Marriage prep gets revamp – now with social media tips
THE marriage preparation programme for Catholics has been overhauled for the first time in 20 years – bringing it up to date with modern challenges, including the misuse of social media.
The new course from Accord, the Catholic Marriage Care Service, will be launched next month after getting the green light from bishops, and is expected to be completed by 4,500 couples this year.
According to the Central Statistics Office, Catholic weddings accounted for 40% of all marriages in 2022, with 9,376 ceremonies. Just over a quarter (26%) of couples opted for civil services, with the remainder having humanist or other religious services.
Wedding website OneFabDay.com advises that all couples wanting a Catholic ceremony must complete a Marriage Preparation Course and provide a certificate to the priest before the big day. Accord has been offering such courses to Irish couples for more than 60 years.
Anne Coleman, Accord’s Specialist in Marriage Education, said the course was designed to prepare the bride and groom not only for the wedding service, but for their future family life together.
‘Facilitators are professionally trained in the delivery of the programme while sharing their own knowledge and experience in a confidential setting,’ she told the Irish Daily Mail.
‘Married couples often comment that marriage can be difficult sometimes, and complicated sometimes, but a good marriage is worth making the effort.’
She said of the revamped course: ‘Accord’s programme has recently been updated to include topics that may be challenging for couples in today’s world.’
She said such changes include asking couples to discuss the possibility of external factors influencing their marriage, ‘such as infidelity and the misuse of social media’.
Studies have found that excessive use of social media can lead to increased monitoring, jealousy and conflict in a relationship.
In the US, some pre-nuptial agreements include guidelines for acceptable online behaviour, such as not befriending exes and not sharing private information or photos without permission.
Ms Coleman said participants were also encouraged to ‘become aware of the importance of building continuous trust, identify their individual styles of parenting, discuss threats and strengths to an intimate relationship [and] manage conflict in ways that will help to strengthen the relationship’.
Bishops recently welcomed the updated marriage preparation programme, saying it was the first major review since 2003.
‘The review was initiated by the bishops and is one of the positive legacies of the IX World Meeting of Families in Dublin in 2018,’ a spokesman said.
‘The new marriage programme explains the nature of the Sacrament of Marriage and facilitates a deepening of couples’ understanding of how to successfully manage their relationship in the context of the challenges of today’s world.
‘It does so by sharing techniques based on the most up-to-date psychological understanding of relationship dynamics.’
See Accord.ie for more details.
‘Marriage can be difficult sometimes’