Online Pre Cana

Mike and Lisa

We began our married life on December 29th, 1984. Michael was already in the Army, having served two years enlisted time and having recently graduated from West Point. Lisa was finishing college (Mount Saint Mary) with a semester yet to go.

The first 6 months of our marriage began with 4 weeks of our living together as man and wife and then 5 months of Lisa finishing college in NY and Michael attending various military schools and trainings. Our life has been an adventure ever since, including 2 children, one grandchild, 14 duty stations, 4 deployments, an un accompanied tour, and retirement.

Our oldest, Angela, is 25 and lives in Texas with her family. She gave us our first granddaughter, Ava. Mikey is 20 and attends Saint Bonaventure University. Our children came to our family through the gift of adoption. Each of their stories is beautiful and we remain eternally grateful for the blessings that they are in our lives.

It is our hope and prayer that our story, combined with the teachings and truth of our Holy Catholic Church, will encourage, enhance, and enlighten the marriage preparation process of the couples we encounter here. “Your wedding is for a day. Your marriage is for a lifetime. Prepare well and entrust your marriage to God.”

Jake and Maddy

Madeline and Jake met in 2012 while Jake was at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. After much delay (in Madeline’s opinion) they were married in March of 2016. Jake is from the Chicago area but Madeline grew up in Colorado and they got married in the church her family had gone to.

Madeline: Growing up as the youngest of four girls Madeline envisioned a life close to her family. She grew up riding and training horses and planned out her future life on a farm near enough to her sisters to see them regularly and all raise their families together. However, a phrase that is now all too common in Madeline and Jake’s lives is, “We made a plan and God laughed.”

Jake: Jake’s life long goal from the age of 8 was to become an astronaut. The best way to do that was to be an Air Force pilot and the best chance he had at that was to try and get into the Air Force Academy. Jake graduated from the Air Force Academy in 2015 with a pilot slot. He has since gone on to fly the F16 and later was a T38 Instructor Pilot.

Jake and Madeline got married and four days later moved away from family and into a new lifestyle that was opposite to the plan. They moved to a small town in Oklahoma for a year and a half where Jake bought Madeline a puppy in the hopes of pacifying her baby fever while he was in his pilot training. It did work for a short time while she trained their puppy. They had their first son while living in Arizona and their second while living in South Dakota. They have since moved to Texas and now await yet another move.

Jake is still flying for the Air Force and Madeline is a stay-at-home mom now. They enjoy the family time they get by playing board games, card games, soccer after family dinner, weekend model rocket launches and reading as much as possible!

Additional Resources:

Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA

Archbishop Broglio's article on the challenges faced by military couples.

What is Convalidation?

The Catholic Church believes that marriages entered into by non-Catholics in their particular church, or wherever they may take place, are valid. In the eyes of the Church, even two atheists or agnostics who are married civilly before a judge or magistrate enter into a valid marriage.

It may be that the Catholic who entered into marriage outside the Church did not realize that these requirements existed, but more often, it is because one or both of the spouses was not free to marry in the Catholic Church because of a previous marriage or because they were awaiting a Declaration of Nullity. Also, the Catholic partner(s) may not have been active in the Church and did not consider having a Catholic wedding.

The Church very much wants to assist these couples who later want to enter into valid Catholic marriage, and it offers them pastoral and spiritual support as they need it. When these couples are ready and free to do so, they celebrate what is called a convalidation, from the Latin word meaning “to firm up” or “to strengthen.” This is sometimes wrongly referred to as the blessing of a marriage.

Additional Resources:

For Your Marriage

Together For Life

Free Convalidation Webinar

Convalidation: Bringing Your Marriage Into the Church (USCCB)

The first step is to contact your local parish priest or deacon.
Make sure to read our Steps to the Altar.

”Pastors of souls are obliged to ensure that their own church community provides for Christ's faithful the assistance by which the married state is preserved in its Christian character and develops in perfection. This assistance is to be given principally: by personal preparation for entering marriage, so that the spouses are disposed to the holiness and the obligations of their new state”… (Can. 1063)

Marriage is a life-long commitment. It is probably the most important commitment of your entire life. We see too many broken families and the increasing rate of divorces to remain indifferent. You want your Marriage to last and to be strong. You do not want to have just a functionnal marriage, but you want an extraordinary one. You want to commit in full knowledge of what marriage is all about, especially in the Catholic Church.

It takes years of studies for a priest to be ordained and fulfill his vocation. Marriage also is a vocation. It needs to be prepared in order to last." So that the “I do” of the spouses may be a free and responsible act and so that the marriage covenant may have solid and lasting human and Christian foundations, preparation for marriage is of prime importance.” CCC 1632

“It is the desire of the Catholic Church to be present and accompany couples from the time they begin their marriage preparation and continuing throughout all the phases of life. In order for this to be possible, we see the necessity of preparing the bishops and all pastoral ministers: priests, religious and lay, to accompany these couples and these families. We must also call upon teams of professional laypersons to help us in this work.” Bishops of the Americas 18 February 2004

Marriage preparation must begin at least 6-12 months prior to a couple's anticipated wedding date. This must be checked with your specific diocesan requirements.
The very first step is to make an appointment with your priest. He will let you know what the requirements of your diocese are concerning marriage and will help you fill out the necessary papers. Then you will be able to start preparing for the sacrament through a manageable series of meetings and educational workshops.

- Complete a marriage preparation inventory (Fully Engage or Prepare&Enrich). This tool is designed to assess the strengths of your relationship and areas that may need growth. Depending on your parish, you may also meet with a married mentor couple to help you review the inventory.

- Participate in Natural Family Planning Classes. Check with your parish or the Office of Marriage and Family Life of your diocese to register.

- Attend a specific Pre Cana, or Marriage Preparation, course as offered on this site.

- Depending on your diocese, you might be required to participate in a specific weekend retreat.

- Finally, about a month before your wedding, you will need to meet with your parish team to finalize the preparation of your ceremony. You will discuss the details of the liturgy and your choice of readings with your priest or deacon. Plan also to meet with your parish music director and the marriage coordinator.

Many dioceses around the U.S. and even around the world have adopted CatholicMarriagePrep.com.

CatholicMarriagePrep.com is the fruit of many years of approved practice in the Archdiocese of Denver where it started in 2004. It is even more complete and thorough than live classes thanks to the one-on-one teaching and the possibility of linking you to so many different valuable resources available through the Internet.

The program is taught one-on-one with an instructor couple who follows you personally throughout the course. You have the opportunity to discuss each and every topic in private, to ask all your questions to your instructors, and to work at your own pace in a three months time frame.

At the end of the course, you will receive a Certificate of Completion for your wedding file.

Our one-on-one heuristic approach can be described in three words: Progressive / Gradual / Deeper.

1- Progressive / Gradual / Deeper:

• Progressive: the engaged couples progress with every assignment as each worksheet is built upon the previous one.
• Gradual: We go one step at a time, we take the engaged couples where they are and we help them go further.
• Deeper: We go back to certain topics after the engaged couples have learned something new so we can take them deeper and deeper.

2 - Heuristic Method:

We do not work in the traditional teaching way, i.e. a lesson then questions about the lessons (we actually do this only for two assignments: assignments 4 and 5: Formation of Conscience and the teaching on contraception).
Instead we ask couples to think first (heuristic process), to search for answers to the questions, before they receive the fullness of the Church's teaching in the answer key.

We want them to 'own' their knowledge, we want them to think for themselves, to discuss, ponder, and investigate, before we complete their reflection with the Church’s teachings.
This way, the couple stays engaged in the process and is more open to embracing the teachings of the Church.

This is why the work is down in two phases:
The first one as we described above is the searching phase, the second one is the reading of their personal answer key from their instructor couple.
The "meat of the program', the core of the teaching, is in the answer key.
Not reading and not discussing the answer key makes the whole process quite worthless.

3 - One on One/personalized method:

Since the engaged couples are asked to give their own personal answers, then each engaged couple is really unique for us.
Their instructor couple will review each and every one of their answers/comments and answer back to each one of them in a very personalized way, before giving them the teachings of the Catholic Church, common to all.
It makes this journey really unique for each engaged couple as well as for their instructor couples.
The engaged couple can ask any question they want, together or separately, on the marriage preparation itself or on any other topic.
If we are not able to answer to their questions, we will take the time to look for the right answers or send them to the right resources.
When some of these questions need the help of a counselor, we have a counselor on staff who will answer anonymously or personally.

We see beautiful things happen through this way of teaching as you can read in our weekly reviews