The Catholic Engaged Encounters experience
A marriage is a day, a wedding is a lifetime
My partner and I recently attended the Catholic Engaged Encounters (CEE) programme organised by the Roman Catholic church of Singapore. It’s a 2-day weekend programme that aims to help couples prepare for married life in the context of the Catholic faith.
The programme is compulsory to attend before getting married in a Roman Catholic church, and is one of the available marriage preparation programmes with the other being unceremoniously named the Marriage Preparation Course (MPC).
While MPC runs for a shorter duration each day over six weekends, CEE runs for two full days. Both programmes started early in the morning and weren’t at places anyone would consider convenient.
Two early mornings of death and destruction it was over six, we decided.
Through God’s blessing, we arrived on time on the first day. Breakfast was served and we spent the rest of the day in a lecture hall with about 50 other couples.
We learnt that the programme was universally standardised across all Roman Catholic churches around the world. While that was cool, it also meant some topics weren’t as relevant in a Singapore context and some nuances in the English language when it came to prescribed communication patterns might not be as effective here.
I’m not allowed to go in-depth into the content of the programme, but one thing I thought was excellent was the breadth of topics covered.
I was not a believer of marriage preparation programmes but after going through a programme that counts as such, I think every couple thinking about experiencing married life together should consider it. It’s not about challenging how close both of you are, your feelings for each other, your communication patterns, or anything about your existing relationship.
To me at least, this programme had an overarching question of “have you considered ___________ before committing to this person?” which was also what I felt such programmes should be asking.
There will be things which aren’t discussed during the dating phase because of the gravity of the topics.
Talking about these topics during earlier stages of a romantic relationship can come across as boring and even presumptuous, but these same topics if left undiscussed before getting married can lead to misaligned expectations on things important only once life together begins. And we can guess how misaligned expectations on important issues end up in any human relationship.
Putting these issues on the table doesn’t mean they will be resolved, but it allows for your partner to at least be aware of your opinions on these issues.
As cliched as it may sound, compromise is a part of any relationship; and compromise cannot begin to happen unless one is aware of the other’s point of view and given time to sit with it.
Even for topics which my partner and I thought we had discussed before, we managed to go slightly deeper into the ones that really mattered and uncovered some of each other’s deeper needs. By the end of the programme, we made a commitment to work on these to each other. This might or might not have happened without this programme, but I’m glad this programme facilitated its happening.
Structure-wise, the programme consisted of a series of separate topics. Each topic in turn was a cycle of sharings by a married couple (termed the Presenting Couple), sharings by a priest, followed by reflection writing time, and concluding with discussing your reflections with your other half.
Topics lasted for about an hour each and brought us through from understanding ourselves to understanding each other, then communication techniques and finally going through common topics of married life. After researching on how other marriage preparation programmes did this, the common topics of married life were actually pretty similar across all programmes.
One thing I really liked about the CEE programme was that it was designed to be inclusive for non-believers. To be fair, this programme is compulsory for all couples including those belonging to inter-faith relationships in order to get married in church; the way that it was conducted was extremely respectful to those belonging to other faiths. There was never a call to prayer without a disclaimer by the priest that everyone can pray to whoever they consider their god.
Also since it’s a Catholic programme, I was expecting a stronger focus on religious practices but only the concept of prayer was mentioned as a passing stage in the grander scheme of discernment and conflict management. Being a Catholic who has a disdain for rituals and the man-made practices/structures of religion in general, this was both relieving and refreshing.
On the overall, this programme was a nice one to go through with someone I’ve been with for a number of years now. Both of us walked away with a slightly deeper understanding of each other and at least for me, also a sense of confidence that we had a pretty good chance of making married life work.
TBH we didn’t expect to be participatory given the time of day it was at and also because we were admittedly slightly doubtful of the what the programme could offer us. She and I are trained in counselling and coaching respectively while the speakers weren’t. Turned out that this wasn’t an issue given the programme content was designed by psychologists and our hosts were only there to share about their experiences and challenges.
The only thing that I felt could’ve been improved was how the Presenting Couple shared stories of their married lives. At the start of the programme, it was declared that the people sharing will likely be reading off a screen because public speaking skills were not a criteria to be the Presenting Couple and that they wanted to deliver the content right. Which is fair.
But while the intentions were good, reading their own stories off a script ended up coming across as third-party narration rather than a personal sharing. I felt that it could’ve been much more powerful if they had shared spontanously - even if that meant missing out on some points or stuttering mid-way through.
Based on my past experiences in programmes that facilitate reflection and dialogue, it takes a lot to enable people to feel safe enough to let their guard down, be themselves authentically, and speak with candor. Typically, the people “in charge” need to exhibit a certain level of vulnerability before participants feel safe enough to be vulnerable themselves. I didn’t feel like this level of vulnerability was achieved for the majority of the sharings which was sad because it could’ve been so much more powerful for participants if it had.
Closing off, I remember the final remarks of the priest: “If after attending this course you find you have some doubts or big unresolved issues, maybe take it slow and hold off on the wedding” (paraphrased).
At that moment I also remember feeling thankful and appreciative of what I had with my partner because this course went pretty well for us. Took that as a sign that our foundations were decent and that I could have faith in her to be there to work things out together, and while I can’t speak for my partner, I felt that the feeling was mutual.
If you’re someone who’s considering marriage or even someone who’s just recently in on this married life thingy, I suspect these marriage courses could be very helpful if you’ve never been to one.
There’s also actually a list by the government here for more secular programmes if you’re allergic to religious organisations.
Till my next life experience~