Marriage Topics
Are you confused about how to find your true love? Do you want to work on a current dating relationship, preparing it for engagement and marriage?
Packed into 101 bite-sized suggestions, 101 Tips for Marrying the Right Person is the help you need to approach dating with confidence and joy, while at the same time helping you become the best, most marriage-ready version of yourself. Jennifer Roback Morse and Betsy Kerekes offer inspiration and advice for all stages of your relationship.
With research conducted by the Ruth Institute and almost fifty years of marriage experience between them, authors Jennifer Roback Morse and Betsy Kerekes have compiled their best tips to inspire and support Catholic singles during all stages of dating and engagement. The life-changing ideas in 101 Tips for Marrying the Right Person offer short, practical suggestions that will help you find a mate and build a strong relationship.
You'll find advice for meeting other Catholic singles, questions to ask yourself before getting too serious, and topics to talk about before engagement. Tips include:
Morse and Kerekes clearly articulate the challenges that face single Catholics today. The hook-up and cohabitation culture is prevalent in our society and in the media, making the temptation to succumb strong. The authors want you to know that you aren't weak for being interested in these options, but you are strong enough to resist them. You can combat these challenges by recognizing single life and dating as ideal times to discern your own call to the vocation of marriage as well as your dating relationship's readiness for the sacrament.
Drawing from his popular healing conferences, forty years of marriage, and decades of clinical work as a couple's therapist, bestselling author Bob Schuchts presents his first resource for married and engaged couples and those who desire true love in their relationships: Be Devoted. This highly anticipated guide delivers sound Catholic teaching, rich storytelling, and practical tools for healing, along with psychological insights and expertise to help couples create a relationship that is rich in trust, passion, and unity.
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 Devotedis 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:
- Take A Moment reflection questions
- prayer guides for couples
- scripts for apologizing and tackling difficult discussions
- practical ways for understanding and working through conflicts
- spiritual exercises for healing past wounds
- prompts for journaling
- appendices with extended prayer exercises and resources
Catholic annulment is often viewed as an obstacle to marriage or a formality of cannon law. Few people realize that annulment is more than just a process--annulment leads to healing. The authors draw upon their own experience of Catholic annulment to describe not only the procedure but also the peace it brought into their lives.
Beginning with the process of annulment, the book presents a section of frequently asked questions, such as: What is the cost? How long will it take? Then the book explains why an annulment process is necessary and tells how to find a procurator to initiate the annulment process.
After discussing the process, the book considers the healing aspects of annulment. Healing must include forgiving others and yourself for all past pain and sorrow. The last chapter of the book discusses how to deal with your children after an annulment.
Encouraging yet forthright, The Catholic Guide to Dating After Divorce offers sound advice to anyone who has experienced the deflating effects of divorce, but is not ready to give up on love. Affirming the universal need for intimacy, relationship expert Lisa Duffy shows that faith can be a catalyst for healthy relationships, helping to identify and uproot emotionally harmful habits and boosting authenticity and confidence.
Duffy identifies five essential characteristics of spiritually healthy people being available, affectionate, communicative, faithful, and magnanimous and shows how cultivating these qualities can bring out the best, most confident, and most attractive version of anyone.
God doesn't want your marriage to simply survive. He wants it to be superabundant. Indeed, Christ s first public miracle was to bring joy to a young couple when he turned approximately 150 gallons of ordinary water into the choicest of wines. "The Choice Wine: 7 Steps to a Superabundant Marriage" moves well beyond divorce-proofing your marriage to place a happier, healthier, and wealthier future within your grasp.
Follow Steve Bollman on an amazing journey as he integrates the latest findings from modern science with the wisdom of the ages and a little common sense to expand your vision of marriage, including the neurological research revealing the reality that husband and wife truly become one, the medical science indicating that the human person transcends the limits of the visible world and the neurological reality that spouses are driven to be profoundly merciful to each other.
Along the way, you 'll hear amazing stories destined to touch your heart: the Nobel Laureate in Medicine who witnessed two instantaneous miracles, the mother whose prayers transformed the heart of a mafia enforcer, and a very special couple who reveals the power of love to transcend the limits of this world to have a foretaste of Paradise."The Choice Wine" will help you experience the superabundant joy intended for marriage from the beginning."
In these pages, Fr. Thomas Morrow, author of the best-selling book, Overcoming Sinful Anger, offers a practical guide to dating in a secular world.
He explores a range of dating issues including choosing Mr. or Miss Right, the four meanings of love, how to have a warm but chaste relationship, the goodness of affection, modesty, restoring the dignity of women, and how to overcome the most common problems with communication.
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
The audio edition of this book can be downloaded via Audible.
Drawing on his forty years as a marriage and family psychiatrist, Dr. Fitzgibbons presents a book that can bring self-knowledge and healing to struggling marriages. It will help couples to identify and resolve the major emotional conflicts that weaken their relationships and hurt their marriage. It is very timely because of the epidemics of selfishness, anger, pornography and infidelity in marriage today.
This work is unique because it draws upon the field of positive psychology, which focuses on growth in virtues by the spouses. It is the first book on strengthening marriages by a mental health professional that incorporates the luminous writing of St. John Paul II on marriage and empirically proven forgiveness therapy.
The book demonstrates the benefits from a commitment to a mission of personal growth in acknowledging one's fault, receiving and giving forgiveness and cultivating virtues. This healing process is both fulfilling and demanding.
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.
How to Survive Being Married to a Catholic uses a lively and highly original cartoon format with full-color illustrations to explain the central beliefs of Catholics in thirteen lighthearted chapters.
This book presents straightforward answers to more than eighty of the questions most commonly asked about Catholicism. Also, it includes a glossary of Catholic terms and suggestions for further reading.
If you aren't Catholic, but your partner is, and you want to understand more about their faith, read this book and laugh. Trusted for over 30 years, How to Survive Being Married to a Catholic has been updated with new content.
Softcover, full-color interior
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.
Most people would agree that marriage today is in crisis. What is usually overlooked even by those married in the Church is that God intended marriage to be a sacrament. The Lord wants couples to rely on his promise to be present in their day-to-day lives, and he wants to give them the grace to live out a covenantal love that mirrors the love of the Trinity.
Rather than simply a defense of marriage, this book presents the "good news" about sacramental marriage. Cardinal Donald Wuerl uses his years of pastoral experience and his gift of teaching to give hope and courage to both engaged couples and those married for many years and to anyone thinking about the meaning or vocation of marriage.
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."
It's a miracle!
God created the miracle of marriage
so we might realize and cherish
God's love for each other
even more....
The ultimate love story.
--From Prayers and Reflections for Newlyweds
Inside are reflective meditations, Scripture, prayer, discussion questions, and activities for the two of you, all designed to help you create new memories together as husband and wife.
Newlyweds, use this book to help you celebrate falling in love, getting engaged, the joy of the wedding day, and a long future together as a married couple--all surrounded by God's grace.
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
It takes three to make Love in Heaven—
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
It takes three for Heaven to make love to earth—
God, Man, and Mary, through whom God became Man.
It takes three to make love in the Holy Family—
Mary, and Joseph, and the consummation of their love, Jesus.
It takes three to make love in hearts—
The Lover, the Beloved, and Love.
One of the greatest and best-loved spokesmen for the Faith here sets out the Church's beautiful understanding of marriage in his trademark clear and entertaining style.
Frankly and charitably, Sheen presents the causes of and solutions to common marital crises and tells touching real-life stories of people whose lives were transformed through marriage. He emphasizes that our Blessed Lord is at the center of every successful and loving marriage.
This is a perfect gift for engaged couples, or for married people as a fruitful occasion for self-examination.
To that Woman who taught the sublime mystery of Love,
Mary Immaculate,
this book is dedicated.
That nations, hearts, and homes may learn
that love does not so much mean to give oneself to another
as for both lovers to give themselves
to that Passionless Passion,
Which is God.
This 365-day devotional assists couples to prioritize prayer together. By combining a passage from Scripture with a pertinent, heartfelt prayer, and thought-provoking reflection, it will give couples prayers they can say together on relevant topics. These themes bring focus and over time, will allow couples to develop stronger bonds with each other. The cliché is true--couples who pray together, stay together.
To Have and To Hold benefits those who are struggling as well as those enthusiastic about keeping their marriage sacred and strong, with the awareness that all marriages have struggles. Most relationships have cyclical peaks and valleys. This devotional integrates suggestions that the author has acquired through The Third Option program, one that assists couples at strengthening their marriage.
A thoughtful, romantic, faith-centered keepsake book for couples becoming engaged. It brings to light the power of love, the importance of shared values in making a marriage work, the history of betrothal and engagement, and stories of proposals, rings, and acceptances. Features a place for the engaged couple to record the story of how they met, their courtship and engagement, family traditions they want to maintain in their marriage, their future together, and more. The engagement period is not only a time to plan a wedding, it is a period of discernment, a time to make sure that the future spouse is both a best friend and a soul mate.
Designed as a formational tool for engaged couples to guide them through each decision of the wedding liturgy, this resource provides suggestions for creating a cohesive Liturgy of the Word. Along with full texts of each of the readings from The Order of Celebrating Matrimony with pastoral commentary, couples can use this resource together to select the readings for their wedding liturgy and gain insight as to why they may choose a particular reading.
This warm and welcoming book invites engaged couples to discover the grace, mystery, strength, and wonder of the Catholic sacrament of marriage. It provides honest answers to commonly asked questions about Catholic weddings. More importantly, it explains the deeper purpose of marriage as a vocation, and how couples can draw unique grace and strength from the sacrament, their faith, and the entire Catholic community. Wonderful, hopeful reading for all engaged couples.
This easy-to-read, magazine-style guide is designed to help couples as they prepare for their marriage ceremony. Illustrated with full-color photographs throughout, it helps couples clarify their own approach to the sacrament of marriage and provide creative support for each other during the preparation period and on into their new lives together.