Who Should Consider WWME
A Worldwide Marriage Encounter Weekend is for any married couple who desires a richer fuller life together…
A marriage can never be too good. Worldwide Marriage Encounter is designed to deepen and enrich the joys a couple shares together, whether they have been married for only a short time, or many years. WWME also provides support and encouragement to priests and religious who are dedicated to their vocation in life.
WWME is faithful to the Catholic Church’s teaching that marriage is a covenant that exists between one man and one woman. Any reference to marriage or couple made by WWME is in this context.
While the weekend is Catholic in orientation and is expressed in the tradition and understanding of the Catholic Church, it is open to all and so a certain number of spaces are reserved each weekend for couples of other faiths.
Please Note: Worldwide Marriage Encounter is for married couples that have been married for at least one year. If you are looking for a Marriage Prep (PRE WEDDING) weekend, please contact your parish or diocesan Marriage and Family Life office for available programs, in your area.
What is Worldwide Marriage Encounter?
Worldwide Marriage Encounter is the largest pro-marriage movement in the world and promotes a weekend experience for couples who want to make their good marriage even better.
Marriage Encounter is designed to give married couples the opportunity to examine their lives together . . . a time to share their feelings, their hopes, disappointments, joys and frustrations . . . and to do so openly and honestly in a face-to-face, heart-to-heart encounter with the one person they have chosen to live with for the rest of their life. The emphasis of Marriage Encounter is on communication between husband and wife, who spend a weekend together away from the distractions and the tensions of everyday life, to concentrate on each other. It’s not a retreat or marriage clinic, or group sensitivity. It’s a unique approach aimed at revitalizing marriage. This is a time for you and your spouse to be alone together, to rediscover each other and together focus on your relationship for an entire weekend. Every marriage deserves that kind of attention!
Why is it called WWME?
Our name defines who we are (worldwide) and what we do (encounter another). “Worldwide” means open to all, but it also reflects our unity. Throughout the world, wherever Worldwide Marriage Encounter is present, there is conformity to the same concepts and values. “Marriage” refers to the spousal relationship between a married man and woman. In the wider sense, it also refers to the spousal relationship of priests and religious with the people of God. “Encounter” means “to meet” and it reflects the exposure of married couples and priests to the full meaning of their sacrament as they meet each other and Christ within their sacramental relationships.
Worldwide Marriage Encounter (WWME) has this name because couples are “encountered” through weekends in over 2100 weekends per year. With over 31,000 couples and 650 priests completing these weekends, we are truly the largest pro marriage movement in the world.
What does WWME mean by “marriage” and “couple”?
WWME is faithful to the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching that marriage is a covenant that exists between one man and one woman. Any reference to marriage or couple made by WWME is in this context.
Marriage and Family
The Worldwide Marriage Encounter Weekend is an incredible tool to strengthen your marriage and family and stay connected to your faith, surrounded by others who support this lifestyle.
Cardinal Anotonelli, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family, while discussing the importance of the sacrament of marriage, said that the world is trying to divide the family. “Children should have the right to have parents that are married and united”. This is a deep interest for not only the children, but for society. This is a strength of what WWME offers couples, the Cardinal said. WWME emphasizes that in marriage the love of a man and woman is not just physical, but also a spiritual union. According to Blessed John Paul II, the image of God is best reflected in the love of a man and a woman.
WWME gives couples tools to grow in love and become one in their sacrament when the world gives them challenges such as illness, loss of job, infertility. Their unity and faith help them to become the strongest they can be to bear witness of Christ’s love in marriage. Statistics show that while almost 50% of today’s marriages end in divorce, only 2% of couples who have experienced a Marriage Encounter weekend fall to divorce.
WWME In Other Faith Expressions
Although Worldwide Marriage Encounter began as a Roman Catholic experience, it has always provided openings for couples of other faiths. Our Catholic weekends show couples the good news of our Sacramental perspective of marriage. Many of these couples have seen the potential the Weekend offers for church renewal for their own denominations.
In 1971, interfaith expansion of the weekend began. Worldwide Marriage Encounter provided the initial financial support and guidance needed for these other faith expressions to flourish and continue today. These other faith expressions, along with the Roman Catholic expression, make up an Interfaith Board, which meets twice a year. These other faith expressions are: Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Brethren/Mennonite, Reformed Church in America, United Methodist, Seventh Day Adventist, United Church of Christ/Disciples of Christ, Wesleyan and Orthodox.
Affiliation with Worldwide requires a commitment of fidelity to the Worldwide Outline (except for necessary theological changes), having all team members on a given Weekend be of the same faith denomination and supporting the daily dialogue technique as a practice and value.
Click here for info on other WWME Faith Expressions.
Evangelization
A WWME weekend gives couples the tools of evangelization.
The heart of WWME’s philosophy is the deep seated believe that the Sacraments of Matrimony and Holy Orders are powerful and precious gifts given by God to the church. The renewal of these sacraments is the special gift that Worldwide Marriage Encounter has to bring to the church and the world. After a weekend, couples come to a deeper appreciation of the value of their marriage relationship, as well as their relationship with God. In living the concepts, their sacraments come alive and many discover their vocation for the very first time.
When the vision of who they truly are as sacramental people has taken hold in their heart and in their daily lives, they are empowered to step out of their comfort zone and become witnesses of God’s love. An encountered couple’s new awareness of their Sacrament calls them to reflect God’s love more clearly to their children and to become beacons of light in the parish community and in the world.
Through living the steps of the weekend, their homes become a model of the Domestic Church. The couples become the Good News for others and participate in the evangelizing mission of the Greater Church.
In a recent meeting between WWME and Cardinal Antonelli, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family, he spoke about evangelization, saying it is based on each person’s ability to meet Christ and transfer that experience to others. In the New Evangelization, the Gospel is transferred THROUGH people. He said, “Christ calls us to be one in the Family – to pray – to hear the Word of Jesus and love each other, beginning in the family – and then network between families”.
Small groups of families are the real experience of the Church. WWME offers small group settings where couples and families can Be One in Family!
History
The story of Worldwide Marriage Encounter began in 1952 when a young Spanish priest, Fr. Gabriel Calvo, began developing a series of conferences for married couples. The focus was on developing an open, honest relationship within marriage and learning to live as a sacrament in the service of others. For approximately 10 years, these conferences for married couples were presented in Spain by “The Marriage Teams of Pope Pius XII”. In 1962, Fr. Calvo offered them as a weekend retreat to couples in Barcelona under the name Encuentro Conjugal. The experience was very successful and rapidly spread throughout Spain.
In 1966, Fr. Calvo and Jaime and Mercedes Ferrer addressed the International Confederation of Christian Family Movements in Caracas. From there, the weekend spread to Latin America and to Spanish speaking couples in the United States. In August 1967, a couple from Mexico and a Maryknoll Missionary priest presented the Weekend to seven couples and a few priests at the close of the Christian Family Movement Convention at Notre Dame University. The experience was so well received that by the summer of 1968, 50 couples and 29 priests were presenting the Marriage Encounter program in the United States.
By January 1969, a national board was formed to coordinate the development of this program. Under the leadership of Fr. Chuck Gallagher and several couples in New York, a new dream evolved. They saw a need for a strong emphasis on the development of “community” after the weekend to provide support for living out the values learned on the weekend, especially for dialogue. In addition, the renewal of the Sacrament of Matrimony became a strong focus as a means for renewing the Catholic Church. Fr. Chuck envisioned Marriage Encounter as a movement for the Church that embodied the spirit of Vatican II.
The original Marriage Encounter Weekend conceived by Fr. Calvo still exists under the name of National Marriage Encounter, but in 1969 the New York group went out on its own to eventually become Worldwide Marriage Encounter. By the fall of 1971, this new movement had made the decision to spread the Weekend throughout the United States and to other parts of the world. Worldwide Marriage Encounter teams traveled first to Grand Forks, North Dakota, with the assurance of financial support, personnel and training from the New York community. The only condition was that once the new area could support itself, the same assistance would be given to other areas. By December, the weekend had arrived on the West Coast, in Santa Barbara. Military couples and priests later brought the weekend to Guam, Saipan and other U.S. territories.
At about the same time, Worldwide Marriage Encounter began its international expansion with teams sent to Belgium and England. As the Worldwide Marriage Encounter Weekend spread to Canada, the first English-language weekend was held in Ottawa in May 1973 and the first French-language Weekend in Quebec in 1975. Canadian expansion continued to Trinidad, with English and French-speaking Caribbean Islands becoming affiliated with Canada in 1990.
The expansion continues today into such countries as China, Russia, Cuba and the United Arab Emirates. The Worldwide Marriage Encounter Weekend is now offered in 98 countries around the world in numerous languages and dialects. Over 1,600,000 couples and 24,000 priests and religious have experienced the Weekend to date!
Even though the Worldwide Marriage Encounter experience was begun in the Catholic Church, couples of other faiths who had experienced the Weekend wanted it modified to their own faith expression. Guidelines were set up for other faith denominations to become a part of this movement, with the focus being the renewal of marriages for the renewal of their own Church. There are currently eleven other faith expressions affiliated with Worldwide Marriage Encounter.
Is WWME for Troubled Marriages?
While Worldwide Marriage Encounter weekends have helped many good marriages grow into amazing ones, when there are serious troubles and you need more intensive help, we recommend you contact your parish priest for counseling services.
In addition, we also recommend Retrouvaille a “lifeline” for troubled marriages. For more information, please visit their website.
Where are the Weekends Held?
Central Texas Marriage Encounter weekends are held at various locations throughout the diocese. Typically, they are at one of three types of locations – Cedarbrake Retreat Center in Belton, a hotel, or at a parish in a non-residential format where couples return home to sleep Friday and Saturday nights.
What to Bring?
We suggest you bring casual clothing. It’s also good to toss in a sweater or jacket as the conference room can be cool to some people. In addition, since you never know when it might rain, please bring an umbrella or two.
You are welcome to bring a cooler with snacks for your room.
What are the Start and Stop Times of the Weekend?
The weekend presentations begin promptly at 8:00 pm on Friday, so we ask that you check in and get settled into your room no later than 7:30 pm on Friday. There is no dinner on Friday night, so please eat before you arrive.
The weekend will end around 4 pm on Sunday.
Will There be Meals Provided?
Yes, meals will be provided on your weekend: Saturday breakfast, lunch and dinner, and Sunday breakfast and lunch.
We will all eat together at each meal.
What does the Weekend Cost?
A non-refundable fee of $200.00 is required to confirm your application. In addition, you will be asked to consider making a “free will” donation on the weekend.
No couple or priest is ever denied the chance to renew their sacrament because they are facing financial difficulties. This concern should not influence your decision to attend a Worldwide Marriage Encounter Weekend. Worldwide Marriage Encounter is a tax-exempt organization.
All contributions made on or in connection with the Marriage Encounter weekend are confidential.
There is limited capacity, so early applications are encouraged.
How do I get More Information?
If you have any other questions or have any problems at all applying for a Worldwide Marriage Encounter weekend, please contact our application couple at 512-677-9963 (WWME) or wwmeaustin@gmail.com.
Apply Today
Learn more or apply for upcoming Worldwide Marriage Encounter Experiences near you