Port Huron-based ministry focuses on making marriage matter from courtship and engagement to 'happily ever after'
PORT HURON — Traditionally, pre-Cana might look like a handful of couples meeting for a daylong retreat in the formation rooms of the local parish. While they’re there — many never having met before — couples might be expected to talk about anything from sex to finances to expectations in marriage; all things couples have a hard enough time talking to each other about, let alone strangers.
“It’s a model, and it’s the model the Church has been using for years,” said Jessie Wiegand, director of marketing and communications for The Marriage Group, a Port Huron-based company that provides couples in every U.S. diocese with online marriage-strengthening resources.
It’s also a model she and her husband went through when they planned their wedding.
While the traditional model of in-person catechesis and formation works for many couples, for others — such as couples who live far apart or for whom in-person courses aren't ideal — it can be a challenge, Wiegand said.
“I think the main difference between those in-person events and what we are trying to do is we’re trying to make something that works for everyone,” Wiegand said.
The Marriage Group offers more than just pre-Cana for marriage preparation. The community-based platform is all done online and is based on the formation of marriage every day. It’s also done online in the privacy of one's own home, so couples can be free to talk through the intimate details of their futures together.
Matt Brooks, who started the company in 2009, says he was working on computer networking when online learning was a new idea. A close friend and his fiancée were planning their wedding, and ended up going to a Detroit-area parish for the retreat.
“For [them], the idea of sitting in a room with a whole bunch of strangers to drink from the firehose for eight hours and being compelled to talk about the most intimate areas of their life, shoulder to shoulder with strangers, was miserable,” Brooks said.
Out of his friend’s experience, Brooks drew on his computer training and employment.
“At the time, we had ventured into online learning,” so he and his friend headed to the archdiocesan offices in Detroit to talk to the Family Ministries Team.
“The (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) spells out on their website the 'must-have' conversations for a comprehensive pre-Cana program: You've got to talk about sex, money, communication, conflict resolution, family of origin,” Brooks said. “We saw an opportunity to provide an alternate choice experience for couples, and it turned out that we were solving a lot of problems that we didn’t even realize at the time.”
One barrier they were able to navigate was during the pandemic, when everyone was locked down.
“The good news is that many first-time ministry leaders started using our courses, and we didn’t see those numbers fall,” Brooks said.
Having an online option for marriage preparation available during the pandemic was a God-send for many reasons, Brooks said.
“Young folks are going to do what they want to do, right? So here you've got a young couple who, they're so in love — hopefully with each other, hopefully with the church, and with their faith as well. But if they've got it in their mind that they're getting married, they're going to get married,” and during the pandemic was no different, Brooks added.
As a member of the Catholic Family Life Association, The Marriage Group's courses today are promoted by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, as well as bishops conferences in England and Wales.
Not only do the couples get theologically correct marriage formation, but they can go at their own pace and revisit it later. “They rely on the flexibility because it meets a variety of circumstances that leaders are facing right now when they’re dealing with these couples,” Weigand said.
As a hearing-impaired person, Weigand said sitting for eight hours with a group of people where “everyone’s talking, and I’m supposed to hear the person across the table, it’s exhausting for me.”
The online learning platform also helps people with attention deficits, anxiety, and sensory issues. But, beyond that, Brooks said there are also couples who want to get married, but for whom distance is a barrier, such as when one is serving in the military half a world away, or couples who met in college and want to be married in their home parish.
Brooks said The Marriage Group encourages couples that marriage preparation is more than a box to check off with a wedding planner.
“On average, couples spend over three weeks working through the course,” he said, adding, “We found it to be an endorsement not of The Marriage Group, but it's an endorsement of young folks do want something. They want to be set up for a wonderful, holy marriage, and they don’t want to just run right through them.”
Classes are carefully curated at the studio Brooks and his team set up in Port Huron, where they built the platform and record all of the videos for the lessons. Topics the ministry teams cover include Theology and Spirituality of Marriage, Finances, the Beauty of Sexuality and Intimacy in Marriage, Communication and Conflict Resolution, and Natural Family Planning, among others.
Weigand said the benefits are exponential. With upwards of 100,000 couples having used the program in the past 15 years, The Marriage Group is seeing couples continue to learn through enrichment opportunities even after the wedding is over. “There’s proactive opportunities for them to work on their relationship,” she said.
It isn’t always happily ever after, Brooks said, but it’s close.
“(Couples) might get mad at us for teaching what the Catholic Church teaches, but we can’t help that,” Brooks said said. “This is a place that celebrates marriage and family,” the way God intended.
The Marriage Group
For more information, or to bring The Marriage Group courses to your parish, visit their website. There is information on Pre-Cana, Marriage Every Day, and Natural Family Planning, as well as a link to the enrichment community where couples can continue to strengthen their marriage.
