>> hello and on behalf of the archdiocese of san francisco, welcome to mosaic. here is information, and anecdote from a layman. when i go to the self help section, i see books offered to help you not with your eem, t are rilpwith the books are also offering to help with your parenting. marriage and family, the couple

vowing their love and fidelity, the home which is the cradle of human life and someone say, the basis of life. do we have an institution that more basic and important than marriage? do we have any task more difficult, demanding and challenging than marriage? do we have any deeper place of joy and love or any arena of life in which we, i, and more exposed to another person or better known to another person, i with my many defect with few virtues to offer as well. the catholic church calls marriage a sacrament, ct tery, a vo marriage and family life with the archdiocese of stay with us as we talk about the teaching on what marriage is, how best to approach it, and god willing, how to succeed at it.

>> hello andbef th archdiocese, welcome to mosa. life at san pfner. directorofy francisco. you have been in this position for six years.

>> i have been in archdiocese of oakland doing similar work. >> let me ask you, you have a couple of masters degrees. >> i have a masters degree in biochemistry, i used to teach that at the high school and community college level and have a masters degree in theology with the dominican school of berkeley. >> it's interesting to talk to you. you have a deep theological understanding of things. marriage is our topic and that is your profession, marriage preparation, marriage resources, marriage help. so 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. >> so to kind of put it in a nutshell, we start with god and what do we know about god? god is -- >> i'm going to guess he has left. >> and not just to god is loving, but god is lo

o d revelationthatd is onet person there is belief, religion that understands that. so i grew up with that as a catholic schoolboy and i knew that and i could pass the test and it didn't really mean anything to me. when i started doing this work i realized, it was pointed out to me that if god is love, god has to be more than one person. >> there's a relationship. >> how many people do you have to have to have love? >> at least two. >> there's the god giving love to the sun for all eternity and how dynamic that would be an assent giving himself back to the father, and when you are around people who are in love, you can almost feel it. and remember, god in love with god. lollkinggod isberee ople, love. so we and i have this icon, i don't know if you can see it on the screen. >> we have a slide which we

hope we can bring it up here. a famous russian icon. tell us what this is representing. >> this is a representation, you can see three different persons, but if you see closely, it's all the same face. we could do a whole lecture just on the thing. they are all positions of deference to each other. the hands pointed out, that's how the artist shows the love between the three of them. this represents the holy trinity. >> also visitors who he gave the good news. >> that's the trinity. >> you can see the second shot of the trinity. this icon altered somewhat. >> we have god who is love and a trinity of persons. then we read in the very beginning of the bible, god makes man, or that human person >> it has to be love.

>> that is the most fundamental thing you can say about any human person. god is a union of persons, but god is spirit. we are spirit and matter so how is god going to make a flesh and blood analog of this meeting of persons in the holy trinity? we read in the very beginning of the bible, so god created man in the image of god, he created him, >> men and women. >> male and female he created them. we have deference, we have unity, and we have love coming out of that. we have difference, we have unity, the two become one flesh and life-giving love comes out of that. this unity of men and woman is intended to be an icon of the trinity. that slide we looked at, ch it is veis ing to you li idot liveright ' li thhe

>> my fe on a few occasions. so that is your basis in theology. it is grand and beautiful. >> and then we have the fall, sin, so relationships are not always as beautiful as they should be. men and women have difficulty with each other sometimes. so jesus came to give us the church and give us the sacraments to help us overcome these difficulties. so the sacrament is, the best definition i've ever heard is sharing god's inner life. god's inner life, god is love. the relationship of love. so the grace and the sacraments give us the ability to love others that we couldn't do on our own. a supernatural ability to love others. the sacrament of marriage is administered by the couple. >> i don't know if i'm positing you, but i have read up on this lately as well. so the couple ministers the sacrament to one another, they

are the agents of the sacrament, not the priest. what does the priest do? >> the priest or deacon is a witness. they witnessed this 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, that is done by the couple. every act of love they coupled us for each other is in a sense, the sacrament. most people don't seem to realize that. >> you are saying sexual life in marriage is the renewal of the wedding vows. of complete gift of self to the other. >> the greatest love in all human history is jesus. he gives himself to us freely, fully, to the end, faithfully d and on your wedding day, you vowed to love your spouse as jesus loved. i give myself fully till death.

>> that's wonderful. we are going to take a pause now and we are going to dig deeper when we come back. please join us when we talk about marriage, the sacrament.

>> hello and welcome back. we are talking with ed hopfner, director of the office of marriage and family life, a ministry of the archdiocese of san francisco. you were talking about a grant, utterly significant, wonderfully fruitful, but let's say, difficult way of life, a vocation that we want and are taking. i think we do want it so badly. we envy those whose marriages look good. you are one of the main, one of the main projects of your office is --.

people need to be trained for, do you have boot camp, or how do you, 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 to do that, one of them is this thing called focus, it is a pre-marriage inventory. the couple would come in and they respond to 150 statements. things like, i'm worried about my fianci's pets are my fianci and i have talked about taking money from my families. all kinds of things. and they do that separately, they come to us and then we go over that with them to try to prevent a lot of surprises. we get as many surprises ahead of time as we can. >> so your office offers all kinds of resources and

personnel and experts but this happens, the couples prep happens at the local level, at their paris? >> typically. some aren't set up to do that so i work with some couples. and we also have classes on marriage. they call them marriage preparation, the church is getting away from that. we are trying to call it formation. because preparation ends. formation is ongoing. my dad is a physician. he loses his license if he doesn't keep up. my mom is a nurse, she loses her license if she doesn't keep up. so couples need to continue doing formation. >> that is a new idea and great. i did marriage preparation. i'm not sure there was formation there afterwards. we were sort of on our own. >> their diocese doing that. we have marriage and family life conference, we do women's retreats, we do men's retreats, i also brought the culture

project in. the culture project are group of young missionaries, they are 22 to 25, we will have a team of them, ix of them for the school year. and they make a one-year commitment and they go around doing talks on human dignity, how to support it, on social media how to use it in a way that's, >> because they are addressing youth. >> yes, primarily youth and some adults. they are talking about chastity. and they live this out so they are great peer role models. you can see them living out this, they are very professional, they are very personal, they are very positive in their presentations. but they can see these young people living out lives of virtue joyfully. which they don't always see and our secular culture. so this is an early part of the marriage preparation before these kids are planning to get married to somebody to start thinking about if i get into a

do iant these rela that's trng bring. >>wh call the permission, of the government to marry, is a marriage license. so when you say okay, you are licensed now to marry but you have to get continuing education to be good at it, to keep up with it. that sounds really good to me. do you have it for the older folks too? >> we have it for everybody. not a lot of people take advantage of it. it's not part of our catholic mentality. >> it might be. >> a lot of our protestant brothers and sisters do you have those programs in their churches. a lot of catholics don't. >> finding the couples in midcourse and saying you need to, have an arena structure where you can communicate truly with each other. >> to better your skills and communication, that's any number of things. >> that psychological insights he gave me is when you choose your spouse, you are choosing a

person who can help you repair a past bad relationship. you need to repair what you didn't have with your parents. so you see a person who can do that for you. >> father michael sweeney has a pitiful quote. he says marriage is for the healing, perfecting and exalting of the spouses. >> healing, perfecting, and exalting. >> perfecting because you have a mirror in front of you. i think i'm a generous guy, right? but in relationship i can see, maybe not so. and then ultimately exalting. >> it is a frightening thing, i'm a reserved person. but you are exposed to that other person. and that person has to, you are out there being known. that's not entirely attractive. on one hand you can see the benefits of it, she knows me and

cares about me, but boy, this is a full-time job. >> there is a verse in first corint i thit's 4:28, or 7:28. st. paul says he who marries will have trouble in this life. i always tell couples and they look at me and say why are you telling me this? because i get these phone calls, we got trouble. and i say marriage, trouble, sounds about right. because we aren't perfect and we had this mirror in front of us, we see our imperfections and marriages of vehicle god uses if we allow him to, to become better lovers. to learn how to love, which is very difficult. >> that is good. re gointo l going totabrieea wel me ba in the final segment with our pfneon marriag

>> hello and welcome back to mosaic. ed hopfner is talking about the catholic churches teaching on marriage. it is interesting. so there's preparation that you offer to enter into the state and an understanding of it and training for it and then there's formation opportunities

after. i visited your webpage. you have and less resources. the various kinds of resources, the various namesof these resources, can you highlight a couple of them? >> we have a couple of programs. a couple things we might mention. there are two people who write a lot about marriage. one is john gottman. he did a lot of research at the university of washington which is where i'm from, seattle. he said they can predict with 92 percent accuracy which couples will stay together or not, observing for 10 minutes. >> people who come into the lab? >> they can just watch a couple for 5 to 10 minutes and say, this is -- he talks about the four horsemen of marriage. criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. he says any of those will kill a marriage. >> he studied these professionally but we might

also be able to guess just from the way -- sometimes we can do that. >> the other guy, he's named gary smalley. that book is a book i often give to couples. i gave it to my nephew who got married two weeks ago. he has been doing christian marriage ministry for years. he does preparation and ongoing formation. both john gottman and gary smalley have websites. it's worth looking into. those are a couple resources. >> it's important because i think i'm correct when i browse the bookstore, shelves and shelves on how to help you marriage. you could point out to people, here's the way to go in here the books to get. and you do that for people. >> with the engage people when they come in, they like to read, here's 15 bucks, this could change your life or your

marriage. >> there's reading, there's also, >> we have the marriage encounter with his a world wife movement. it's a retreat format, the couple come in for retreat and there's optional sessions. couples generally really like it and find it, typically we say after five years of marriage, anytime after that to your marriage. we have couple letters struggling with their marriage. they have a similar form. it's a fantastic program. it's also a weekend retreat where the couples come in. they might be sitting like this when they come in and the ones that stay for the weekend, typically by the end of the weekend, they are leaning on each other and they have a 75 percent success rate of couple stayed together if they go to the program. and even those who divorce typically has better working relationships, especially if they have kids.

>> there's a requirement to do this preparation for couples who want to be married in the church. >> we do the focus, we encourage them to take a class in it natural family planning and understand their fertility. most people don't learn about that, even nurses i'm finding. we have the marriage reparation classes offered. there's also an online program that i really like. catholic marriage prep.com. and what it does is when you sign up for, you get with a couple and they try to match you up so if you're an older couple, they try to match you up with an older couple. you have a trained couple. >> you are matched with a married -- throh. li itause it's personalized and also because most of our programs are one or two days go through a day or two and really incorporate all of that into

your life. where is if you do online, does the engaged couple, did they meet with the married couple personally? >> typically it's online. my friend does with his wife. they do the program live in their parish. they also do it online for other couples and other parishes. he says it works better online. >> it might well be, do they do skype or -- >> sky. because we are a digital culture. this can be done over a stretch. if i have a two day intensive in the church basement, i could get a false positive rating. we really prepare, we are know it what we doing. check the box. but if you have to carry it out and face it, ink if i'm not ect, a al preti some

kind. so i have read sort of statistics. 80 percent of people that have good preparation, they didn't divorce. >> much better statistics. it depends on the preparation, but any prep is going to be helpful. >> you're going to tell is about an event where you honor couples that have succeeded and endured in their marriage. you can tell us about this. this is the wedding anniversaries mass, an annual event in the archdiocese. >> we do this every february to honor couples who have been married 30, 40, 50 or more years. we had 17 couples that have been married 50 years and almost 2 dozen that were married over 50 years. we had a beautiful reception afterwards, one couple was

married 72 years. we had 40 people in our families. look it up. really we would love to invite you to attend next year. >> anyone is welcome. they may be the 70 year? >> it was a hispanic couple but they're probably only 40 or 50 years. you started with god and we are going to end with god and d thmaiving thanks to god for your marriage. in 25 seconds, what is your message to people interested in being married well? >> prepares much of the camp. knowing that has been too prepared for marriage. talk to other couples who have been married and ask them. >> i will second that. ed's website is wonderful, full

of all kinds of resources and programs. there iss retrts, corea variety to im ure animove your marriage is all about. so thank you 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 the mosaic. have a good day.

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