Marriage ministry targets hurting couples with care

By Rebecca Bostic
The Catholic Sun

Six months ago Tom and Belinda Harvey were ready to give up on their marriage. But then the St. Anne Parish Sunday bulletin offered them a lifesaver: the Retrouvaille program.

“I thought we were the only ones living in hell with all these problems” in our marriage, Belinda said of her experience at Retrouvaille, a ministry for troubled marriages that sponsors weekend retreats providing tools for better marriages.

“We were just at the end of our rope and maybe ready to separate… it was just a Godsend going there and knowing that other couples were having the same problems,” she said. “Here we’re ready to throw in the towel and they’re trying to make it work. It was very inspiring.”

The program has sponsored a host of retreats since it first came to the Phoenix Diocese in 1985. Currently, Retrouvaille sponsors five retreats a year in the Phoenix area.

Fr. Michael Diskin, assistant chancellor for the Phoenix Diocese, has worked with the group for 13 years.

Retrouvaille provides “a positive challenge to couples to redefine their understanding of what love is,” he said.

“Too many people think of love as an emotion that a person can easily fall in and out of depending on how they experience their needs being met,” Fr. Diskin said. “In Retrouvaille we teach that love is a decision and that people can choose to love, even in challenging times.”

Difficult situations face most of the couples that attend a Retrouvaille retreat according to Nancy Beck, a participant in the program with her husband Ron since 1993. The couple gives talks at Retrouvaille retreats in Phoenix and throughout the country.

“Some of the couples that come are just miserable,” she said, adding that the weekend talks teach couples tools to resolve their unhappy situation.

“One thing I look forward to on the weekends is seeing somehow, someway, the Holy Spirit show up,” Ron said. “Something happens on the weekend that kind of breaks down walls and barriers and for quite a few of the couples, if not all the couples, it brings them closer together.”

Following the initial weekend experience, couples are encouraged to attend additional weekly sessions. Retrouvaille participants are also invited to participate in CORE — Continuing Our Retrouvaille Experience — a social gathering hosted once a month that includes past participants who wish to develop a support system for their marriage.

“A support system is something that’s important to keep a marriage strong,” said Sallie McGuire  who attended Retrouvaille with her husband Brian in 1999.

“I think for Brian and me, we didn’t really have anything, any support system and that was one of the problems we were having,” she said.

More than a ‘tune-up’

Retrouvaille originally developed in a French-speaking region of Canada when leaders of the Marriage Encounter ministry noticed many participants ending their marriage with divorce.

“So they said, ‘well there must be something missing for these couples,’” Sallie McGuire said. “So they kind of took talks and adapted them so it’s very much a related program but marriage encounter is to make a good marriage better whereas Retrouvaille is for hurting couples.”

The groups still work closely, cross-referencing couples they think would be benefited by the other program.

“The difference between Retrouvaille and Marriage Encounter is one is a tune-up and the other is an overhaul,” Tom said.

The Harveys, Becks and McGuires all credit the success of their marriage to Retrouvaille and the tools and support the ministry provided them while they were in hurting marriages. The Retrouvaille program has an extremely high success rate — 75 percent of couples that complete the entire program stay married, according to the group.

“For Catholics, marriage is a sacrament, which is almost at the same level as going into the priesthood,” McGuire said. “Being a priest, that’s a job someone is doing and will spend all of his time devoted to. I don’t think a lot of people think about marriage that way.”

Retrouvaille teaches that marriage is work, but it is a job three out of four Retrouvaille couples around the world now enjoy.