Exhortation called a ‘love letter to families’

Record Photo by Father Patrick Delahanty Donnia and Peter Schlaff, left, members of St. Gabriel Church, and Caryn and Darryl Steffy, members of St. Martha Church, renewed their vows during a special Archdiocese of Louisville Anniversary Mass on April 9 at St. Raphael Church. Thirty-two couples from 25 parishes participated in the ceremony that honored couples celebrating milestones from 5 to 25 years of marriage. Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz called the couples to “reconfirm your desire for mutual and lasting fidelity to this commitment.” Pope Francis issued an apostolic exhortation on the family, “Amoris Laetitia” (The Joy of Love), on April 8.
Record Photo by Father Patrick Delahanty
Donnia and Peter Schlaff, left, members of St. Gabriel Church, and Caryn and Darryl Steffy, members of St. Martha Church, renewed their vows during a special Archdiocese of Louisville Anniversary Mass on April 9 at St. Raphael Church. Thirty-two couples from 25 parishes participated in the ceremony that honored couples celebrating milestones from 5 to 25 years of marriage. Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz called the couples to “reconfirm your desire for mutual and lasting fidelity to this commitment.” Pope Francis issued an apostolic exhortation on the family, “Amoris Laetitia” (The Joy of Love), on April 8.

By Ruby Thomas, Record Staff Writer
Since the release of Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation, “Amoris Laetitia” (“The Joy of Love”) in April, leaders in the Archdiocese of Louisville have had the opportunity to read and take to heart the Holy Father’s advice, especially on the subject of marriage.

Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz is calling on the faithful throughout the archdiocese to read the exhortation, too. And he suggests people start with chapters four and five, where the Holy Father writes about the meaning of love and bearing children.

Archbishop Kurtz describes “The Joy of Love” as “a love letter, especially addressed to families.”

“The document provides a great opportunity for the renewal of marriage and to tell people how important their life is,” said the archbishop.
The apostolic exhortation comes from Pope Francis’ personal experience as well as from his reflections on the 2014 and 2015 world meetings of bishops, said Archbishop Kurtz during a recent interview. Pope Francis called for the special meetings, known as Synods of Bishops, to focus on family life.

The pontiff’s reflections on marriage and marriage preparation — found in chapter six of the exhortation — will bring about a few changes in the Archdiocese of Louisville.
Deacon Stephen Bowling, director of family ministries in the Archdiocese of Louisville, said he aims to improve the archdiocese’s marriage preparation programs.

Deacon Bowling called “Amoris Laetitia” a “wonderful document” and said during an interview last week that any notion “that the pope is trying to change our message on what we believe and teach with regard to marriage and family” is a misunderstanding.

“The message is unchanged, but he does have some legitimate suggestions and criticisms with regard to our methods,” said Deacon Bowling. What he gathered from reading the document, he said, is that the pontiff “sees a real need for a kinder and gentler tone.”

Regarding Pope Francis’ message on marriage preparation, Deacon Bowling said “this is not a huge mountain we have to climb” in the archdiocese.

“We’re already a quarter of the way up,” he said. “We understand the need for accompaniment as far as sacramental preparation, in particular marriage sacramental preparation.”

The “great fruit of the document” is that it will change the way marriage preparation is
done in the archdiocese, said Deacon Bowling. He noted that marriage preparation, the way it is now, ends with the wedding.

“Anything else we did, if we did anything at all for newly-married couples, was seen as something separate,” he noted. “We never saw the consistent continuum between the two.”

“Amoris Laetitia” helped him realize that there’s a “deliberateness that is required from us.” Marriage preparation, he said, should really be “marital accompaniment,” a process that continues after the wedding for a period of years or perhaps even for life.

As a result, Deacon Bowling said, his office is working on ways to improve its offerings. The archdiocese currently promotes three programs for marriage preparation — Catholic Engaged Encounter, Foundation for Marriage and Sponsor Couple. Couples typically choose from one of these options.

  • Sponsor Couple, a parish-based program where married couples are paired with engaged couples and meet four times before the wedding, is being “re-tooled” and re-named “Companion Couple.”
    The updated program will be archdiocesan-sponsored and will focus on mentoring before the wedding and building upon that relationship later on, said Deacon Bowling. The companion couples will meet with the newly-married couple six months, a year, a year-and-a-half and two years after the wedding to continue the relationship they formed.
  • Catholic Engaged Encounter and Worldwide Marriage Encounter programs will be promoted differently in the future, said Deacon Bowling. He hopes to connect the two programs locally.
    Engaged Encounter is a national program that provides couples with a weekend retreat where they are encouraged to examine and deepen their relationship with each other and with God.
    Worldwide Marriage Encounter is a similar program that comes after the wedding.
    “We’ve not done a good job of connecting the two,” said Deacon Bowling. He aims to present the programs to couples early on and ask them to commit to doing both.
  • Foundation for Marriage is a day-long workshop where engaged couples learn about “issues that are critical to the success of marriage,” said Deacon Bowling. The family ministries office is now working on a second part to this program, which couples would attend after their wedding. It would be a half-day workshop and include Mass and a “date night.”

Some parishes have done a follow up program for Foundation for Marriage, but “we don’t have a consistent program or model we can offer to those parishes on an archdiocesan level,” Deacon Bowling said.

It makes more sense to do it this way, he said, than to ask individual parishes to hold such an event for only a handful of couples they may have married that year.

Marriage ministry is about “walking with the person; imparting some wisdom; and attempting to set them up for success by passing along what we know to be good and true,” said Deacon Bowling. It’s about being with a couple “as they walk along the road, and that includes when they stumble and fall to help them back up.”

Ruby Thomas
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Ruby Thomas
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