Make more out of Pre-Cana

Go-To Guy

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By Stephen Phillips

Jenna and I recently fulfilled the last bureaucratic-esque requirement that allows us to get married in a Catholic church: The Pre-Cana Engaged Encounter Weekend. While I’m not religious, I figured that enduring a weekend of watered-down explanations of married life is worth it to marry the woman I’ve been with for six years. I’m great, huh?

Lucky for me, my fiancée found this retreat to be just as ridiculous as I did. There’s a lot I have to say about this experience, and I can’t fit it into one column; therefore, the next few Go-To Guy columns will focus on various concepts and lessons we were subjected to during this Pre-Cana retreat.

I feel that every couple should have the opportunity to get an alternative view to these ideals before accepting them as the only path to a successful marriage. A room full of couples with different levels of experience should not be told that mutual happiness is not a top priority in a marriage, at least not without being able to explore other options for running their own relationships.

For those who may find themselves participating in a Pre-Cana “Engaged Encounter” weekend to receive final approval to get married in a Catholic church, you should come prepared with internal questions and the ability to keep an open mind about taking the weekend’s lessons and integrating them with your own methods for maintaining a healthy relationship.

The Engaged Encounter weekend is called a “retreat,” which I believe is misleading. A more fitting term is “boot camp.” Your dorms are for sleeping and bathing only, there are short meals and strictly enforced designated snack periods, and you have absolutely no free time. You even have to make your bed up a certain way before departure.

It’s not as bad as I’m making it sound, but I must admit I was disappointed at the structure of this so-called retreat. I envisioned a tranquil, free-willing environment where we are cut off from contact with the outside world and given the opportunity to discuss our personal expectations of married life together as group.

In my mind, I saw group sessions, team-building couple games and open-minded discussions where couples got to exchange philosophies of marriage. Dare I say it: I was excited about doing that.

The weekend “retreat” featured a few discussions about disillusionment in marriage, and I couldn’t help but relate that to my feelings toward the entire weekend itself. For an event that has been around so long, it sure was poorly executed.

There were absolutely no structural variations in the discussions and lectures. Two subtly dysfunctional married couples talked about their lives in relation to topics such as sex, compromise, and family life, and then each person was given a sheet of paper with a list of questions about our chosen methods of living by the rules discussed in the previous lecture. The couples separated, answered the questions for 15 minutes and then came together to “reflect” and compare answers.

This went on repetitively for several hours at a time with the VERY occasional break. In fact, because the breaks were so few and far between, many couples would use most of this “reflection” time to grab a Coke and a bag of chips, rendering many of the lessons and “life rules” ineffective.

We had about 15 minutes to discuss the answers we wrote down about handling finances, family planning, forgiveness and other heavy-handed topics. Fifteen minutes, and then someone rang a bell for us to return to the meeting room, becoming angry if any of us went to the bathroom on the way. After all, we were on a tight schedule.

According to a document I received prior to this Engaged Encounter, the retreat was meant to be about the couple – about us. On the contrary, the weekend seemed to be primarily about the married couples giving the lectures and what they expected of us. The point was misleading – instead of learning how to build a healthy relationship to prepare for a happy, withstanding marriage, the weekend was about meeting the expectations of a Catholic marriage. Religious philosophies aside, this is simply a terrible way to prepare for the reality of marriage because it outlines responsibilities and does not promote empowerment.

Not all of it was bad. During the several minutes each evening we had to ourselves before bed, I was able to catch glimpses of how other couples view the idea and expectations of marriage. It gave us a speck of opportunity to learn from one another, even if it was to discuss how a couple allows God to guide them in keeping their relationship strong.

One couple even took the initiative to structure a fun “Newlywed Game” activity at night. Other than that, however, very little inter-couple interaction was possible. And as a result, we only saw performances, not relationships. We saw couples trying ever-so-hard to agree on everything, to appear as the happiest, most stable couple on the premises. We never had the opportunity to let down our guards and open up to others, and we couldn’t learn because we were constantly being talked at.

The retreat perhaps served as a wakeup call for those engaged couples who were truly too inexperienced to consider marriage at this point. Most of the issues addressed during the weekend crash course were legitimate and important in a marriage. While Jenna and I found many of them obvious and had long since discussed even the most insignificant issues, we tried to keep an open mind and considered alternative scenarios to the foreseen structure of our married life. We wanted to get something out of this retreat, even if it meant deviating from the closed structure of the Engaged Encounter curriculum.

If you’re an engaged couple who plans to attend such a retreat, prepare for the weekend by taking off your prefabricated masks; make an attempt to befriend a couple and ask questions. Don’t judge anyone else; every couple has a right to their own relationship values. Use your tiny amount of couple reflection time to tackle issues that mean the most to you. Don’t ignore the lectures, but don’t commit them to your photographic memory, either.

If you think you’re ready for marriage and are willing to go through the hassle of getting married in a Catholic church, your relationship is probably pretty stable. Why not use that stability as a foundation for creating your own way of life as a married couple? That’s what Jenna and I decided to do long ago. Does that go against God?

Originally Published: Issue 688 - June 11, 2008

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