Wedding season: How to marry in the Catholic Church
Spring in New Jersey means cherry blossoms and weddings. Love is in bloom. As the country continues to emerge from the pandemic, weddings are back.
“The numbers are definitely going back up,” said Brian Caldwell, director of the Archdiocese of Newark’s Family Life Office. “We’re seeing that some couples have rescheduled their weddings over and over again during the last two years.”
Other couples opted for civil marriages and postponed the sacramental church wedding. Still, others have decided that now is a good time to get engaged. The result is a sharp increase in marriages.
“I think we kind of hit the bottom of the valley during COVID, and now things are starting to resurge again,” Caldwell said. “I know the statistics predict as much of a 50 percent rise in weddings nationally. I don’t know how much of that we’ll see in the church. But it’s definitely trending upward.”
With weddings comes marriage preparation. The Archdiocese of Newark and its local parishes are working diligently to help couples make their way down the aisle to recite their “I do’s.”
Caldwell said about 150 couples per month across the Archdiocese are participating in the marriage preparation process. This is up from a pandemic low of 50 couples.
How to marry in the Church
The Archdiocese of Newark’s Family Life web page offers resources for couples who want to be married in Catholic churches. These resources include a couples’ checklist for Church marriage, policies, guidelines, and more. There is also information online about Natural Family Planning, marriage enrichment, and special wedding anniversary Masses.
“A couple’s first step is to contact their local parish as soon as they get engaged,” Caldwell said.
A member of the parish staff works with a couple, sets up a meeting with a priest or deacon, and helps get sacramental records in order. Couples complete a pre-marital survey about important topics like communication in marriage, problem solving, and lifestyle expectations.
Couples must also register for the two marriage preparation courses and an optional Natural Family Planning seminar. God’s Plan for a Joy-Filled Marriage is designed to help engaged couples embrace a Catholic vision of married love. The life skills marriage preparation session known as Pre-Cana offers practical insights and assistance for building a successful marriage.
“When the couples come, they are newly in love, and then life happens,” said Dawn Duffy, the parish secretary at St. Raphael Parish in Livingston, who manages their Pre-Cana program.
Pre-Cana sessions are led by Catholic couples like Duffy and her husband, who have been traveling down the road of marriage for some time and have wisdom to pass along.
“I’ve been married now for 18 years in May, and so I feel like it’s good to give people perspective,” Duffy said.
She and her husband lead the communications talk for the St. Raphael Parish Pre-Cana session.
“It’s all about communication and being effective in your communication,” Duffy said. “It’s important to express what you need from your partner and not just try to make them guess.”
Duffy also encourages couples to focus on their spouse’s happiness, not just their own.
“There’s a lot of joy in that,” she said. “It’s a me, me, me kind of a world. If you’re like, ‘what have you done for me lately’ in your marriage, you can become disappointed.”
At the end of the Pre-Cana session at St. Raphael Parish, couples attend Mass, where they receive encouragement, exchange letters, and the faithful are asked to pray for them.
“It’s nice to get couples reintroduced to the church,” Duffy said. “Some of them haven’t been to Mass in a while. It’s a great way to get them back into the Church, and hopefully, they are inspired and want to come back.”
Father Jose Erlito Ebron, the parish pastor, said including pre-cana couples in Mass is a way for them to feel the presence of the Church in their marriage journey and observe parish families participating in worship.
“They see the families participating at Mass and how this Church lifestyle can really help with their journey as husband and wife, and later on, the family,” Father Ebron said. “It may not be right away that they return, but it’s etched in their mind and their heart that they have a home in the Church.”
Having the couples at Mass is good for the parish, too, he said.
“They are an inspiring presence,” Father Ebron said. “It’s a witness, and we get to talk about married life and the importance of family in our parish.”
The family is the domestic church, and that’s where it all begins, he said.
“Jesus himself came from a family,” Father Ebron said. “That’s the first calling; to grow the family. That’s where the seed of the Kingdom of God is being sown.”
Father Ebron said pre-cana is a great ministry in which the parish is involved. It’s a form of evangelization and promotes a healthy community.
“If we want a healthy church, we have to have spiritually healthy families,” he said.
Other Family Life ministries
In addition to marriage preparation, the Archdiocese of Newark’s Family Life Office coordinates parish-based support groups as part of its ministry of loss and healing. The Office also offers healing retreats and bereavement leadership training. Visit the website for more information.
The Family Life Office recently partnered with the Catechetical Office to create a guide for families to practice synodality. The Archdiocese is participating in a synodal journey with Catholics worldwide at the prompting of Pope Francis. Learn more about this synod family resource here.
Featured image: Rebecca and Agustin Vazquez were married in Lyndhurst at Sacred Heart in 2020. For the young couple, who were married during the pandemic, the road to their wedding took many last-minute twists and turns, but they were determined to make it happen. (File photo courtesy of the Vazquez’s)
