By Bridget Spinks
Archdiocesan agencies Catholic Marriage Education Services (CMES) and Natural Fertility Services (NFS) have merged and relocated to new offices in the Newman Siena Centre in Doubleview.
Archbishop Barry Hickey blessed and dedicated the new Catholic Marriage and Fertility Services premises on 23 February, saying he was pleased the agency was so active in the Archdiocese.
“It is a boast of the Archdiocese and I value it because it is so relevant to now,” the Archbishop said.
In contemporary society, “we’re seeing a massive breakdown in family living” and the “spreading of a cynicism of marriage” as to whether it can last; young people are cautious about committing to marriage, the Archbishop said.
“We have a particular vision of marriage; one that fits all the criteria of Humanae Vitae. This encyclical was also about the value of Christian marriage. Those who live by that are nourished; those who reject it also show that in their lives,” he said, and acknowledged the presence of the members from the government department of Families and Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA) and said he has sympathy for the work they do but added that “we have to do the preventative work too”.
“We have a job to do: to be a light in a world of darkness,” he said.
CMES, formerly on Hay Street, has been providing pre-marriage education, marriage enrichment and counselling services since 1946.
NFS, formerly in Victoria Square, has been working in the schools providing fertility and relationship education to school students and teaching couples the modern, sympto-thermal, multi-indicator method of Natural Family Planning since it was established after the release of Humane Vitae, Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical ‘On Human Life’.
Derek Boylen, who directed both the CMES and NFS prior to the merge, will also direct the new agency, CMFS. “It’s always been the Archbishop’s wish that they would be amalgamated; since about 2006 when he decided that’s the direction he’d like to take things,” he said.
The Archdiocese has been planning the new premises for 18 months in collaboration with CMFS to design the new facilities.
The premises include consultation rooms, a kitchenette and meeting area, administration areas, the ‘Bishop’s lecture room’ which will be officially called the Clune Lecture Theatre, and other offices.
Mr Boylen said the renovations on the Newman Siena centre for the new office space are part of a bigger renovation project. Several other Catholic agencies are based in the Newman Siena Centre including Maranatha, Marriage Encounter, Celebrate Love, Billings WA, Loving for Life and Catechesis of the Good Shepherd.
He hopes the new facilities will become a hub for much marriage, family and fertility related activities in the Archdiocese.
This year, CMFS expect to provide services to up to 30 primary schools and 17 secondary schools, running programmes for more than 6,000 students in Years 5-12.
It is also anticipated that more than 1,000 couples will participate in a number of different pre-marriage programmes designed to cater to different couples’ needs.
The agency will also provide services to newly-weds in the CMFS’ Together in Harmony follow-up programme.