Consultant Sharon Goh hopes recent changes make the courses more relevant and supportive
By Agnieszka Krawczynski
The B.C. Catholic
Caption: Sharon Goh
The Archdiocese of Vancouver is changing the way it offers its marriage preparation program.
Coordinator Sharon Goh hopes the revamp will make courses more helpful for engaged couples. “We are there to support them, to encourage them, and not to point fingers, and not to talk down to them,” she said Nov. 15.
Goh, who stepped in as the marriage preparation consultant six months ago, said change is necessary in part because of a changing culture and approach to marriage.
On average 540 couples per year attend the archdiocesan marriage preparation program, she said. Some 40 per cent of these attendees are not Catholics, but are marrying Catholics.
“We want the message we teach to be way more relatable,” she said. “Easily half” of participants are either not Catholic or don’t regularly go to Mass. They might be living together or already civilly married. “The course has to meet them where they are at.”
She plans to bring in new instructors and favours discussions over lectures. She is also talking with presenters about making the content less heavy on catechesis.
Sister John Mary Sullivan, FSE, teaches the “Theology of the Body” segment. The challenge, she said, is “striking the balance”: being relatable “but not watering down” Church teaching.
She has also changed the style of her presentation. Now she gives couples a break every 15 minutes to discuss what they have just heard.
“There are such beautiful and important concepts that we’re presenting, but unless they’re applicable to their future marriage, it falls on deaf ears.”
Any local Catholic who wishes to get married in the Church must have some form of preparation first, Goh said. The archdiocese’s marriage preparation course is one way of fulfilling that requirement.
Until now it has been offered as a five- or six-week course on weeknights, or a three-week course on Saturdays. A single weekend will become an option starting Feb. 17-19.
“There are couples who don’t live in the same city,” or who “have work schedules that won’t permit them” to attend courses together on six weeknights, Goh said. They can apply to take all the courses they need in one weekend.
“We’re trying to give them tools,” she said. “There are some topics that we are going to raise that churn up stuff. It’s good if you both get closer by discovering difficult topics and discussing them.”
The fertility health awareness course, formerly the natural family planning section, is still required, and will be offered starting Feb. 4 as a separate seminar to give couples more dates to choose from.
As the marriage preparation program changes, Goh encourages Catholics to sign up at least four months before the wedding.
“How can you have a real clean, clear discernment process if it’s the last thing you’re going to do, and you’re frenzied with the stress of preparing for the wedding day?”
The course isn’t there to “spoil the fun,” she added. “We’re saying: take it more seriously. They need to know that when they make that vow at the altar, they cannot take it lightly.”
