Married couples witness to the engaged

By KENNY KEANE, Globe staff reporter
Posted February 13, 2003

Summer will be here soon enough. That being the case, many couples are currently planning summer weddings.

However, there is another important thing they need to be planning for - marriage.

To help, the Sioux City Diocese offers Sponsor Couple, Engaged Enrichment, Pre-Cana and Cana II, which are all forums in which married couples share their experiences with engaged couples.

According to Bev Hurni, director of family ministries for the diocese, each of these programs essentially deliver the same message but in different time frames.

The Sponsor Couple program, initiated by the individual parishes, pairs engaged and married couples together to meet five times over the course of several weeks. Engaged Enrichment is a weekend retreat for engaged couples held in Okoboji and at Briar Cliff University in Sioux City. Pre-Cana is a 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday program for couples entering their first marriage, while Cana II, held during the same times, is where one or the other person is entering a second marriage.

No matter which forum the couple chooses, Hurni said it is consistently coming through in the evaluations from participants how much they appreciate the married couples sharing their experiences and sharing them with honesty.

"These couples don't come pretending to be experts or that they have perfect marriage," Hurni said. "They have lived the ups and downs of married life and believe in it. Their life is a witness to faithfulness.

"The married couples themselves have often told me that they love serving this ministry because it enriches their own marriage. Couples spend a lot of time preparing for the wedding, but when they come to these programs what we prepare them for is married life."

Linda Shoemaker, a parishioner at Nativity Church in Sioux City, said she and her husband Sid also help at Engaged Enrichment once a year sort of selfishly because it allows them to call themselves to conscience on whether or not they are living the sacrament correctly.

"I feel like that lays the foundation when these engaged couples come to understand what it is that they're committing themselves to and the fact that this is not just a legal commitment but a spiritual commitment," she said. "If they start their marriage that way, they've always got a foundation, and it just gives them something to look back on and remember."

One misconception to dispel according to Linda Kunkel, who volunteers at Engaged Enrichment with her husband Tom, is that this is not a ploy to convert people to Catholicism.

"Of course that would be wonderful, but that's not our purpose," said Kunkel, a parishioner at St. Joseph Church in Hartley. "Our purpose it to make them look at things from different angels, to see things from another person's point of view and to learn form the experiences of the sponsor couples."

Each Engaged Enrichment also calls upon the services of one priest from the diocese, and Father Tim Johnson, pastor of St. Mary Church in Remsen, has filled that role in the past. Although he has enjoyed those experiences, he said that the Sponsor Couple program is more intimate.

"A lot of times you'll go into different tangents on what the married couple sees either as a struggle or a blessing in their marriages or some useful information they want to pass on to the couple they're helping out," Father Johnson said. "It's more intimate in that manner, and at the same time it's informal. There's nothing to be threatened about because whatever they ask of you on the sheets to fill in or the information to give, they go through the very same process."

For the past 11 years, the diocese has focused primarily on recruiting more couples to act as sponsor couples, according to Kay Morrissey, director of the Office of Faith Formation for the diocese.

"It's a very vital ministry. It's crucial that we have married couples who say by their very presence with engaged couples, there is goodness in marriage," Morrissey said. "Fidelity and trust is possible. This is a life-giving reality, and that's why these people are so important to the diocese as a whole."

Hurni said the current schedule for Engaged Enrichment is March 8-9 in Okoboji and June 28-29 at Briar Cliff. There will also be a fall retreat offered this year, Sept. 27-28 at Dayton Oaks Camp located south of Fort Dodge. The only Pre-Cana date schedule right now is for April 12 in Sioux City. As for Cana II, which is held three times a year in conjunction with Catholic Charities, one was just held earlier this month, and the other two will be May 10 in Manson and at some point in September in Carroll.

For those who wish to find out more about these programs, contact the Office of Family Ministries at (712) 233-7531.

"Most couples are rather hesitant and not sure whether this is going to be counseling or they're going to be drilled with a lot of questions," Hurni said. "People can just relax because it's like having conversation with your friends."