hello, and on behalf of the archdiocese of san francisco welcome to mosaic. here is an observation or an

anecdote, when i browse through the self-help section of the bookstore i see that the ponderings of books are not to help you with your finance or self-esteem but your marriage. second number to that seems to be books helping you with parenting. and if that is so, it is not surprising, marriage and family, the couple bowing their love and fidelity, the home which is the cradle of life and some would say the basis of social life and civilized life. do we have an institution more basic and important than marriage? do we have any task or difficult, demanding and challenging than marriage ? and do we have a deeper place of joy and love and any arena in life in which we, i, m more exposed to another person or better known to another person? i, with my

many defects and let's hope a few virtues as well. the catholic church calls marriage a sacrament, a mystery, a vocation and sacred obligation. our guest today is the director of office and marriage life in the archdiocese. stay with us as we talk with him about the catholic church teaching on what marriage is, how best to approach it, and god willing, how to succeed in it.

hello, welcome to mosaic. our guest today is ed hoffner, the director of the office of marriage and family life at the archdiocese of san francisco, a very important officer -- office and you've been in this position for six years and prior to that -- thee five years in the diocese of oakland with similar work. >> marriage and family life, a lot comes under that. you have a couple of masters degree >> a masters degree in biochemistry, i used to teach that at the high school and community college level.

>> it is very interesting to talk to you. you have a theological understanding of things. marriage is our topic and that is your profession, marriage preparation, resources and help . you explained to me that it is based on the catholic theology or anthropology or those mixed together of what marriage is. help us understand that. >> to put it in a nutshell, we start with god, and what do we know about god? god is love. not just that god is loving, but literally love, that is his nature. we also know that from christian revelation god is one but three persons at the same time. no other belief or religion understands that. i grew up with that as a catholic schoolboy , i knew that and could pass a test but didn't really mean anything to me. when i started to do this work in -- it was pointed out that if god is love he has to be more than one person. how many people do you have to have to have love, at least two. imagine god giving father to

the son, all eternity and the sun giving himself back to the father, how dynamic that would be. and when you are around people in love, you can almost feel it. imagine god being in love with god. we understand it to be the three-person in the eternity. we start with that. we have this icon, i don't know if you can see it on the screen. >> we do have a slide i hope to bring up. a famous russian icon. >> this is considered to be representation of the icon and you can see three different persons. but if you see closely come it is all the same face. that is how the artist shows, and we can do a whole lecture on this, there is position of deference to each other and that is how the artist shows the love between the three of them and it represents the holy trinity.

>> and also to whom he fed and gave the good news. here is the naked icon by itself. when you see the second shot of the trinity, it is altered somewhat. >> we have god, god who is love and a trinity of persons and we read in the beginning of the bible that god makes man in his own image. what is that mean? if we are in the image of god, what are we made for? we are made for love, that is the most fundamental thing in any person. god is human in persons but also spirit. we read again in the beginning of the bible, and so god treated man in the image of god . >> man and woman. >> male and female. in the trinity we have difference, unity and life-giving love coming out of that. in the human persons we have

difference, unity, the two can become one and life-giving love comes out of that. the union of the men and women is part of the trinity and christian marriage is intended to point is toward heaven, like a preview of coming attractions, a little taste of what heaven will be like. if you don't live it like that, it's like the other place. >> my wife has mentioned that on a few occasions. so there is the basis. it is grand and beautiful. >> it is beautiful. then we have the fall of sin, and relationships are not as always beautiful as it should be. men and women actually have difficulty with each other sometimes. jesus came to give us the church and sacraments and help us overcome these difficulties. sacrament is, a share of gas in her life. god's life is love.

>> the relationship of love. >> this grace from the sacraments gives us the ability to love others the way we caught it on our own. the supernatural ability to love. six sacraments are administered by the church and the seventh a sacrament is ministered by the couple. >> to me, that is interesting. i read up on this lately, the couple administers the sacrament to one another, they are the agents of the sacrament. not the priest, what does the priest to do? >> the priest is a witness, so there is official witness of the sacrament taking place. but the giving of oneself to the other, the consent to receive that gift and the giving of that gift between the couple is done by the couple. every act of love the couple does with each other is in a sense a sacrament. but when they come together as husband and wife, that is renewal of the wedding vows and the sacrament. most

people don't seem to realize that. >> you are seeing sexual life and marriage is the renewal of wedding vows. the complete gift of self to the other. >> yes. the greatest love in all in history is jesus. he gives himself to us freely, fully, to the end, faithfully and fruitfully. on your wedding day yuval to love your spouse as jesus loved. i come here freely, give myself fully, until death, and i'm open to new life coming out of that. >> that is wonderful. we will take a pause and dig much deeper when we come back. please rejoin us when we talk about marriage, the sacrament thereof.

welcome back. we are talking with the director of the office of marriage and family life, a ministry of the

archdiocese of san francisco. you just described a kind of grand, utterly significant, wonderfully fruitful, but let's say difficult way of life. a vocation that we want and have undertaken. we wanted so badly, we envy those whose marriages look good. you are one of the main, one of the main projects of your office is marriage preparation. what you described is something that has to kind of be taught and implicated in people train for it in a way. do you have a boot camp, or how do you tell me how to get married and what to do, what is the preparation? >> a lot of things we do is exactly that, it couples ready, and one of them is called focus, a pre-marriage inventory. the couple coming and respond to 150 statements. things like, i'm worried about my fiance's pets or my fiance

and i talked about taking money from our families. all kinds of things. they do it separately, they come to us and we go over that with them to try to prevent a lot of surprises. as many surprises ahead of time as we can. >> let me just to get this, your office offers all kinds of resources and personnel and experts but this prep happens at the local level? >> typically at the parish level, some parishes are not set up to do that so i work with couples. we also have classes on marriage, we call it marriage preparation, but we started to call it formation. because preparation and, formation is ongoing. very quickly, my dad is a physician and he would lose his license if he doesn't keep up. my mom is a nurse, she would lose her license if she didn't keep up. married couples need to do

ongoing formation , so we have preparation and ongoing formation. >> that is a new idea and it is great. i did marriage preparation, i don't know if there was formation after, we were relatively on our own. >> it is a recently new concept. it is not all that common. we have the marriage and family life annual conference, women's retreats, men's retreats and the culture project. that is a group of young missionaries, 22 to 25 and we will have a team of them, five or six of them for the school year. they make a one-year commitment and go around doing talks on human dignity, how to support it and what offends it, on social media and how to use it. they do talks on sexual integrity or chastity and they live this out. they are great role

models. young people can see them having this out, they are very professional and personal and positive in presentations. they can see these young people living out lives of virtue joyfully. which we don't always see in our culture. this is an early part of the preparation before kids are even planning to get married to somebody. they think, if i get in a relationship, how do i want that relationship to be? is it a relationship of giving or taking? >> it occurs to me that what we call the permission of the government to marry is a license. when you say, you are licensed now to mary but you have to get continuing education to be good at it and keep up with it. that sounds really good to me. do you have it for older folks, too? >> we have it for everybody. not a lot of people take advantage of it, it is not

honestly part of our catholic mentality. a lot of our protestant brothers and sisters do have those programs but a lot of catholics don't. >> in other words, finding couples in midcourse and say you need to have a restructuring that you can communicate . >> here is a better, to prove yourselves, communication. >> the psychological insight someone gave me is when you choose your spouse you are kind of choosing a person to help you repair of bad past relationship. you need to repair what you didn't have with your parent. so you see a person who can do that for you. >> father michael sweeney's has

a beautiful quote that says marriage is for healing, perfecting and exalting of the spouses. >> tha you have a marriage in front of you. i think i'm a really generous guy but in a relationship, maybe not so. >> i think it can be frightening. i am reserved, but you are exposed to that other person. you are out there being known, and that is not entirely attractive. on the one hand you can see the benefits , she knows me and cares about me. but on the other hand, it is a full-time job. >> there is a verse in 1 corinthians verse 7 : 28 and it says he who has marriage has trouble in his life. and people say, why are you telling me this. because, we are not perfect, when we have a mirror in front of us we see imperfections. marriage is a vehicle that god uses, if we allow him to, to become better

lovers and learn how to love. that is very difficult. >> we will learn more about that. we will take a brief break again and will come back with our final segment on marriage. - [narrator] at kpix, we're taking weather to the next level. - we can show not just what's happening at ground level, but we can show what's happening in the upper levels of the atmosphere. let's lift the clouds off of ground level and talk... - it really spotlights how unique the geography is here. - it's dynamic. it's different. as i lift this, you can actually see it in real-time. this is shaking it up for me as an meteorologist. - [narrator] the bay area's only virtual weather studio. next level weather. only on kpix and pix+.

(upbeat music) - this is the new pix+ with the only 8:00 and 9:00 pm news, the primetime edition: weeknights on the new pix+. 44 cable 12. (bell chiming) welcome back to mosaic. ed

is telling us about the catholic church teaching on marriage. it is interesting, very much so. there is preparation you offer to enter into this state, and understanding of it and i guess a training for it to get your license. and then there is information opportunities after. i've visited your webpage. you have endless resources. the various kinds of resources and names, can you highlight a couple of them? >> we have a number of programs, a couple of things i might mention, there are two people who write a lot about marriage, one is andrew gottman. he did a lot of research in washington. and it talk about , they can predict with about 92% accuracy if couples stay together or not by observing them for 10 minutes. after all the work they've

done in the lab. they can watch a couple for 5 to 10 minutes and he talks about this for horsemen of the marriage. criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling. saying any of these would kill a marriage. >> he studied this professionally, but if you when i see the next couple at the restaurant we may also be able to guess. >> sometimes. >> who else would you like to mention? >> gary smalley, a christian author and he has been doing this for years. that ready to wed book is a book i often give to couples. i give it to my nephew when he got married a couple of weeks ago. he does marriage preparation and ongoing formation. so both have websites, one is the gottman institute and the

other is the smalley institute. those are a couple of resources >> i think i'm correct when i say i browse the bookstore, shelves and shelves of how to help your marriage, so someone like you can point out to people, here is the way to go, here are the books to get. >> we do that with engaged couples, if you like to read, here are 15 books that can change your life and your marriage. >> there is reading and also? >> we have the marriage encounter, which is a worldwide movement, in english, spanish and chinese. it is in retreat format with ongoing optional sessions afterwards. couples generally really like it. typically , after about five years of marriage we say anytime after that, come to recharge your marriage. and also couples struggling and thinking about divorce, we have a similar format, a fantastic project program, a weekend

retreat where couples come in and they may be sitting like this when they come in and the ones who stay for the weekend, by the end of the week and they are typically leaning on each other and it is about a 75% success rate of couples staying together. even the ones that divorce typically have better working relationships, which is important if you have kids. those are two really great programs. >> there is a requirement for this preparation for couples that want to be married in the church. >> we do the focus, we encourage them to take a class in the natural family planning. understand about fertility. most people don't learn about that. and the marriage preparation classes offered around the archdiocese and there is also an online program that i really like. catholic marriage prep.com. what it does, when you sign up for it, you get paired with a couple, and they try to match you up, if you are an older couple,

they match you with an older couple. a trained couple. they will do the preparation with you one-on-one all the way through. i like it because it is personalized and also because most of our programs are one or two days. it is hard to go through a day or two and incorporate all of that in your life, where as if you do it online you will do it over time. >> that makes sense. does the engaged couple, perspective couple, do they meet with the other couple personally? >> typically is online. my friend does this come alive with your parish and also online with other parishes and his wife says it works better online. >> i'm thinking, it might well be. >> through skype, facetime. >> we are a digital culture now. always getting stuff through those screens. and as you say, this can be done over

a stretch period. if i have a today kind of intensive in the church basement i could get a false positive reading. hey, we are really prepared and know what we are doing. but if you have to carry it out and face it, which i think, if i'm not incorrect, there is a lengthy period recommended or required before. >> 6 to 9 months is recommended. >> 6 to 9 months of engagement and during that time, structural preparation. so i too have read statistics, about 80% of people who have good preparation didn't divorce. >> much better statistics. it depends of course on the preparation but anything we do is helpful. >> you want to tell us about an event in which you honor couples that have succeeded and endured their marriages. this is the wedding

anniversary mass, an annual event in the archdiocese . >> we do it every february to honor couples married for 30, 40, 50 or more years. last year we had 17 couples married 50 years, almost two dozen married over 50 years. the bishop says mass, we have a beautiful reception afterwards. one couple was married 72 years and brought about 40 people in their family. look it up, it is every february at the cathedral, one of the bishops, we would really love to invite you next year. >> here is a couple, i cannot read the nametags, they may be the 70 year? >> it is a hispanic couple, probably 40 or 50 years. it is a really nice event. >> you started with god and we will and with god, as we go to mass giving thanks to god for your marriage. in the last 25 seconds, what is your final

message in people interested in being married well? >> repair as much as you can. no one i know has ever been to prepared and use all the resources available. talk to older couples who are married and what works for them. go to our website. >> i would second that. it is a wonderful website full of all kinds of resources and programs. men's retreats, couples retreats, women's retreats, a variety of things to improve your marriage and your social understanding of what marriage is all about. thanks very much for joining us and good luck with your work at the archdiocese. and thank you very much for joining us on this episode of mosaic. thanks very much.

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from cbs news bay area, this is the morning edition. >> san francisco cracking down on residents walking -- blocking lks with cars blocked in the drivers. this is causing tension among neighbors. i think we should be more friendly.