Disappointing Engaged Encounter Retreat

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My fiancé and I just completed our engaged encounter retreat this weekend. It was a disappointing experience. The first disappointment I really can not complain about. For those of you that have not been through one, the format is a couple talks to you a little bit about their experience in a given area, then each person goes and writes answers to a bunch of questions, then they share their answers with each other. My fiancé and I have read a lot of books together and talked about all kinds of things. We have very open communication and had covered almost everything in the questions already. We did not learn much about each other.

Here is the really disappointing part. We felt like they could have taken the word “Catholic” out of the name “Catholic Engaged Encounter”. We did have a mass and we did pray before meals and it was at a Catholic retreat center, but relativism was alive and well. 😦 I think there was only one, maybe two other couples that were not already living together. They talked only a couple minutes about NFP and said that it was “the only method of birth control that is ‘recommended’ by the Church”. They said nothing about ABC not being allowed. Then they made a statement about if you are currently having sex they would encourage you to stop and abstain until your wedding. This statement was prefaced by they were not trying to be preachy or making this statement for moral reasons. Nothing was said about this being a sin or against the rules or anything like that. Their reasoning is that it would keep you from thinking clearly in terms of discernment, that basically if you were having premarital sex, you would not get to know each other as good as a person. I suppose this is true, but it is not the primary reason. It seemed like they just did not want to offend anyone or rock the boat. There were several other examples of this where there were teachable moments that were lost. My fiancé and I thought this was very sad.

It seems like this is the direction the church is headed more and more.
 
My fiance and I went to ours back in April, my brother and his fiance went a few weeks before we did. We all joke that it was “Relationship 101” and if you hadn’t talked about most of those topics before now you really shouldn’t be getting married.

I decided to think of it like this. If you go to a lawyer, the lawyers job is to make sure you realize all your courses of actions before you decide on one. But the only way the lawyer can make sure you know all the options is to go through each one with you. Likewise the Church can’t know you have had all these discussions already so they make sure that they bring each topic up for you. Most of the couples it is going to be a waste of time but for a few it’ll be extremely valuable.

My fiance and I discussed with our priest our unhappiness there didn’t seem to be a lot of the Catholic teaching going on. He told us that it was more of a discuss and skills building weekend. The teaching and religious aspect come more from your meetings with the priest.

I highly doubt anyone that attends any retreat weekend for marriage is not aware premarital sex and birth control is a no-no. The couples directing the weekend probably were a little light on these topics because it is best handled one on one with a priest. Can you imagine how quickly the discussion will heat up and get out of control? I’m not sure the presenting couples would have been able to handle it well- at least at my weekend.
 
Oh just FYI, since you seemed a bet upset about the couples living together. If a couple is living together there are some more steps/discussions/requirements they have to take/have/meet before the Church will marry them. So just because it didn’t come up in the weekend doesn’t mean it won’t be addressed.
 
Kat127 said:
Oh just FYI, since you seemed a bet upset about the couples living together. If a couple is living together there are some more steps/discussions/requirements they have to take/have/meet before the Church will marry them. So just because it didn’t come up in the weekend doesn’t mean it won’t be addressed.
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I wasn’t upset that they were living together. It was more of an observation as to the environment. As far as I am concerned, that is their business. I think it is sad that they are doing that, but it is not my place to judge. It is not like I have always done everything exactly the way I should (I have not lived with anyone but was pointing out that I am far from perfect).
Kat127 said:
My fiance and I went to ours back in April, my brother and his fiance went a few weeks before we did. We all joke that it was “Relationship 101” and if you hadn’t talked about most of those topics before now you really shouldn’t be getting married.

I decided to think of it like this. If you go to a lawyer, the lawyers job is to make sure you realize all your courses of actions before you decide on one. But the only way the lawyer can make sure you know all the options is to go through each one with you. Likewise the Church can’t know you have had all these discussions already so they make sure that they bring each topic up for you. Most of the couples it is going to be a waste of time but for a few it’ll be extremely valuable.

My fiance and I discussed with our priest our unhappiness there didn’t seem to be a lot of the Catholic teaching going on. He told us that it was more of a discuss and skills building weekend. The teaching and religious aspect come more from your meetings with the priest.

I highly doubt anyone that attends any retreat weekend for marriage is not aware premarital sex and birth control is a no-no. The couples directing the weekend probably were a little light on these topics because it is best handled one on one with a priest. Can you imagine how quickly the discussion will heat up and get out of control? I’m not sure the presenting couples would have been able to handle it well- at least at my weekend.
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Oh I totally agree with you about the “relationship 101” part. I could see some couples might not have covered everything before but they should have hit most of it.

On your second point, there are plenty of people that do not know about the church’s teaching on birth control. I have even seen people on here saying how they just learned about it after being married for x number of years. The church I think is failing to teach morality. Even if they had not talked about it in detail, but said that NFP was the only method “allowed” rather than “recommended” it would be a totally different story. Everyone is so PC these days.
 
This is why I stayed well clear of that kind of thing, they are geared to non-practising Catholics and are always ran with an emphasis on avoiding offending anyone with the mention of uncomfortable Truths. A group setting is not a very good way to carry out instruction on what is a very personal area for people either.

For my prep I read Three to get married by The Most Reverend Fulton J Sheen and several other books, that approach would also be more fruitful for you I believe.

The Church actually recommends no birth control at all, NFP only been allowed for serious reasons, there is a huge difference between something been allowed in certain situations and somethign been recommended. So the instructor completely failed that one.
 
TeachAg said:
They talked only a couple minutes about NFP and said that it was “the only method of birth control that is ‘recommended’ by the Church”. They said nothing about ABC not being allowed.
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When my husband and I went 24 years ago, we were told that birth control is a matter of “conscience”…so what you describe is actually a step in the right direction! Still sad though…

Have you thought about writing to the presenting couples and expressing your disappointment? Not that they will listen, but perhaps if they knew that there ARE people attending these weekends who are trying to faithfully live the Church’s teachings, they may take a different approach to their presentations. Their credibility is shot if they aren’t speaking the truth. Of course, your letter should be written in charity. It might change some hearts.

Kathy
 
Milesius said:
This is why I stayed well clear of that kind of thing, they are geared to non-practising Catholics and are always ran with an emphasis on avoiding offending anyone with the mention of uncomfortable Truths. A group setting is not a very good way to carry out instruction on what is a very personal area for people either.

For my prep I read Three to get married by The Most Reverend Fulton J Sheen and several other books, that approach would also be more fruitful for you I believe.

The Church actually recommends no birth control at all, NFP only been allowed for serious reasons, there is a huge difference between something been allowed in certain situations and somethign been recommended. So the instructor completely failed that one.
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We were not given the option of staying clear. We were told we had to participate in one. That is actually the next book on our reading list. We have read some on TOB and Love and Responsibility as well as several other.

You are correct but they were not even saying that NFP is the only method of regulating, spacing, or whatever you want to call it, children that is allowed for any reason what so ever. I wasn’t even getting into when NFP should/can be used… I was more commenting on the fact that they did not say that ABC can not be used.
KathyA said:
When my husband and I went 24 years ago, we were told that birth control is a matter of “conscience”…so what you describe is actually a step in the right direction! Still sad though…

Have you thought about writing to the presenting couples and expressing your disappointment? Not that they will listen, but perhaps if they knew that there ARE people attending these weekends who are trying to faithfully live the Church’s teachings, they may take a different approach to their presentations. Their credibility is shot if they aren’t speaking the truth. Of course, your letter should be written in charity. It might change some hearts.

Kathy
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They gave us review sheets at the end. My fiancé and I were the only ones that spent any time writing on them and we both wrote about it. I do have the presenting couples’ contact information so maybe I should send them some more detailed thoughts. I will have to think about it.
 
I guess it depends on your diocese, as we went to ours a couple months ago and I thought it was helpful for those who don’t talk as much as my fiance and I do. But having been together for almost 6 years we had talked about everything already.

Ours had a great segment on NFP. I think it really depends on the couples who are leading the talk. Ours were very enthusiastic about NFP and even talked about how they had been on ABC and realized their fault.

Of course you could tell who there weren’t practicing Catholics, like the one girl at our table who sat the whole time during the NFP talk shaking her head and grimacing at the speakers.

But really, I wouldn’t say that it’s the way the Church is going, of course I think they could do better, but really, you have to remember that not all going to the talks are practicing, and so they have to talk about things that are easy to understand and not turn them away from the Church.
 
It is very sad, indeed. When my husband and I went to our Engaged Encounter, we experienced similar things and a few things that made it a bit worse. My husband was disillusioned while I was just plain mad, although we still tried our best to focus on getting something out of the time and to focus on preparing ourselves more for the sacrament of marriage, which we did. When we got back home, at the next meeting with the Deacon we voiced our concerns to him, and he seemed really surprised to hear about our experience. All that matters in the end is that you’re prepared for marriage and understand what all is involved before you take the plunge!
 
This was similar to our experience 10+ yrs ago. Only add to it sleeping on uncomfortable cots in a hallway and freezing temps. We really did not enjoy it and joked that if we didn’t get along in our marriage we’d have to go to a Marriage Encounter Weekend, and that should be incentive enough to be good spouses.

And it also gave us reason to volunteer in our church as marriage prep facilitators, and we hope that by doing so we are giving other couples a more positive experience.

I will say that in regard to the living together, most couples preparing for marriage in the church are living together. I guess the hope is that they will grow in their faith and come to see that it wasn’t the right decision.

And in regard to NFP, even among practicing Catholics, it can be hard to find many who are adhearing to church teaching on this. I find it discouraging-- and also discouraging that we didn’t really feel informed about NFP at engaged encounter even though the facilitating couple decided to share this information with a few of the couples there. Why would they keep the information from the others?
 
I remember very little about our weekend 16 years ago other than the fact it was diocesan event, held at a Holiday Inn and the couple that led it were a Deacon and his wife and they were ‘old’. In our parish today, engaged couples are turned over to a married couple that has materials and has been prepared lead the younger couple. They have a number of meetings/sessions/dinners instead of a weekend. I am sure the personal touch is much more effective than being cooped up with a big group.
 
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