Quote:
Originally Posted by ADqtPiMel
I despised Engaged Encounter -- we had to do it because we got married in the Catholic church. It's actually a big part of why I'm not a practicing Catholic anymore. Ours was very very heavy on the preaching -- we literally got locked away in a closet with one of the couples running the show, and they spent an hour trying to convince us that living together was going to completely ruin our relationship (and at that point, we'd already lived together about a year -- no way we were finding the money at age 23 to finance two separate apartments in DC, even if we wanted to). There was a whole afternoon session about how birth control is awful, and snide pointed comments at a few couples in the room (us included) who they knew lived together and used BC. It was humiliating and I was really angry for a long time after.
I am way in favor of premarital counseling (our sessions with my parish priest were helpful), and I'm glad EE worked for some couples, but I can't recommend it to anyone except the strictest practicing Catholics.
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Wow, I would have been very unhappy if I had been at this EE. I am a pretty liberal Catholic, and don't particularly agree with some teachings. I think, like anything else, it is the luck of the draw. The couple who presided over our weekend were grandparents, had been through a lot during their married life, and were pretty realistic and non-dogmatic. Their focus was on the couples, and supporting good communication, especially the difficult stuff. Birth control talk was for maybe 15 minutes. Pretty cut and dried-this is the Church's position and this is why. They told us that ultimately, it was up to us. The priest was a Jesuit professor at Fordham who was really interesting to listen to and talk to. I guess we just really lucked out.
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