Catholic marriage educators seek closer ties with bishops, renew identity.
By Anthony Barich
Perth’s Catholic Marriage Education Services Director Derek Boylen has been elected President of the national Catholic Society for Marriage (CSME) Education in a move that will see the organisation have closer ties with the Australian bishops.
Melbourne Auxiliary Peter Elliott – a former official of the Pontifical Council for the Family, chaplain to the Pope and now Director of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family in Melbourne – is also the new bishops’ liaison to CSME, taking over from Darwin Bishop Eugene Hurley.
In other changes to the CSME hierarchy, Francine Pirola, Co-director of the Pastoral and Matrimonial Renewal Centre and Ros Lloyd from Centacare Broken Bay were newly elected.
The relationships landscape around Australia has changed and many groups that started out as marriage educators in the secular sector and, in some cases, in the Catholic sector, have broadened their portfolio to same-sex and de-facto relationships.
The new elections are understood to be part of a drive to re-establish a stronger Catholic identity of Catholic marriage preparation.
Mr Boylen told The Record that many people who get married in the Church are ‘quite secular’ and the new direction will seek to develop more resources to communicate the Church’s teachings on the beauty of marriage, like Theology of the Body. He said that Christian churches provide up to 80 per cent of Australia’s marriage preparation and the Catholic Church would provide up to 90 per cent of that.
The new appointments come a week after the Australian Bureau of Statistics released figures that revealed an increase of 2.1 per cent in registered marriages and a 1.6 per cent drop in divorce compared with 2007.
Mrs Pirola, whose PMRC has up to 60 trained marriage educators around Australia who run marriage preparation and enrichment courses aimed at training other leaders at a parish level, said the ABS figures reveal what the Church has been promoting for two millennia – that marriage, and marriage education, are crucial to the stability of society.
The figures are also timely as the Australian Senate has referred the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill 2009 for inquiry and report. The Bill seeks to remove all discrimination from the Marriage Act 1961 on the basis of sexuality and gender identity and to permit marriage regardless of sex, sexuality and gender identity.
It also comes weeks after the National Marriage Coalition gathered 10,000 petitions endorsing marriage as between a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others and hosted the inaugural National Marriage Day on August 13 to mark the anniversary of the passing of the 2004 Marriage Amendment Act.
In a panel discussion at the August 27-30 bi-annual Marriage and Relationship Educators National Conference in Melbourne hosted by CSME and the Marriage and Relationship Educators Association of Australia (MAREAA), Dr William Doherty of the University of Minnesota told the 202 participants that they need to “dispel the myths about marriage in society today, specifically identifying five common myths about marriage.
These are that “it’s foolish to get married without cohabiting; it’s best to wait to get married when you are financially secure; if a marriage gets rotten it never gets ripe again; if marriage fails, children really want the parents to find another romantic relationship as they want them to be happy; and that men aren’t interested in relationships.”
Dr Doherty, an internationally recognised expert on marriage, was one of several international and national speakers and marriage researchers at the conference.
Key-note addresses and workshops covered topics like Intentional Marriage, Sexuality, Men as Life Partners with Women, Social Change and the Paradox of Choice.
The event is a joint initiative of the CSME and the MAREAA. The theme of the conference was Festival of Learning. Prior to the beginning of the conference, 36 Catholic marriage educators gathered for a day of prayer, discussion and reflection, concluding with Mass celebrated by Bishop Elliott.
The August 28 CSME Annual General Meeting farewelled outgoing president Anne Matuszek, Michele Simons and Ray Reid, who stepped down from the executive.
The new CSME executive is: Mr Boylen (President – Catholic Marriage Education Services, Perth), Anne Matuszek (Secretary – Centacare, Tasmania), Robyn Donnelly (Treasurer – Centacare, Newcastle), Jennifer Mason (Centacare Brisbane), Ros Lloyd (newly elected – Centacare Broken Bay) and Mrs Pirola (newly elected – PMRC Australia).
CSME members are organisations, parishes and agencies within the Catholic Church that offer individual and couples marriage and relationship formation.
Fore more information see www.csme.catholic.org.au.