Counseling of engaged couples is catching on in district

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Counseling of engaged couples is catching on in district

Homewood church, Greensburg diocese are among pioneers

Friday, March 27, 1998

Here's a look at two local religious programs that already focus on premarital counseling.

Bethany Baptist Church

At Bethany in Homewood, the Rev. William Glaze has been slowly piecing together his premarital counseling program for eight years.

In the beginning, he was the only counselor, and sessions were limited to members of his congregation. Today, his counselors come from a trained volunteer corps of eight and, thanks to a $100,000, three-year grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and Pittsburgh's Christian Life Skills organization, he hopes to spread the counseling beyond the walls of the church.

That's important for Homewood, Glaze said, because it's a community where single-parent families are common and where crime and drugs are chronic problems.

Glaze believes some of these social problems can be curtailed through premarital counseling, because strong marriages can help stabilize a community. For the 20 or so couples who have gone through his program, the first step was the PREPARE inventory, which asks couples to discuss finances, family history and other issues.

Bethany requests at least three months of counseling. During that time, couples are asked to attend six to eight sessions that last one to two hours each.

Greensburg Catholic Diocese

A spectrum of choices awaits Catholics in most local dioceses.

Greensburg Bishop Anthony Bosco said several programs were offered because achieving prevention was better than finding a cure.

Here are the basics, said Sally Loughran, the Greensburg diocese's marriage preparation coordinator:

Evenings for the engaged -- small groups with no more than 10 couples. Counselors and parishes operate independently to establish what guidelines will be set.

Sponsor couples -- older, married couples work one-on-one with the engaged. Discussions include everything from intimacy to Catholic sacraments. Priests choose the married couples to be trained, and the diocese does the training. There is usually one session a week for a month.

Private counseling sessions with clergy. Priests will not marry without some type of marriage preparation.

Members of most dioceses can also take advantage of a few national programs aimed at enriching a marriage.

Engaged Encounter -- a weekend retreat to prepare spiritually and emotionally before marriage.

Marriage Encounter -- for married couples at any stage, a weekend retreat to get away from family, children and work, and to improve communication through a guided dialogue technique. Marriage Encounter sessions also exist for other religious denominations.

Retrouvaille (the French word for rediscovery) -- a program aimed at healing marriages in distress.