8 - Sponsor Couple ™ ministry - A Peer to Peer process benefiting engaged couples & their sponsors.
Sponsor Couple ™ ministry: Peer to Peer education/formation that benefits engaged couples and their sponsors. Rob Ruhnke [6-11-2023]
1 - The particular value of “sponsorship.”
I think there is a unique value in making use of Sponsor Couple ™ ministry that motivates me to keep up the effort to promote this method of marriage preparation.
I use the word "sponsor" to define the role/task of one who passes on a (faith) tradition within the context of a peer relationship...and whose fundamental authority flows from his/her praxis of the (faith) tradition that he/she is consciously trying to pass on to the new candidate. While a sponsor could also be a highly educated person and even have achieved advanced academic degrees in the faith tradition that he/she is attempting to pass on to another person, the art of sponsorship relies on the ability of the sponsor to establish a peer relationship with the candidate and thereby avoid the negative consequences of a relationship in which the candidate views the "sponsor" as a person who is “superior” (to the candidate) in wisdom/holiness. Why is this important? Because the goal is for the candidate to live the faith (not merely have an intellectual understanding of it) and is more likely to achieve this praxis when the candidate becomes self motivated as a consequence of the relationship with the sponsor...i.e. "I can do this because my sponsor has made it clear to me that he/she is enough like me that I now know I can also live the (faith) tradition as he/she does. I have no reason to say to myself I cannot live the (faith) tradition because I am not as gifted/blessed as my sponsor (because he/she is “superior” to me)."
I think this is the heart of the use of the word "sponsor" as traditionally used in Baptism and Confirmation. I think it is also related to the Christian concept of martyr/witness in that the central issue is the effective living of the faith tradition, and not academic certification (degrees) or titles (professor/priest/bishop).
2 – Why has “sponsorship” not been incorporated into most marriage preparation programs?
Marriage preparation began to develop in North America (where it has probably been worked at more consciously than in other areas of the world) in the 1940s, before the role of the adult sponsor in the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults was re-developed after Vatican Council II. Prior to Vatican Council II, the Church tended to think of catechesis ~ and marriage preparation ~ as a process best accomplished by trained teachers (experts). Education/formation was a “one way” street (the teacher taught, the student learned). This is probably the simplest explanation for why marriage preparation programs ~ beginning in the 1940s ~ did not include the concept of the "sponsor." The first efforts to develop the Sponsor Couple ™ process began with Carmody/Ruhnke in 1974 just after the RCIA was being introduced to parishes. Even though the leaders of the "marriage preparation movement" placed a high value on the inclusion of married couples on the parish/diocesan marriage preparation teams, marriage preparation programs were founded on educational models and assumptions that rely on the theory that the engaged couples are lacking certain information that the teacher(s) have gained from a combination of life experience and academic study, which is why the couples are expected to become students of the teachers. [Note: engaged couples do not necessarily choose to become students when they take part in marriage preparation programs, but that continues to be the goal of this model of marriage preparation!] It can also be pointed out that key leaders of the marriage preparation movement were celibate clerics who could never function as "sponsors" in the literal sense of the term (because they were not married and not peers to the engaged), and this could easily explain why these leaders did not have a clear recognition that the educational assumptions/models used in the marriage preparation programs might be missing something valuable.
It is also worth noting that Marriage Encounter/Engaged Encounter/Cursillo/etc. are programs that incorporate "ordinary lay people" (not celibates and not clerics) into their educational model. HOWEVER, while these efforts were an effort to improve the teacher/student model, they did not replace it with a new model. The Sponsor Couple ™ process is an effort to put in place a new model of education/formation. It is an example of “peer to peer” education/formation.
3 – The marriage enrichment effect for those engaged in Sponsor Couple ™ ministry.
The most consistent feedback coming from experienced sponsor couples is their claim that they get more (benefit) from the process of sponsorship than the engaged couples. I have been hearing this feedback for more than 30 years, and I continue to try to understand exactly why this seems to be true.
Here is my current theory.
Marriage experts are consistent in saying that most married couples do not get involved in marriage enrichment programs and this is the primary reason for the high divorce rate. The experts know that most marriages could be “saved” today, except for the fact that most couples are not willing/able to do the kind of “work” that will make their marriage effective. Even though most people are wise enough to do maintenance on their homes and cars and even get regular medical check-ups, at the same time most people are highly resistant to doing maintenance on their marriage…even when they are having significant marital problems. This aversion to marriage maintenance (“marriage enrichment”) is so prevalent in North American that even the most successful marriage enrichment program ~ Marriage Encounter ~ reached only a small percentage of married couples[1]. And this highly regarded program never achieved more than getting couples to just the one weekend. Even though the program promotes the necessity of on-going support and follow-up programs, most couples do not return for a “refresher” experience. On the other hand, those serving in Sponsor Couple ™ ministry have the built in benefit of doing marriage enrichment of their own marriage every time they go through the process of sponsoring an engaged couple. It is interesting to note that they do this marriage enrichment not because they are choosing to focus on their own marriage enrichment, but because they are willing to assist the engaged couple. The enrichment to their own marriage is a “side effect” they experience because they were willing to assist the engaged couple!
My thought is that it is the motivation to serve others (i.e. the engaged couple) that provides the energy (grace) to overcome the aversion to the vulnerability that is an essential condition for effective marriage enrichment.
[1] It must be said that a very high percentage of married couples who became involved in ministry in the 1970s/1980s acknowledge Marriage Encounter as the experience that motivated them to “work on” their marriages and get involved in ministry to others in their parishes and dioceses. But when you compare this number of couples to the total number of Catholic married couples, it is still a very small number.