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Father Michael Delcambre looked at his congregation on Sunday and realised he had what other pastors might call an unusual sight.
He counted 10 newly married couples sitting right there in the pews, and they were regulars.
“I wondered if these couples would be coming to Mass if we had not really gone out of our way to help connect them in such a way that they want to be at Mass and see the importance of it,” he told the National Catholic Register.
The difference, said the pastor of St Joseph and St Rose in Cecelia, Loiusiana, was that his parish developed and embraced a new way of parish-based marriage formation called “Witness to Love,” which is beginning to take off nationally.
Before his parish made the switch, Father Delcambre, like other pastors, had too often watched engaged couples he had prepared for marriage disappear after their weddings.
“Witness to Love” is a virtues-based and Eucharist-centered model of parish marriage ministry.
The core feature is that the engaged couple chooses a mentor couple they admire from the parish that meets certain criteria: married at least five years, preferably with children already, and active in the parish life and regularly attending Mass for the past year.
The mentor couple follows the “Witness to Love” program in building relationships and marriage skills, while the priest or deacon helps the engaged couple delve into the theology of marriage and, with the help of a trained marriage-preparation coordinator, forms the mentor couple throughout the process.
When the mentor couple fulfills each section or activity with the engaged couple, they sign and date it for accountability.
Mary-Rose and Ryan Verret, a married couple at Father Delcambre’s parish, developed the “Witness to Love” parish ministry model and programme three years ago.
Sources
- National Catholic Register, as reported by Peter Jesserer Smith at the Catholic News Agency
- Image: Ottawa Anglican Diocese
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