By Paula Day

A ground level, windowless office in the Catholic Center is the hub of programs that may affect many Catholics in the archdiocese throughout their lifetime. The Office of Family Concerns can touch Catholics when they are preparing to marry, planning a family, struggling as a single parent, working through difficult periods in their marriage.

“What we hope to do in our ministry is be a voice for families in the Church and to serve families at significant developmental stages,” explained Mary Ellen Hughes, director of the Office of Family Concerns. “We are certainly particularly interested in joining with folks who are just beginning to form their families so there is a Church presence and concern at the marriage preparation stage.”

Marriage preparation in the archdiocese is the responsibility of the pastor helping the couple or of a priest assigned the responsibility by him, Ms. Hughes explained. Couples planning to marry, after consultation with him, decide which of several marriage programs is best for them.

In the archdiocese couples have four basic choices, three of which the Office of Family Concerns directly implements as a service to pastors. They are the Pre-Cana program, Remarriage program and the Sponsor Couple program. This latter program is carried out at the parish level but lead couples for it are prepared by the Office of Family Concerns. The fourth choice, Engaged Encounter, received its seed money format he archdiocese but is conducted by volunteers.

PRE-CANA

Pre-Cana is a one-day workshop for engaged couples held on 20 Saturdays during the year at the Catholic Center in midtown Atlanta. A team, consisting of a priest, a married couple, a financial advisor and a natural family planning teaching couple along with a workshop leader conducts the sessions.

Pre-Cana is geared to couples marrying for the first time. Talks and experiential activities using a workbook deal with the issues of communication, finance, marriage as a sacrament, sexuality and natural family planning. Side issues can include in-laws, dual careers, and interfaith marriage. Because over 70 percent of marriages in the archdiocese are interfaith, this aspect of the day’s program focuses on the couple sharing their understanding of God and exploring ways to pray together.

The program is able to utilize experts in specific areas and gives a lot of information in a short period of time. It is very popular, according to Ms. Hughes, and couples need to register well in advance. Each workshop, limited to 39 couples, is always full. They come not only from metro Atlanta parishes but from parishes throughout the archdiocese as well as from Macon which is not in the diocese. Seven to eight hundred couples annually attend Pre-Cana workshops.

“The one-day format lends itself to the needs of those living farther away because they can complete the preparation all at one time,” Ms Hughes explained.

Ms. Hughes attests to its success. She has had phone calls a year or more after couples participated in Pre-Cana asking for the name of the team couple or the financial advisor because the newly-married couple needed their assistance.

REMARRIAGE

Remarriage is another one-day workshop and is held at the Catholic Center. It is designed for couples one or both of whom have lost a spouse through death or divorce. It recognizes that a second marriage is different from a first regardless of the circumstances of that loss. The workshop’s goal is to facilitate the couple’s dealing with ghosts of the former marriage in a realistic way, Ms. Hughes said. Couples entering remarriage need to realize the impact the former marriage continues to exert on them. Facing this together can help bond them and prepare them for the unique challenges of remarried family life.

The six-hour workshop is offered once a month and is directed by Diane Huey, a licensed marriage and family therapist. Limited to eight to 10 couples, the sessions involve couple discussions, communications exercises and problem-solving issues as parents and stepparents. Other topics include religion, finances and sex.

SPONSOR COUPLE TRAINING

Larry and Lynn Crutchfield through the Office of Family Concerns conduct a training seminar in four sessions to prepare couples from parishes to do marriage preparation with the engaged couples in their parish. The training is offered three times a year and takes place in a parish setting. Each evening session is two hours long.

The Sponsor Couple program itself is a structured program designed for use during four to five evenings when the married couple share one-on-one with the engaged couple, usually in the home of the sponsor couple. As in the sacraments of baptism and confirmation, ideally the sponsors keep in contact with the engaged couple after their marriage and so help in building up the parish community. In addition to utilizing the example and wisdom of the lived-marriage experience of the married couple, the Sponsor Couple program has the advantage of local control and flexible scheduling for the engaged couple.

The goal of the Office of Family Concerns is to establish the program in any parish in the archdiocese that wants it and to train married couples selected by the pastor to prepare engaged couples for marriage by these couples from his own parish.

ENGAGED ENCOUNTER

The fourth choice for couples preparing for marriage is not directly implemented by the Office of Family Concerns. The Engaged Encounter Weekend is a retreat experience available in the archdiocese. It also is very popular, according to Ms. Hughes, and is filled each month with its maximum of 23 couples. The weekend allows engaged couples to concentrate on each other, free of the normal preoccupations of daily life. They are led to dialogue with one another honestly about areas important to their future.

A priest and two couples, one longer married, the other more recently married, make up the team. They share their own experiences and insights, exploring such topics as self-identity, role expectations, money, sex, children, family and religion. Each engaged couple interacts only with one another through writing their responses to and ideas about the topics in a notebook which they exchange. The only time all the couples socialize as a group is during a usually lively Saturday evening “rap” session.

Mary Ellen Hughes, herself, is from a remarried family. She was raised in Atlanta, attended Our Lady of Assumption elementary school and St. Pius X high school. After high school she entered the Sisters of the Good Shepherd but left before making final profession. In the religious congregation she worked with disturbed adolescents in a residential treatment community.

Ms. Hughes is a member of St. John Chrysostom Melkite parish. She is a licensed clinical social worker. When she began working in the archdiocese in 1978 she spent two-and-a-half years initiating the Crisis Pregnancy program.

“I see my role here as one to enable people who can do this work best to be out there doing it. I’m a catalyst. I hope to be creating structures and programs where the spirit of God is free flowing. Each of us has wisdom. If we can keep a spirit of shared wisdom, incredible things happen.”

The Office of Family Concerns receives approximately 50 percent of its funding from the archdiocese. The remainder comes from fees from its programs. Guest speakers and volunteers into the Pre-Cana program receive an honorarium for their contribution, as does the guest speaker in the Remarriage program. The therapist in the Remarriage program is under contract with the Office of Family Concerns and receives a stipend. Sponsor Couple trainers also receive an honorarium.

“In order to offer more programs we attempt to match the income from the archdiocese with fees from the various program,” Ms. Hughes explained. “We try to be as self-supporting as possible.”

Couples participating in the Pre-Cana and Remarriage programs pay $50 for the one-day workshops. The per couple fee for the Sponsor Couple training program charged to the couple’s parish is $25. The Engaged Encounter Weekend is primarily self supporting through fees for the weekend and through donations.

Programs coordinated by the Office of Family Concerns other than marriage preparation programs are the Beginning Experience for those starting over after a separation, divorce or death of a spouse; the Natural Family Planning program which teaches this method of birth regulation; and a program for single parents. Retrouvaille is a weekend program for troubled marriages with its own governing body.

Volunteers add to the cost effectiveness as well as the ministry of the Office. Ms. Hughes estimates over 200 men and women assist in its programs as volunteers. In recognition of their contributions and in support of their own needs for enrichment and rejuvenation, the Office hosted an enrichment day Feb. 10 for all the volunteers who had worked in family ministry through the Office during the year. Eighty participated in the day which was held at Holy Cross Church in Atlanta.

(The Office of Family Concerns is one of the archdiocesan efforts supported by the Archbishop’s Annual Appeal, to be held Sunday, March 11.)