are not super couples, nor are they in the parish all day. They are just good Catholic couples who are living their lives and don't assume they have anything to share.
Ryan Verret. Founder Witness to love
How many couples have participated in the program during this time?
-Since its inception, more than eleven years ago, the company has been Witness to Love about 16,000 couples in 80 dioceses.
What is the feedback you have received from mentors and partners?
-[Mary Rose]We get a lot of feedback because, at the end, couples fill out a survey to get married, and they explain how their experience has been and how they would like to be involved in the parish.
-[Ryan]: I think the summary of the engaged couples surveys is that mentors are occupying a space that society and their own families had broken.
Couple-mentors fill this gap, they create a real bridge between the hope of the engaged couple and what the Church proposes as premarital preparation.
Mentors are not super couples, nor are they at the parish all day or going to all the Church events. They are just good Catholic couples who are living their lives and don't assume they have anything to share.
For those who have the intellectual capacity, there are other forms of marriage preparation. But for those of us who need friendship, you can be accompanied by someone. It is necessary to share.
Sacramental marriage in Spain has been declining steadily for years, as have other sacraments. How do couples recover that sacramental departure through Witness to love?
-[Mary Rose]I think the traditional way of doing the marriage workshop, the classes and just quizzes or online resources, might work if the couples had actually grown up in a Christian family, in a domestic church. It would be about offering resources right at the end, before the wedding, for people who already knew what they were saying yes to. But if you haven't grown up in that environment, couples look at marriage and say, "I had nothing to do with this."
Deep down they have no idea what they're doing. If they go to a church, it's because "it's going to look good on Instagram. You have to break out of that Instagram mentality and remember that marriage is a sacrament, and this is what you are saying yes to, that God is involved.
In this sense, in surveys, engaged couples always emphasize that they did not see themselves as being able to do all that is actually the marriage but they realize that, without God, they could not do it. They also recognize that they were not aware that God was part of the marriage, and now they know that it takes more than just a man and a woman to get married and stay married. You need God, mentors, and community. They also didn't know that marriage is a vocation. It's like that saying, "You don't know what you don't know until you know."
-[Ryan]The decline in Christian life is happening everywhere. In the United States, it's true, much of this decline is a direct result of the clerical situation, the abuses. There are a lot of people who have simply said, "It's over."
Maybe they still pray to God, but they don't go to church. Also, after the pandemic there were many people who did not return to the parish, because during the pandemic it was closed, and they said: "Well, if we can pray at home, why do we have to go to church?".
We have discovered that Witness to Love is a catechumenal approach, like that of the early Church, of couples who are meeting Christ in the Domestic church. The home is a missionary center of the parish. And the parish needs the home to be part of evangelization. The mentors are the Aquila and Priscilla of our time.
