da learn how abbvie could help you save. (upbeat music) hello , and on behalf of the archdiocese of san francisco, welcome to "mosaic." an anecdote from a layman, when i browse through the self-help section of any bookstore, i see the preponderance of books offered to help you not with your startup is, finances, or even sesteenumber to that is to be the books offering to help you with your parenting. if that is so, it is

not surprising. marriage and family, the couple bowing their love and fidelity, the c human life, and some would say, the basis of social life and even civilized life , do we have an institution more basic and more important than marriage? do we have any task more difficult, demanding, and challenging then marriage ? and do we have any deeper place of joy and love, or any arena in life in which we, i , and more exposed to another person, or better known to another person? i, with my mini effects, and let's hope with if you purchase to offer as well. the catholic church calls marriage a cyclic sacred obligation. i guess today is the direct their of marriage and family life of the archdiocese. stay with us as we talk with him about the catholic church's teaching on what marriage is,

how best to approach it, and god willing, how to succeed in it. that was truly a day that altered our times.

hello, and we have the archdiocese. welcome to "mosaic." i guess today is ed hoeppner. ed is the director of the office of marriage and

family life at the archdiocese of san francisco, a very important office. you have been with the archdiocese of san francisco indisposition for 6 years now. prior to that? years in oakland in very similar work. >> marriage, family life, a lot comes under that. 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 in seattle. and i have a masters at dominican university. >> it is very interesting to talk to you. you have a deep, sort of theological understanding of things. i mentioned, marriage is our topic. that is your profession. marriage therapy . 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 kind of put it in a nutshell, we start with god. what we know about god? god is-- >> i'm going to guess he is

love . >> god is love. that is god's inner nature. we also know from christian revelation that god is one, but god is three persons at the same time. there is no other belief, religion that understands that. i grew up with that as a catholic schoolboy and i could pass the test and it did not 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 is a relationship. >> how many people do you have to have love? >> at least two . >> imagine god giving himself to all of eternity, how dynamic that would be, the sun giving himself back to the father, how dynamic that would be, and when you are around people with love, how that must feel. we actually understand it to be the third person of the holy trinity. god has to be three people, logically's people logically speaking. we have this icon, i

don't know if you can see on the screen . >> we have one slide, which i hope we can bring here, a famous russian icon . tell us what this is representing. >> ridley, this is considered the representation of the icon relay of. you can see three different persons, but if you look closely, you could see all different phases. we can do a whole lecture just on the thing, but there are positions of deference to each other, the hazor pointed out, feet pointing-- that is the way the artist shows the love between the three of them. these represent the holy trinity. >> also the visitors who he fed and gave him the good news. so, here is the naked icon by itself. we can see our second shot of the trinity, this icon altered some way. >> we have god who is loved , and a trinity of persons. we read in the very beginning of the bible, god makes man, or

the human person in his image . if we are in the image of god, what are we made for? >> it has to be love. >> the most fundamental thing you can say about any human person. god is not a person, but god is a spirit. we are spirit and matter . how is god going to make an analog of this and the holy trinity? we read again at the very beginning of the bible, god created man, in the image he created them-- tri community, life giving love that comes out of that. the human person , we have difference, unity, the two can become one flesh and life having love comes out of that. this union of man and woman is intended to be an icon of the trinity . that slide we just looked at, christian marriage is pointing us towards heaven. it is like a preview of coming attractions . it is a little taste of what heaven will be like if you live it right. if

you don't live it right, it is like the other place. >> [ laughter ] my wife has mentioned that on a few occasions . okay, that is your basis in theology. it is grand and beautiful. >> and then we have the fall. relationships are not always as simple as they should be . men and women actually have difficulty with each other sometimes. you may have experienced that, i have. jesus came to give us a church and give us a sacrament to help definition i have ever heard, the share of god's inner life. god's life is, god is -- >> he is love. a relationship of love . >> this grace and sacrament gives us the ability to love others in the way we cannot love on our own, a supernatural ability to love. we have six sacraments administered by the church and the seventh sacrament, marriage , is actually administered by the couple. >> that is interesting. i have read up on this lately as well.

the couple ministers be sacrament to one another, they are the agents of the sacrament, not a priest. what does a priest do? >> the priest or deacon is a witness, official witness of the sacrament taking place, but administer of the sacrament, the giving of oneself to the other, consent to receive that gift and giving of that gift between the couple is done by the couple. every act of love the couple does for each other is in a sense a sacrament. most particularly, when they come together as husband and wife, that is a renewal of their wedding vows, a renewal of the sacrament. most people don't realize that. renewal of wea lete olfto ea fully, to the end faithfully, and fruitfully. in your wedding day , you vow to love your spouse as jesus loved. i come here freely. i give myself

fully, till death and i am open to new life coming out of that. >> that is wonderful. we will take a pause now and talk about that more and did much deeper when we come back. please rejoin us when we talk more about marriage, the sacrament there of.

hello, and welcome back . we are talking with ed hoeppner, director of the office of marriage and family life of archdiocese of san francisco. you just described the kind of grand, utterly significant, wonderfully , fruitful, but let's say difficult way of life , a vocation that we want to undertake and i think we do want it so badly, we envy those whose marriages look good . you are one of the main projects

of your office is marriage preparation. what you describe is something that has to be kind of thought, implicated, and people train for in a way. do you have a boot camp? [ laughter ] how do you tell me how to get married and what to do? what is the preparation? >> a lot of what we do is exactly that, to get the couples ready, the requirement they need to do. one of them is this thing called focus, a pre-marriage inventory. the couple will come in and respond to 150 statements , things like, i am worried about my fiance's past , or my fiance and i have talked about taking money from our families, all kinds of things. they do that separately, 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 get the administrative things. your office offers all kinds of resources and personnel

expert, but this happens, the couples prep happens at the local level? >> typically at the parish level. some parishes aren't set up to do that, so i worked with some of the couples. we also have classes on marriage. we called the marriage preparation. the church is actually getting away from that. we call it formation. formation is ongoing . just very quickly , my dad is a physician . he loses his license if he does not keep up. my mom is a nurse, she loses her license if she doesn't keep up. so, married couples also need to do ongoing formation . we have been trying to offer that in the archdiocese more and more. we have preparation, but also ongoing formation. tech that is new and great. to me, i did marriage preparation. i am not sure there was formation there after. we were sort of on our own . >> a relatively new concept for the church. they are dioceses doing it, but not something that is common . we have

marriage and family life annual conference, women's retreats, men's retreats, i even brought the culture project in. the culture project is a group of young missionaries, all 22 to 25, somewhere in that age. we will have a team of them, five or six of them, for basically the school year. they make a one-year commitment and go around , doing talks on human dignity, how to support it, what offends it, or social media, how to use it . >> because they are addressing youth. >> yes, primarily youth. they do talks on sexuality and chastity. they live this out. they are great peer role models . young people can see them living . they are very professional, very personal, positive in their presentation , but they can see these young people living out lives of virtue joyfully , which they don't always see in our secular culture. this is kind of an

early part of the marriage preparation before the kids are even planning to get married to someone, start thinking about, gee, if i get in a relationship with somebody , how do i want that relationship to be? is it a relationship of giving or taking? >> that sounds good. it occurs to me , what we call the permission of the government to marry is a marriage license. when you say, okay, your license 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 all people take advantage of it . it is honestly not a part of our catholic mentality. a lot of our protestant brothers and sisters do have those programs in their churches, a lot of catholics don't . >> in other words, finding couples midcourse saying , you need to have an arena structure in which you can communicate truly with each other? to better improve your communication, any number of things.

>> the need psychological insight someone gave me about marriage , when you choose your spouse, your kind of choosing a person who can help you repair a past bad relationship. same with this rohingyas insight, you need to repair what you did not have with your parents. so, you see a person who can do that for you. >> father michael sweeney has a beautiful quote, he says, marriage is for the healing, protecting, and exalting of the spouses. isn't that a great quote? >> that is very good. healing, perfecting, and exalting. >> healing, as you said, all the things we did not get, perfecting, because you have a mirror in front of you. i think i am a generous guy, but in a relationship, maybe not so . >> i will say, in my experience , it is a frightening thing. i am a reserved person. you are exposed to that other person and that person -- you are out there being known . that is not entirely attractive . on the

one hand, you can see the benefits of it, she knows me and cares about me. on the other, this is a full-time job. >> there is a verse in first corinthians, first corinthians 4:28 , no, first corinthians 7:28. st. paul says, he who marries will have trouble in this life . and couples look at me and go, why are you me this? get e one callther sometng wrong . ouitis right. because we are not perfect and when we have this mirror in front of us, we see our imperfections . marriage is a vehicle god uses, if we allow him to, to become better lovers, to learn how to love, which is very difficult. >> that is good. we are going to learn more about that. we will take a brief break again and come back with the final segment with our guest, ed hoeppner, on marriage and love.

hello and welcome back to "mosaic." ed hoeppner is telling us about the catholic church's anqing on marriage, it is , very interesting, very much so . there is preparation you offer to enter into this state an understanding of these and a training to get your license to varied. then, formation after it. i have visited your webpage, you have endless resources, the very kinds of

resources, the very names of these resources, can you highlight a couple of them? >> we have a couple of grams . a couple of things i might mention, two things that write about marriage, one is manning gottman. >> i think i have a book. >> he did a lot of research at the university of washington, where i am from in seattle. he talks about, they said , they can predict with 92% accuracy which couples will stay together or not, observing for >> after all the work they have done in their lab, after five or 10 minutes. he talks about the four horsemen of marriage, criticism , contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling . he says, any of those will kill a marriage and talks about how to overcome them. >> gutman started this professionally, but you and i have seen, we may also be able

to guess just from the way-- sometimes we do that. was the other person wanted to mention? >> gary smalley, a christian author. he has been doing this stuff for years and years. the ready to wed book is a book i often give couples, i gave it to my nephew when he got married two weeks ago. he has been doing christian marriage for years. he also does ongoing formation. both john gottman and gary smalley have websites, one is the gottman in the two, one of the smalley institute. ose sours. it mpink i am ecsa i browsed the bookstore, shelves and shelves of how to help your marriage. someone like you can oint out, here is the y et. a t of times coming $15 ur lif it is worth doing. we do that. we involve marriage encounter, a worldwide movement .

archdiocese culture we have in english , spanish, and chinese. it is a retreat format , the couple will come in for a retreat and there are optional sessions. couples generally really like it . typically, we say after about five years of marriage, anytime, come in after that and recharge . also, for couples struggling with your marriage, maybe thinking about divorce, we have a similar form called retro vibe. retro vibe is a fantastic program, also a weekend retreat where the couples come in and they might be sitting like this when they come in . the ones that stay for the weekend, typically by the end of the weekend they are leaning on each other and have about a 75% success rate of couples being together if they go through the whole program. even the ones that divorce typically have better working relationships, and fourth and if you have kids. those are two really great programs. >> so, there is a requirement

to do this program for couples that want to be married in a church? >> we do the focus, encourage them to take a class in natural family planning, understand about fertility. most evil don't learn about that , even nurses i am finding , it is amazing. we have the marriage preparation classes offered around the archdiocese . there is also an online program, which i really like, catholicmarriageprep.com . what it does, when you sign up for it , you will get paired with a couple. they try to match you up . if you are an older couple, you will try to match with an older couple, excuse me, with a trained couple. they will do the preparation with you one on one all the way through. i like it, because it is personalized, but also because most of our programs are one or two days and it is hard to go through a day or two and really incorporate all of that in your life, whereas, you do online you will do overtime. >> that makes a lot of. does

the engaged couple 's perspective , the couple meet with the married couple personally ? >> typically all online. my friend does this with his wife. they do the program live in their parish and also online for other couples in other parishes. his wife says, it works better on mine. >> it might very well be. do they do skype? that is, because we are a digital culture . we are always getting stuff through the screens. as you say, this can be done over a stretch, a period. if i have a two day kind of intensive in the church basement or something, i can get a false reading, we have really prepared. we know what we are doing. check the box. if you have to carry it out and face it , which i think if i am not incorrect , there is a lengthy period of recommended or required by the catholic church. >> six to nine months is recommended. >> six to nine months of

engagement, during that time a structural preparation of that time. i have statistics here and there. i can't quote them , 80% of people that have good preparation did not divorce . >> much better statistics . he depends on preparation, of course . anything you do will be helpful. >> we have a couple of minutes left. he wanted to tell us about an event , in which you honored couples that have succeeded and endured in their marriage. we can run a few slides . this is the wedding anniversary's mass and annual event in the archdiocese >> we do this every february to other couples that have been married 40, 50 or more years. last year, we had 17 couples married 50 years attend. we had almost two dozen married over 50 years. >> the bishop says mass? >> yes, we have a beautiful reception afterwards. one couple was married 72 years and brought about 40 people in

their family . it was beautiful. look it up, every february, usually archbishop or leone , and really we would love to invite you to attend next year . >> everyone is welcome. here is a couple, i can't read their nametags -- >> it was a hispanic couple , probably only about 40 or 50 years. >> it is a really nice event. >> i think you started with god , and we will end with god as you are going to mass, giving thanks to god for your marriage. in the last, i don't know, 25 seconds, what is your message to people interested in marrying well ? >> prepare as much as you can. no one i know is ever repaired. use resources as much as you can. talk to older couples about what works for them. go to our website. >> yes, i will second that . ed's website the sf archdiocese website is wonderful, will of all kinds

of resources and programs. there is men's retreats, couples retreats, women's retreats, all kinds of varieties of things to improve your marriage and improve social understanding of what your marriage is all about. thanks very much for joining us and good luck with your work at the archdiocese. thank you very much for joining us on this episode of "mosaic." thanks very much. one grocery store will stop at nothing to make sure you save more on the brands you love. starring produce, and...... you... as the super saver, in....bargain bliss bliss, bliss, bliss todd we talked about this. our deals are just so epic. i know, todd.

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this is the morning edition. storm making community shaken after a violent rampage claimed th lives. this morning, the question persists, why. >> i wanted to know what he was thinking. >> >> [ music ] mock funerals are held on both sides of the bait in an effort to pressure the state to provide more money for public transportation. we are out across the bay area, for the first weekend of pride month. good morning, it's sunday, june 4th. t'