DAY RETREAT
We highly encourage you and your Sponsor Couple to do a day retreat together. A retreat like this can definitely strengthen your relationship as a couple and help you thrive in your spiritual lives. FBYC offers several day retreats for Marriage Prep throughout the year.
Extra cost for day retreat
$ 190 for Couple
Dates
February 15, 2020
or
May 2, 2020
Fall 2020 dates TBA
Printable day retreat flyer
NATURAL FAMILY PLANNING
We also encourage you to do a Natural Family Planning (NFP) course. You‘ll be equipped with the resources to practice family planning based on a woman‘s menstrual cycle without using artificial contraception.
We recommend "SYMPTOPRO" for your NFP Course. Right now they only offer an online training. Check their website for upcoming dates if you are interested in taking an in-person course.
To take their online course see details to the right...
The Father Bernard Youth & Retreat Center offers marriage preparation within the New Catechumenal Framework for Marriage Prep of the Archdiocese of Portland.
This program is made of two building blocks: Prepare/Enrich and Witness to Love.
Marriage Preparation can be started anytime throughout the year. It is recommended that you give yourself six to nine months before your planned wedding date for the course to ensure you have adequate time to complete the process.
Prepare/Enrich is the #1 premarital assessment in the US. With a solid research foundation and wide applicability the reliability of the assessment and the feedback guided by the Marriage Prep Coordinators will help you strengthen and enrich your relationship.
Witness to Love is a virtues-based, Catechumenate model of marriage renewal and preparation that integrates modern principles of psychology and the virtues to help you facilitate an authentic dialogue about your relationship.
What makes Witness to Love unique is that you choose your own sponsor couple. This is a couple you both admire and see as a source of faith formation. This sponsor couple gives you a concrete connection and integration into the parish. Through the sharing of the sponsor couples’ own marriage journey, you inherit a “lifeline” of support in your commitment to Jesus and His Church.
For questions and more information please contact
Tabea & Dominik Heen
marriageprep@fbyc.info