Marriage Topics

Winner of a third-place award for marriage and family life books from the Catholic Media Association.

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 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:

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

“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.

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 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

Single women often feel left alone to find answers to their deep questions about love and intimacy. Some hang out and hook up, hoping for love. Others are afraid even to hope. At some point, every woman needs reassurance that she and her standardsare not the problem. "How to Find Your Soulmate without Losing Your Soul" presents 21 strategies to help single women raise the bar, instead of sitting at it, waiting around for Mr. Wonderful.

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.

Prayerbook for Engaged Couples is the perfect gift for engaged couples and will help them develop a practice of prayer that will sustain them throughout married life. This resource includes suggestions for choosing Scripture for the wedding ceremony and reflections on the words of the Order for Celebrating Matrimony.

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

The ultimate goal for the Christian life is heaven, but what path should a couple take to get there?

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.