Catholicizing

[jethrien]

We got ourselves Catholicized this weekend.

Well, not really. Just sorta.


To get married in the Catholic Church, you have to go through a program called pre-Cana first. Basically, the idea is this - Catholics aren't allowed to divorce. So if they're going to marry you, they want to make really, really sure you've thought this all through.

So we (and, like, 100 other couples) spent all day Saturday listening to a marriage counselor and doing activities in a workbook.

All right, that sounds really cheesy. It wasn't. It was actually pretty cool. A lot of the activities were things like filling out forms on various topics - your own family history, your favorite things, your strengths and weaknesses, your fighting styles, your feelings on children, your financial history, how you wanted chores to get done - both with your answers and also with what you thought your partner's answers would be. Then you compared with your partner to see whether your own image of yourself was different from your partner's image of yourself, and vice versa. For us, there weren't a lot of surprises - we'd talked about most of this stuff before and we know each other really well. But even so, there were some things that were a little surprising. Just little things where one of us didn't realize how they were coming off to the other, or where one of us was totally beating themselves up over a "failing" that the other hadn't actually even noticed. And there were a couple topics we hadn't ever talked about - whether we'd want to adopt if we couldn't have kids of our own, for example.

And while we were pretty unsurprised by a lot of the stuff, I suspect there were a lot of people there who probably hadn't thought of some of it. I kind of wish there was a way to make this kind of program mandatory for anyone trying to get married. People definitely got out of it what they put in, but it's at least worth an effort.

It's also an impressively practical little program. It started with a prayer and ended with a mass, but it's not really about religion at all, except in the context of what role you each expect it to play in your marriage. This wasn't preaching - it's run by lay people, and it's really entirely about communication and making sure that you think and talk about all the issues that make or break a marriage. There were exercises on planning out a full budget for your first year of marriage, or exactly how many hours per week you ideally want to spend on every activity in your life. On how you fight, and how you make up, and how you choose where you're going on vacation. On warning signs and how to know that you should stop right now and put the wedding on hold. On what you expect out of sex and how you want to deal with your parents and in-laws. Really frank, blunt stuff.

Anyway, good program. Really interesting. Wish more people had to do it.

Comments

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

Cool. Glad the counseling went well. Definitely improves my opinion of the Catholic Church :)

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, the high profile bad stuff tends to completely overshadow the millions of good people working hard to live up to all the good things the Church teaches.

[wavilyem.livejournal.com]

That reminds me of a sign I saw at Pride this weekend that said something like "Protect Marriage -- Make Divorce Unconstitutional". In my opinion most religious conservatives totally deserve to be mocked like that, but it's good to know the Catholic Church sponsors a program that may actually be productive in protecting marriage.

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

This is a long and involved rant, but if you believe that marriage is the social institution that most conservatives claim it to be (that is, the best way to produce and encourage the production of well-developed and educated children to ensure the survival of our society and species), then divorce is a big worry, but only in that it indicates that many people shouldn't have gotten married in the first place. And not only is the "institution" damaged when those marriages fail, but it's damaged while they're going on--children from such homes are at a severe disadvantage to the children in stable marriages.

I have to agree with my sweetie here--some sort of secular program that would require premarital counseling for everyone would be great. But that would require calling attention to the fact that conservatives screw up their children at least as much as gay people, often more. And we can't have that.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

I think the motivation is less homophobia than pure selfishness, but I generally agree with you. I'd also add that many couples who get divorced should have gotten married in the first place, but with a legal system that more strongly discourages divorce. The surprisingly high number of divorces that involve one party or the other wanting "to find himself/herself" or "just being unhappy" (surprisingly, usually it's women filing these divorces) are more a symptom of bad divorce law than bad premarital counseling. But, requiring people to show fault in a divorce wouldn't let congressmen run away with their secretaries, and we definitely can't have that.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

Correction: By bad divorce law, I mean "bad divorce law & culture encouraging divorce."

[feiran.livejournal.com]

One of my favorite assignments in high school was to make a list of things to ask your future spouse before making any kind of commitment, kind of a collection of things you absolutely flat-out required and a way of figuring out whether your ideas about marriage, childrearing, future expectations, behavior, and responses would match. I've kept mine for years, since it got me thinking about the practicalities.

Things like that are so important!

[nanonicole.livejournal.com]

Friend #1: Don't you think it should be harder to get divorced?
Friend #2: I think it should be harder to get married!

It seemed appropriate. =)

I'm glad you enjoyed your pre-Cana. I wonder if it's feasible to make this available to everyone wanting to get married. The state of NY required me to sit through a 6 hour course when I wanted to get my driver's license... you'd think that a marriage course would make sense too.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's so much that the legal system should make _divorce_ more difficult as it should make _marriage_ more difficult.

I'm not sure I agree that "just being unhappy" is never a good reason to divorce. I agree that there should be hoops - if "unhappiness" is your reason, perhaps mandatory marriage counseling and a waiting period - but what purpose does it serve to trap someone who's miserable? Do you really think that it's going to help the kids grow up in a loving home when it's obvious to everyone that Mom is miserable and really doesn't want to be there?

I do think, however, that Britney Spears' quickie marriage/divorce does more to damage the supposed "sanctity" of my impending marriage than a loving, faithful pair of people who happen to be the same sex ever could.

[freekofnature.livejournal.com]

Interesting.
I had a summer job and one of the other employees who I worked with was planning a RC Church wedding and was terrified (he did not have a good early childhood experience in the Parochial school system) of pre-Cana.
He came back from the weekend retreat all happy and excited and loved every minute of it!
He said that if being involved in church activities was all like that, he would have been much more active!
Interesting aside, I was interested in the fact that Judaism always allowed divorce, throughout the ages. There was a severe disapproval of it, but if both parties were determined, one could be obtained. Last Summer I had an audience with one of the most renowned Torah (bible) scholars alive and, among other concerns, asked him why our religion allowed divorce. I was struck by his answer: "People make matches (both arranged, as in the past, and fall in love as is presently the practice) people are human and fallible. People sometimes make mistakes, and sometimes people change."

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

Correct, but a bit of an overgeneralization. In particular, Judaism makes it very hard to get a unilateral divorce, even with a showing of abuse and adultery. My mom found that out the hard way.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

I don't know. Cynically, I suspect it would end up getting hijacked by some special interest group and turned scary, or made so bland as to be useless, or someone would declare it was a violation of their rights. Or worse, somehow it would become a way of testing couples before letting them marry in a way that would actually become discriminatory. (The difference between my standards and random scary cult's? Well, mine are right, of course.)

[nanonicole.livejournal.com]

Yeah it would be hard for the state to require it on some "individual rights" shindig (and as a "small-government" kinda girl, I wouldn't like having it required). And, in reality, the course would probably turn into something as boring as the one I sat through to get my driver's license.

It's an interesting thought experiment... but I don't think it should be done. I think this really just turns into, "The world would be a lot better if people were like me and my friends... can we require that?" Unfortunately, no. =)

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

I'd think someone who, after being married for a while, suddenly wanted to find himself/herself could have stood for a little more introspection before getting married. While I agree that perhaps making divorce laws too lax makes for people getting divorced when they'd be better served by seeing a marriage couselor and trying to find their problems so they don't repeat them, that's treating the symptom more than the problem. If you're willing to grab a no-fault divorce at the first opportunity, perhaps you're not mature enough to have committed to a marriage in the first place.

I'd like to walk into my marriage expecting it to be a life-long thing. If I had doubts about that, then I shouldn't get married now, I should get married when I feel I can make that sort of committment.

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

"So he's the man of your dreams?"
"He's the man of my list."

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

Agreed, definitely. But we've gotten to the point where people enter into a marriage expecting it to be a first marriage. It seems a bit odd to talk about a deterrent effect of fault requirements, but it's there. Count me in for both suggested changes.

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

The thing is, though, the course didn't actually try to teach us anything. The purpose was to bring up topics that we otherwise might not have, and force us to talk to each other about them. I think, if it were kept to the original intentions, it would be a rather hard program to hijack.

I also think there's a middle ground to tread on the "required" front. After all, there's no test, no promises, and little required reading. All you have to do it show up for six hours, and talk to the person you want to marry. And frankly, if someone has a problem with talking to the person they plan to marry, I'd like to hit them with my shoe.

[nanonicole.livejournal.com]

Heh. Totally. I have a bat if you'd like to borrow it. =)

Trying to think of parallels with other state-organized things... is there any program that you're required to only show up to? Like you said, no tests or anything (which I had for my driving course). I guess you're required to show up if you're drafted, but I feel like that's not really a parallel...

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

Well, technically, if you're underage you're required to show up for school, but no law requires you to graduate.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

That was both one of the strengths and one of the weaknesses of the program. We did a lot of talking during lunch, on the way home and over the rest of the weekend. (Hey, the stuff was thought provoking!) But you could easily show up, make a pretense at answering things, get your certificate, and never speak of it again. It also wouldn't help if you have a habit of not telling your partner the whole truth, too - if you always try to cushion their feelings or are afraid to give them a straight answer, are you going to be willing to tell them that they have a tendency to be sarcastic and generalizing when they fight?

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

Well, here's a few:

- Judges can require alcohol or drug counseling as part of a sentence or settlement. Anger management can also be included.
- If you want to adopt or act as a guardian in some other way, the state requires you to go through some amount of counseling.
- A lot of discrimination laws require you to go to mediation before taking the case to court, but you don't have to make a serious effort.
- There are lots of requirements that apply to state officials and employees like that.

On the other hand, marriage is considered a right rather than a privilege, so most of the above (including driving licenses) don't apply.

[hyouneko.livejournal.com]

I think part of the problem is that, depending on where you grow up, exposure to the Catholic Church may only come from history classes and the news. I know that most of my experience with the Church (before dating nanonicole) was through AP Euro, and that really doesn't do it any good. Of course, growing up in a town that is mainly Protestant; and where the arch diocese are wracked with controversy doesn't help.

I really like the pre-Cana. My old roommates in Seattle went through it, and I thought it was a really good idea. I also like how they don't try to force a conversion to Catholicismwith it. (or at least from what I've heard)

Yay for Catholic girls and their heathen boys.

[wavilyem.livejournal.com]

This reminds me a lot of the controversy in the trans community over the Harry Benjamin standards. The basic idea is that you need to see a therapist regularly for a certain amount of time and have him/her sign off before you start to take hormones or have any irreversible surgery. The hope is that the therapy will let shrinks catch people who think they're trans but who have some other psychological condition before they make really bad decisions. The problem is that this turns therapists into gatekeepers and it's easy to for anyone to beat the system by telling them exactly what they want to hear before signing off on a patient. It's also relatively easy to find therapists who think the standards are nutsy and get them to sign off for whatever you need. I personally think the therapy and waiting periods are a good idea and I'd want to follow them even if I didn't have to, but I don't think its fair to punish trans people who have already had numerous inconveniences in their lives simply in order to help people who will be able to circumvent the system if they're determined enough.

Similarly, I think no matter what you do to try to keep couples who shouldn't be married from getting married, you're not going to keep people determined to elope from getting married without severely inconveniencing couples who know what they're doing.

[nanonicole.livejournal.com]

I was hoping you'd weigh in here. The interesting one is the adoption counseling... they don't make you do that if you're going to have your own kids. This strikes me as being really odd.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Pretty much. Both are fairly life-altering decisions that could be made after serious contemplation, or sort of on a whim (although I think marriage is easier to do spur of the moment), or while in a not-in-the-right-mind state. But it's hard to sort out the second two without infringing on the rights of the people in the first.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Oh, I think probably a quarter of the people in the room weren't Catholic. They very strongly emphasize that they don't want one partner to cave into the other's religion just to keep the peace and that they want you to talk about the strengths each faith (or lack thereof) brings to the marriage. There were sections on how you plan to raise your children, how you plan to celebrate traditions, and how you deal with worshipping in different ways. They didn't tell you how to do any of them - they just told you that you really, really need to talk about these things in advance. Heck, they were even talking about how it's important to figure out the logistics of how each person will get to services if the services are at the same time. They also said it's important to attend the services of your spouse from time to time so that you can truly understand something that's part of their life.

They also had a section on couples cohabiting and what they expect to change or not change.

It's a very practical program.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Heh.

My momma told me never to marry a man until I'd seen him lose his temper. Sound advice, I think.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Well, Catholicism isn't the only faith with this sort of pre-marital counseling thing. I think all the protestant sects require it too.

[wavilyem.livejournal.com]

Actually if you know where to get hormones without a prescription, marriage probably isn't easier. Well, except maybe in Nevada =P