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Praying together
Couples learn it's key to stronger marriage
Story by Joe Kohn
Of The Michigan Catholic
Published February 6, 2004
FARMINGTON HILLS –Jim Fisher was frustrated. A long drive home from work, across town in the pouring rain, had only done more to frazzle his nerves on a Friday evening in September 2002.
But as he walked in the door, his wife, Mary, reminded him that it was the night the couple would attend a prayer meeting at St. Lucy Parish in St. Clair Shores – on the other side of town.
"So we get back in the car," Mary recalls. "It's raining. It's awful. We're not sure where we're going. And he's in a bad mood because I'm making him go."
Jim – who soured at the thought of church functions – protested. Mary won.
But neither knew that the evening would change their lives. That night, the Fishers, for the first time in their eight-year marriage, would begin to learn to pray together.
The Fishers are one of more than 100 couples touched by the Couple Prayer Series, a program conducted by Deacon Bob Ovies, director of the archdiocesan Office for Family Life. Since it began in 2000, the six-week series has been conducted across the archdiocese. Demand for it has grown. And various dioceses across the country have inquired about it.
"Married couples very seldom pray together as a couple, outside of saying grace," said Deacon Ovies. "There are two reasons for not doing it. First, couples don't know how. And, second, they don't feel safe. They feel vulnerable."
The Couple Prayer Series is meant to teach couples, from the ground up, not how to pray – but how to try to pray. Every couple can find a way, Deacon Ovies says, but they have to be eased into it, and given some suggestions – such as praying with Scripture or music, meditating together and worshiping together.
"We just guide them through a menu of different ways couples can pray together," he says. "And a lot of times, couples find their own way… and it's a great discovery for them."
Since they were married in 1994, the Fishers had been through tempests in their relationships with God – separately.
Says Mary: "It wasn't as if we had each other to lean on from a spiritual side."
Says Jim: "If we talked about religion, it was when we were mad about it."
Mary prayed privately. Jim was content going to Mass each Sunday at their parish, Our Lady of Sorrows in Farmington.
The trials began when their second daughter, Jamie, was born in 1998.
The child wasn't growing.
They fed her, but she would throw up. The doctors couldn't figure out why.
At 18 months old, Jamie weighed 18 pounds. She was weak and wouldn't improve.
Mary, typically strong in her faith, grew angry that God wouldn't heal her child. She thought Jamie would die. When she wasn't attending to her 4-year-old, Kayla, she was on the living room floor, trying to feed Jamie.
Jim grew frustrated, too. A man always in control, he had no power over his daughter's health. Once, he even took a crucifix from the kitchen wall and slammed it on the floor.
Eventually, though, frustration was met by mercy. Jamie began to improve, slowly.
Mary regained her strong faith. Jim learned that God was in control when he couldn't be.
And they had a third child, Grace, who was born in 2001.
But through it all, the Fishers still didn't think of God together, didn't talk about Him, and didn't pray together. As Mary said, they again became a couple that was only married.
Their first evening of the Couple Prayer Series, Jim and Mary walked into the church hall late.
"I remember, he was so afraid," says Mary.
"Bible bangers," Jim says, completing her thought, as Mary laughs. "I'm like, 'I'm not going to become a Bible banger.'"
Mary wasn't as interested in the topic as in hearing Deacon Ovies – an old friend.
Jim, meanwhile, tried to avoid eye contact with the deacon.
That is, until he heard comforting words.
"I thought he was talking right to me," Jim says. "He said, 'This is hard for guys to do at first.'
"He brought it to my level."
Last month, the Fishers were in the hospital as Mary's dad was dying.
The room was silent. Mary's father couldn't move. He couldn't speak.
Mary's heart was heavy – but she had help.
In the hospital room, Jim and Mary prayed. Together. And so three – Mary, Jim and the Lord – watched her father slip from this life.
As they did, Mary knew their father could heard them and took comfort in their prayer.
"At that time, we had been praying together for a year and a half," says Mary, tears swelling in her eyes. "And Jim understood what I was dealing with. Some of our most special moments were praying together at my dad's bedside.
"That's what couple prayer has done for us."
The Fishers started slowly. That rainy first night, they had gone home together with envelopes containing suggestions on how to pray together.
It was clumsy. Mary voiced her prayer. Jim said "ditto."
But soon the couple grew comfortable. They looked forward to prayer time.
"I could see how God was working in our marriage," Jim said. "I was floored because I knew what Mary was praying for and what she was thinking about."
They eventually found their own way to pray – in candlelight, and with scripture.
"After a year and a half, it becomes more like a lifestyle," says Mary, who now can't even recall what marriage was like before her and Jim prayed together.
Now, the Fishers help Deacon Ovies with the prayer series. Vivid memories enter their minds when they see another couple finding their way to Christ together.
Men who are uncomfortable, like Jim was, become grateful.
And couples who are only married find out what becoming one in Christ really means.
"That's what praying together does," says Mary. "God has a new world for you as a couple."
For more information about the Couple Prayer Series, visit www.coupleprayer.com, or contact the Archdiocesan Office for Family Life at (734) 414-1111.
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Archdiocese aims to keep mobile society grounded in faith
Story by Joe Kohn
Of The Michigan Catholic
Published February 6, 2004
METRO AREA – Young adults make up most of the Church, nationally and in Detroit — and, on average, they are the least involved.
Various national studies cited by the Archdiocese of Detroit Office of Pastoral Resources show that young adults – ages 18 to 39 – make up about 47 percent of the Church. The studies also show that about 33 percent of young adult Catholics attend Mass weekly – compared to about 50 percent among Catholics 40 and older.
There are an estimated 564,000 young adult Catholics living in the Detroit area.
"Mobility, I think, is part of the answer to this," says Michael McCallion, a doctor of sociology of religion and the archdiocesan director of Pastoral Resources. "(Young adults) move away. They go to college… It's a big rift in the connection to a local parish."
Another reason, McCallion says, is that many of today's young adults don't have an inherent sense of obligation to attend Mass, as past generations have shown. Young adults place more importance on their own choice of whether to believe, and less emphasis on the truth of what they believe.
"It's a culture of choice," McCallion says, "It's not a culture of fate."
Their own thoughts
Young adults in the archdiocese have their own ideas as to why a lot of their peers fall away from the Church.
Outside a dimly lit St. Michael Church in Southfield, after a young adult holy hour that mixed silent prayer and upbeat music, Tara Lindsay, a fresh-faced 30-year-old from St. Hugo of the Hills Parish in Bloomfield Hills, talks about the years she spent away from the Church in her early 20s.
She returned, with the help of friends her same age.
"Believing isn't hard," says Lindsay, who spent four years in foreign missionary work after returning to the Church. "But it feels lonely if you don't have that faith community to be part of."
Many young adults who are involved in the Church say that the biggest challenge is letting their peers know what's going on – and assuring them that they can pray with their peers, and be comfortable doing it.
"There's a lot out there (in the Catholic Church for young adults)," says Lindsay. "But I don't think a lot of people know about it, or they think that we're a bunch of Bible-thumping holy rollers who tell you you're going to hell."
Offerings
For young adults looking for fellowship in their faith journey, the Catholic community in Detroit has an array of offerings. Some parishes have young adult groups, holy hours, retreats and even Masses geared to young adults.
And when things get too "churchy," parishes even take ministry to local bars and coffee shops with programs named Theology on Tap or Coffee and Conversation.
For many, meeting outside of church is important.
"It's time to spend with people who aren't total downers," said Matt Kammann, a 25-year-old parishioner of the National Shrine of the Little Flower in Royal Oak, while hanging out with his Catholic peers at a restaurant. "It's friendship. It's community. It's always nice to be around a group that's upbeat and positive."
Rakhi Roy, 28, who on Jan. 13 conducted a conversational talk with a roomful of young adult Catholics at The Box Bar in Plymouth, says it's a simple matter of strengthening your faith by sharing it.
"You find validation as a young adult Catholic when you're around other young adult Catholics," says Roy, a parishioner at St. John Fisher Chapel University Parish in Auburn Hills. "I really think a lot of young adults are searching for a place to belong."
Bringing it together
And the Archdiocese of Detroit is trying to make it easy for young adults to find that place to belong.
In 2002, the archdiocese drafted a plan to network young adult groups and campus ministries in and around Detroit. The plan – called the Corridor Model because of the way it divides the archdiocese – involves dissecting the Detroit-area Church into nine regions, each including a few vicariates, and then creating a ministry dedicated to young adults in each of the regions.
"This is what we attempted to do, saying that they need to get connected," says Fr. Ken Kaucheck, pastor at St. Anastasia Parish in Troy and chairman of the task force that drafted the Corridor Model. "You bring young adults and you establish these centers at parishes, and get them linked together where they meet other people their own age going to school, working, holding down three jobs, all that stuff – and saying also that their spirituality is extremely important and 'How do we feed it?'"
While Fr. Kaucheck said building the proposed network of young adult ministry centers would take several years, the plan already has spawned its first center – the aptly-named Genesis Ministries.
In the beginning…
Genesis, which is funded by the parishes of the Pontiac and Birmingham-Bloomfield-Troy vicariates, operates out of St. John Fisher. Genesis eventually will be connected to young adult groups in, and funded by, three other adjacent vicariates.
Already, it has become popular.
Genesis conducts informal talks at coffee shops in Royal Oak or Rochester every Tuesday evening, offers a monthly 5 p.m. young adult Mass at St. John Fisher the first Sunday of each month, and even organized a retreat for about 50 young adults in January.
Still, says Genesis director Tamra Hull, it has a long way to go yet.
"Part of me wants to say that Genesis is still in its genesis," Hull says. "We are gathering momentum as parishes and vicariates become aware of all that we offer, but there's a great deal of work to do yet in getting the word out to young adults and making them aware of it."
The ministry is being encouraged, too, by the archdiocesan Department for Youth, Family and Faith Support, which is overseeing the growth of the Corridor Model.
"Right now, our focus is to support Genesis," says Deacon Bob Ovies, the office's director. "Clearly the Corridor Model has been very thoughtfully and prayerfully developed. It's at its initial stages. We're really focused on supporting (Genesis) and helping it to grow in any way."
Priests fear not
Meanwhile, young adults appear to have another thing going for them in the Archdiocese of Detroit – the Gospel Truth.
Several priests in the archdiocese who commonly minister to and with young adults attest: Active young adult Catholics are serious about their faith and finding the Truth, which can only help the Catholic Church.
"My experience is that there is a tremendous hunger," says Fr. John Riccardo, director of the Cardinal Adam Maida Institute, based at St. John Center for Youth and Family in Plymouth Township. "Unless the Gospel and all its power and its force and its challenge are presented to them, then it looks almost as if we're begging them to come (to Church). They, as a generation, see quickly through the flimsiness of cheap grace or a watered down Gospel."
"They want to know how Jesus is really relevant to their life, and what difference He makes."
Fr. Kaucheck, who often works with St. Anastasia's young adult group, also only finds encouragement when he looks to the young adult Catholic population.
"I know that people are saying 'We're losing the young people in the Church,'" Fr. Kaucheck says. "I don't think we are…The rootedness of the faith, and what the Catholic Church offers in terms of the fullness of the Truth of Jesus Christ, is eventually why they're returning."
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Worship, preaching and music are what young adults say draw them back to the Church
Michael McCallion is director of the Office of Pastoral Resources for the Archdiocese of Detroit and a doctor of the sociology of religion. In January, McCallion spoke with staff reporter Joe Kohn about the young adult population in the Archdiocese of Detroit. Here are excerpts of the conversation:
Mass attendance among adults from age 18 to 39 is down, according to national surveys that you've cited – do we know the reasons why?
Mobility, I think, is part of the answer to this. They move away. They go to college. They have another interest. They may go to Mass here and there, but they know they have no ties to it per se, so perhaps the involvement is not as high, the attendance is not as high. College is a big deal here. It's a big rift in the connection to a local parish. Another factor is that episcopal authority has just declined among this generation. It really started with the baby boomers. If they go to church, and then leave, and then come back – it's because they want to. It's their choice. The culture of the '40s and '50s was that they came back out of a sense of duty, a sense of obedience, a sense of carrying on tradition. I don't think this generation has that as much… A lot of (research) has shown that there's been this shift, generationally speaking, from a more institutionally based religiosity to a more individualistic-based religiosity.
What do you mean by individualistic-based religiosity? And where did it come from?
Well, it's always been a part of the American culture… There was always this sense of going west, "manifest destiny," you made your own way. If there's one characteristic that all of us have – I don't care what religion you are, what ethnicity you are – it's individualism. It's always been there.
But (now), there is a stronger sense of self, a stronger sense of self-esteem, a stronger sense of self-actualization, a stronger sense of "I need to be fed." … There's a sense that "yeah, yeah – I'll support (the Church) community, but I've got to be getting something back." That's that individualism.
What does the growth in individualistic-based religiosity mean?
Given that more individual base, the religion that's being done in the churches – homilies, liturgies, religious education, youth ministry – these things have to be done well. Or they're just going to go somewhere else.
It's a culture of choice. It's not a culture of fate. They want to be fed.
So does religious truth not matter as much?
This generation would say, 'I'm spiritual, not religious.' Whereas before, in the '40s and '50s, they would say "I'm religious," meaning they belong to a church, an organization, an institution. And, here, "I'm spiritual" means "I don't need an institution, unless it's very attractive."
According to your numbers, older adults attend Mass more often – so young adults, at some point, must come back to the Church. What makes them come back?
The larger numbers come back when they get married, especially when they have children. There's a big return to the faith because of that.
Why is that?
They want to pass on some faith to their children. That's one of the paradoxes about America – we're one of the most religious countries in the world. We're the most individualistic, secular, sex-drenched – and, at the same time, the most religious. Who would guess? And people want to pass on some kind of religious faith or truth.
(One researcher's) study shows that the No. 1 reason why parents pick this church is because there's something for their kids. It may not be a good reason theologically…but that's why they come back.
What about for the rest of the young adult population, excluding their kids? What attracts them to the Church, or a church?
Worship comes up over and over and over again as the main reason why they're attracted or not attracted to a place. And it's two things – preaching and music.
This generation is not just going to bounce back automatically and come back to the Church. They're going to come back because they choose to, and they have to be attracted.
Might that imply that, instead of theology and reason, young adults want something they can feel or relate to?
I would say why they come back is not doctrinal. It's more situational. And I would say, yeah, emotions are a big deal. There's something they feel. They belong there. They fit. There's a connection. There's something for their kids. There's something for them. So that's a big deal.
Then, you can lead more to the doctrinal and theological. You can move them along from there.
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