Marriage Topics

The key to a healthy and passionate marriage is as simple as fostering genuine love and affection, or devotion, according to retired couple's therapist and healing expert Bob Schuchts of the John Paul II Healing Center. True devotion only develops, however, when both spouses take responsibility for their actions and emotional wounds--something each of us brings to all of our relationships. These wounds, which are often rooted in childhood and past relationships, exist in all of us to some degree, making it difficult for couples to cultivate friendship, resolve conflicts, and build trust.

Drawing on the riches of St. John Paul II's theology of the body, Be Devoted is an essential guide to healing from these wounds within your marriage, while providing practical tools for cultivating unity. The first part of the book focuses on building intimacy, unity, and communion, and the second part offers wisdom and guidance for restoring trust when it is damaged. You'll find practical tools for cultivating intimacy, resolving conflicts, and restoring sexual passion.

To help you engage deeply and prayerfully, Be Devoted includes:

“The Catholic Church saved my marriage
and, quite possibly, my life.”

So begins David Anders in this remarkably forthright book. In it, David reports that by the early 2000s, his marriage was so painful he actually longed for death. It wasn’t simple incompatibility; he and his wife had just one thing in common: contempt for each other.

Today, David and his wife are happy together – not because of marriage therapy, but because they came to know and fully embraced the Catholic Church’s teachings on marriage.

Many people who encounter such teachings are shocked by their rigor. Yet the Church offers much more than rules about sexual restraint; she offers a way to make marriage into something supernatural, even mystical. 

Here Dr. Anders shares his personal discovery of the Church’s teaching on marriage and offers a robust defense of the Church’s most controversial teachings, including divorce, remarriage, gay marriage, and contraception.

With the Church’s teachings and the writings of the saints as his guide, he also offers practical, time-tested ways to improve your marriage, such as how to live in peace despite an unhappy marriage, the value of suffering, and ways to overcome your reluctance to forgive grave offenses.

In a culture that breaks apart marriages and undermines human dignity, Dr. David Anders offers a hope-filled alternative for those who live moral and spiritual lives in union with Christ and His Church.

In a few short minutes, the Scripture quotes, passages from Church documents, and thoughts from the Saints which begin the days in this book will provide comfort and guidance for married couples as they seek to live their vocation to the fullest. A brief reflection and prayer complete this dynamic daily practice.

Everyone seeks happiness and love and most people experience them in marriage. While dreaming about this kind of love, young adults often misunderstand the true meaning of marriage and lack the attitudes and skills needed for successful relationships. The material in this booklet has been drawn from the experiences of many married and engaged couples. The first section helps individuals choose a partner and build a happy relationship. The second section highlights facets of a lifelong, holy marriage.

Getting Married will help couples begin their journey from the period of dating to married life and support them during their first years of marriage.

Booklet

Drawing on his experience of forty years as a psychiatrist, Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons presents twelve habits that can foster healing and growth in Catholic marriages. This books helps couples to identify and resolve the major emotional conflicts that weaken their relationships and hurt their marriages.

Habits for a Healthy Marriage is unique because it draws on the field of positive psychology, which focuses on growth in virtues. Each chapter names a common marital problem along with a particular virtue that can help couples to overcome that problem. It shows that the road to healing is paved with forgiveness, not only between spouses but also within their families of origin. Along the way the author incorporates the luminous writing of Saint John Paul II on marriage and the timeless wisdom of the Catholic Church.

Whether you are newly engaged, recently married, or married for many years, the conflict-resolving strategies described in this book--the habits of a healthy marriage--can help you to protect your relationship from the emotional storms that often lead to quarrelling and mistrust, and sometimes to separation and divorce.

Winner of a Catholic Press Association Award: Family Life Books (First Place).

In Intimate Graces, bestselling author and Catholic media personality Teresa Tomeo and her husband, Dominick Pastore, invite couples to enrich their marriages by practicing the fourteen Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy. Through their own story and that of other married couples, Tomeo and Pastore demonstrate how reciprocating the works of mercy brings out the best in a marriage.

The Catholic Church encourages believers to perform Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy, tangible actions that show charity toward others. In Intimate Graces, Teresa Tomeo and her husband, Dominick Pastore, demonstrate how applying the fourteen traditional virtues of Catholic spirituality can foster deeper intimacy in any marriage. The couple uses personal stories and reflections, as well as the experiences of other Catholic couples, to show how a husband and wife can become, in a real way, a haven of compassion and virtue for each other.

Tomeo and Pastore each write in their own voice and include reflection questions, practical suggestions, and a prayer at the end of each chapter.

There are certain aspects of life that we simply shouldn’t tackle alone, one of them being finances. The complexities of financial responsibility—from life insurance to health insurance, debts to savings, assets to charitable donations, and everything in between—can seem like rocket science! In this highly user-friendly book, Joe Salem offers a solid, well-balanced outline for financial stability and responsibility that will benefit all married couples.

As a firm believer that strong marriages are the basis of every healthy society, Joe lends his expertise so that the financial pillar of your marriage will benefit greatly. His advice is sure to mitigate financial tensions, collaborate on a long-term plan, and help you see eye-to-eye as you work towards your financial goals and dreams.  If you desire to move forward in your married life with a commitment to living financially responsibly, in solidarity as a couple, these pages will prove quite indispensable. 

Is marriage the foundation of family life? Many people today would say, "No!" Others would say, "Yes!," but they would define "family" and "marriage" in ways at odds with how the words have been used almost throughout human history. In this revised and expanded edition of Marriage: The Rock on Which the Family is Built, internationally-renowned theologian William E. May makes the case for marriage's foundational role for family, with marriage defined as the union of one man and one woman. Drawing on Pope John Paul II's "theology of the body," he explains the person-affirming, love-enabling, life-giving, and sanctifying nature of marriage. He shows how marriage is necessarily a complementary union of man and woman and how this rules out the idea of "same-sex" marriage.

May argues, drawing on Popes Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, that marriage fully respects the equal dignity of husband and wife as persons, while recognizing their unique, exclusive, enduring, complementary contributions to their union. Likewise, he shows how marriage honors the truth that each new human life brought about by sexual union is a person equal in dignity to his mother and father. What's more, both reason and revelation are used to show that only the family, founded on marriage as an enduring, mutually-exclusive union of one man and one woman, provides the proper context for begetting and raising children.

Reproductive technologies are also critically examined and the author argues that human beings ought to be begotten in an act of spousal love, not made through in vitro fertilization. Furthermore, the role of the family as the "domestic church," a community of holiness, is explored. This expanded edition includes new chapters: "'Man and Woman He Created Them': Pope John Paul II's Catechesis on Human Sexuality" and "Pope Benedict XVI and Marriage," the latter summarizing Benedict's thought on marriage, particularly as found in his first encyclical Deus Caritas Est. Also included is Pope John Paul II's "Letter to Families."

In this volume five Cardinals of the Church, and four other scholars, respond to the call issued by Cardinal Walter Kasper for the Church to harmonize "fidelity and mercy in its pastoral practice with civilly remarried, divorced people."

Beginning with a concise introduction, the first part of the book is dedicated to the primary biblical texts pertaining to divorce and remarriage, and the second part is an examination of the teaching and practice prevalent in the early Church. In neither of these cases, biblical or patristic, do these scholars find support for the kind of "toleration" of civil marriages following divorce advocated by Cardinal Kasper. This book also examines the Eastern Orthodox practice of oikonomia (understood as "mercy" implying "toleration") in cases of remarriage after divorce and in the context of the vexed question of Eucharistic communion. It traces the centuries long history of Catholic resistance to this convention, revealing serious theological and canonical difficulties inherent in past and current Orthodox Church practice.

Thus, in the second part of the book, the authors argue in favor of retaining the theological and canonical rationale for the intrinsic connection between traditional Catholic doctrine and sacramental discipline concerning marriage and communion.

The various studies in this book lead to the conclusion that the Church's longstanding fidelity to the truth of marriage constitutes the irrevocable foundation of its merciful and loving response to the individual who is civilly divorced and remarried. The book therefore challenges the premise that traditional Catholic doctrine and contemporary pastoral practice are in contradiction.

"Because it is the task of the apostolic ministry to ensure that the Church remains in the truth of Christ and to lead her ever more deeply into that truth, pastors must promote the sense of faith in all the faithful, examine and authoritatively judge the genuineness of its expressions and educate the faithful in an ever more mature evangelical discernment." - St. John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio

Dan and Amber DeMatte, who have worked together in youth and family ministry for more than fifteen years, believe it's holiness--living as Jesus did.

Giving and receiving love and living for the sake of others--especially your spouse and children--will help you achieve holiness, the DeMattes say. You can even find holiness in the everyday tasks of marriage and family life such as doing the dishes, changing diapers, and cleaning up messes.

In The Three Secrets to Holiness in Marriage, the DeMattes walk you through a thirty-three -day retreat that culminates in consecrating your marriage to Christ. They will help you achieve perfect love for each other, your family, and God by incorporating the virtues of poverty, chastity, and obedience into your life. This retreat will help you fall deeper in love with Christ, your spouse and children, and the world God calls you to serve.

Each chapter includes discussion questions and a prayer for couples.