With Christ’s help, Oakland couple wants husbands and wives to fall in love all over again
A marriage needs maintenance to stay on track and for over 50 years Catholic couples have sought out Worldwide Marriage Encounter for some “couple’s enrichment.”
In the 1980s Sheila and Peter Oprysko were a young couple with two children under the age of 3. Sheila was a stay-at-home mom, while Peter traveled frequently for business. Like many young couples, busy raising children and advancing in careers, the couple began to feel a disconnect. They had also just relocated to California and didn’t have family support. One day at Mass they read about Worldwide Marriage Encounter in their church bulletin. Peter suggested they go, but without family around to take care of the children Sheila was hesitant. Peter found a church couple who were willing to take the children for the weekend and off they went.
“It changed our lives,” Sheila said.
As couples go through changes: family expansion, a new job, a big move, or becoming empty nesters Worldwide Marriage Encounter can help a couple navigate the change, bringing husband and wife closer together.
Marriage Encounter was first organized in the 1950s by a priest in Spain. The idea was to offer married couples a place to focus on the development of an open and honest relationship while learning to live out a sacramental relationship in the service of others. In the late 1960s, the movement expanded into the United States and conferences expanded into weekends. It became Worldwide Marriage Encounter (WWME).
Worldwide Marriage Encounter offers married couples the opportunity to spend time together away from the busyness of the world to focus on each other. It offers tools for building and maintaining a strong, Christian marriage in today’s world. The weekend is also open to priests so they can focus on their Sacrament of Holy Orders.
Peter and Sheila Oprysko were so impressed with their encounter in 1986, that they have stayed involved in WWME ever since serving as local and regional leaders and chair couple for the 50th Anniversary WWME Convention in 2018. The couple now resides in Oakland, N.J. and Peter serves as an inside sales manager for a national power systems company; Sheila works at the Archdiocese of Newark.
In November, WWME named Peter and Sheila Oprysko and Father Dennis O’Brien from Pensacola, Fla. as its new United States leadership team.
Priests are encouraged to attend the weekends along with the couples. Just as married couples give their lives to each other, a priest shares his life in service to his “spouse,” the church. Similar to how couples can rediscover the spark from their wedding day, priests can reclaim the initial spark of their ordination day through WWME. In Worldwide Marriage Encounter, married couples and priests enrich, support, and learn from each other at all stages of life. For Catholics, like Holy Orders are a sacrament, so is marriage.
“It allows the couples to experience our priests in a different manner, one that is more based on relationship. And we’ve always seen this as really vital to the health of our church, to be able to have those types of relationships,” Peter said.
As a couple leading the weekends, Peter and Sheila and a priest have shared with the other couples their experiences and the tools they used to get back on the road to intimacy. There’s no group discussion for the participants. A series of presentations are given by a team of three Catholic couples and a priest. They provide new tools, using examples from their own lives, to help couples work through common, relatable themes such as exploring personality styles and appreciating the differences; listening in a new way, communicating intimately, and how to address difficult topics; discovering God’s desire for the marriage; and how to continuing their journey.
Each presentation allows participants to look at themselves as an individual, and then to look at their relationships with the people they live with, work with, and minister to.
“They are led to look at their relationship with God, the Church as a whole, and the world. Married couples view all these relationships in terms of their own vocation, but the principles are freely applicable to the priesthood and religious life as well,” according to the WWME website.
The next encounter will take place Feb 24-26 in Princeton, N..J. The Korean experience is May 27-29 at the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Huntington, N.Y. The Spanish-speaking experience is February 24-26 San Augustine in Union City, N.J.
For more information on Worldwide Marriage Encounter visit wwme.org/for-couples or contact the Opryskos at Peter.Sheila.Oprysko@wwme.org or 201-310-9560.
Listening Movement
Peter and Sheila said that the movement is reflective of, on many levels, the Synod on Synodality the Catholic Church underwent.
“We’re really grounded in that because we are a listening movement. And the idea of synodality is to become more of a listening church. And so we have been really trying hard to work at that in our relationship and the relationships around us,” Sheila said.
And because the priests and couples work together in the ministry, it emphasizes what many who answered the Synod want in their Church — more opportunity for involvement by the laity.
In January, Pope Francis told members of the Roman Rota, a Vatican-based tribunal that deals mainly with marriage cases and requests for marriage annulments, that every marriage, even a non-sacramental one, is a gift of God to the spouses.
Pope Francis said he wanted to focus his talk on marriage “because there is a great need in the church and in the world to rediscover the meaning and value of the conjugal union between a man and a woman on which the family is based.”
One flesh, given and received
The Archdiocese of Newark will observe National Marriage Week Feb. 7-14 and World Marriage Day Sunday, Feb. 12. Director of Family Life Ministry Brian Caldwell said the week offers an opportunity to focus on building a culture of life and love that begins with supporting and promoting marriage and the family.
This year’s theme, “Marriage…one flesh, given and received” highlights the one-flesh union of husband and wife that is willed by God. It also indicates the personal self-gift of each spouse, one to the other. These concepts point to Christ who gives Himself under the appearance of bread and wine—as real flesh and blood.
The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate reports that overall church weddings are down.
Caldwell says those numbers more or less mirror church attendance and participation in general.
“We are living in a more secularized society than in previous generations and that certainly has an impact on people approaching their church to receive the sacraments,” Caldwell said.
Data however, revealed that more Catholics compared to the general population are getting married, at least civilly. In a 2015 survey on marriage and the family by Pew Research, 51% of Catholics reported they were married, compared to 47% of the general population.
And according to Caldwell, the Archdiocese of Newark has not seen a decline in the number of marriages within the church since 2020 even through the pandemic.
“While still less than a generation ago, the numbers have remained level for the last four years or so, which is a good sign,” Caldwell said. “My hope is that we can work with parishes to build more comprehensive family ministry efforts and start reversing the overall trend of decline.”
The other good news is that Catholics are somewhat less likely to divorce. Pew found that 25% of Catholics have been divorced, as compared to 31% of the general population.
WWME found that the divorce rate among couples who have attended a Marriage Encounter Weekend is less than 2% nationwide.
Caldwell said the reason couples who attend Marriage Encounter programs stay married far more than the average is two-fold.
“First, if they are seeking enrichment in their marriage, it demonstrates their commitment to one another. Second, by participating with Marriage Encounter, they have support from other couples who value not only their own marriages, but the institution of marriage as well and are willing to be a witness for others. In any aspect of faith and family, this is critical for families remaining committed to one another,” Caldwell said.
Couples pay a nominal non-refundable application fee to secure their spot at an encounter experience. At the end of the experience, participating couples and religious are also asked to help defray the costs of their experience and to help make the experience possible for other couples. Couples only have to be married to participate, they do not need to be Catholic.
“We are very excited that Peter and Sheila and Father Dennis are leading Worldwide Marriage Encounter’s efforts in the United States. They share our vision to renew the Sacraments of Marriage and Holy Orders, and to help assist U.S. Bishops in their strong support for marriage and the family, “said Tony and Sue Morris and Bishop Michael Warfel, the Worldwide Marriage Encounter North American Secretariat leadership team, in a press release announcing the appointments.
For more information on Worldwide Marriage Encounter visit wwme.org/for-couples or contact the Opryskos at Peter.Sheila.Oprysko@wwme.org or 201-310-9560.
For more information on National Marriage week and for resources to help celebrate and live the great gift of married life, including a special prayer for married couples, go to usccb.org/topics/marriage-and-family-life-ministries/national-marriage-week.
