Welcome to the Office of Family Life. Please feel welcome to browse through any of our sites and select your area of interest.
Worldwide Marriage Encounter’s Mission of renewal in the church and change in the world is to assist couples and priests to live fully intimate and responsible relationships by providing them with a Catholic “experience” and ongoing community support for such a lifestyle.
Marriage Encounter is designed to give married couples the opportunity to examine their lives together…a time to share their feelings, hopes, disappointments, joys, frustrations…and to do so openly and honestly in a face-to-face, heart-to-heart encounter with the one person they have chosen to live with for the rest of their lives.
The emphasis of the Marriage Encounter weekend is on communication between husband and wife, who spend a weekend together away from the distractions and tensions of everyday life, to concentrate on each other. It’s not a retreat, nor a marriage clinic, nor group sensitivity. It’s a unique approach aimed at revitalizing Christian Marriage.
Natural Family Planning (NFP) promotes the love-giving and the life-giving nature of marriage, supporting God’s design for husbands and wives. NFP, which promotes an openness to life, is based on scientific, natural and moral methods of achieving or postponing a pregnancy.
For more information, contact Jennifer McManus at [email protected] or call (413) 533-5204
Additional NFP Resources
Retrouvaille, a Christian Peer Ministry for troubled marriages. Although this confidential ministry has its origin in the Catholic Church, all denominations are welcome. Retrouvaille, which means “rediscovery”, consists of a weekend experience in which husbands and wives are helped to re-establish communication and gain new insights into themselves as individuals and as a couple.
You will not be asked to share your problems with anyone else. However you will be encouraged to put the past behind you, to look beyond the hurt and pain, in order to rediscover each other in a new and positive way.
You may contact Retrouvaille on the Internet at Retrouvaille Home Page: www.retrouvaille.org for articles, dialogue, questions, etc. Many of these articles may be just what you were looking for.
For more information on programs in your area please call: 1-800-470-2230 or visit the www.helpourmarriage.org