Serving Couples Separated by Distance

Leveraging Technology to Connect People from Around the World

The Challenge

Among the primary challenges facing Family Life Directors and marriage ministry teams is how to effectively prepare couples for marriage when they are physically apart.

How are you preparing “military couples” for the sacrament of marriage?

The most obvious example of this situation is when one or both of the engaged couple are serving in the military. If she lives in the U.S., but he is deployed in the Middle East, they will not be able to attend an Engaged Encounter weekend or other in-person events that may be offered by your office.

Just think of the various other situations that have couples living far away from each other, aside from military service.

  • How many of your younger parishioners have moved away in recent years in search of employment opportunities?
  • How many singles have met their partner online and happen to live far apart?
  • How many families have moved out-of-state, creating distance between the now-engaged couple?

The Solution

The online Catholic Marriage Prep Class produced and delivered by Marriage Ministries has been used by thousands of couples around the world. Our partners from small parishes and archdiocesan offices depend on the online courses as trusted, proven alternatives to their existing, traditional PreCana offerings.

Benefits

  1. Imprimatur: The online marriage preparation class has been reviewed and found that its contents are in conformity with the teachings of the Catholic Church.*
  2. Peace of mind. We welcome you to learn all about the program — even see it for yourself. Being that the program content features professionally-produced, pre-recorded segments, you have the comfort of knowing exactly what your engaged couples will experience with the online program. That’s peace of mind.
  3. Accountability. We are often asked, “if the couple does this online, how do we know they actually did it?” In fact, the online learning environment ensures a higher degree of accountability than traditional “classroom style” gathered events. [Learn more about this...]

* In accordance with c. 827, permission to publish is granted on April 18, 2011 by Rev. Msgr. John F. Canary, Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Chicago. Permission to publish is an official declaration of ecclesiastical authority that the material is free from doctrinal and moral error.