Marriage Topics

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

A warm invitation to the faith and a simple approach to Catholicism, Joined by Grace is a book for beginners and those who want to know more about Catholic prayer life. The book offers guidance about the ways to pray, background information on prayers and devotions, and simple how-to-instructions. Family members and friends, as well as pastors, mentor couples, and others working in marriage ministries will find this a perfect gift for engaged and newly married couples.

Couples can learn how to pray spontaneously, offer thanks and praise, petition God, and express sorrow. There is guidance on blessings, praying with scripture, and liturgical prayer. The book also can be used to learn common Catholic prayers such as the Our Father, Doxology, and Hail Mary. Beyond the most essential Catholic prayers, the book offers insight and instruction for participating in the great devotions of the Church such as the Stations of the Cross, the Rosary, the Angelus, and Eucharistic Adoration. The last part of the book offers meditations on the seven sacraments as conduits of grace in our everyday lives.

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.

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.

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.