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 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."

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.