Londoners train for marriage

A SCHEME to enable married couples to prepare engaged couples for marriage is being launched in the West London area of Westminster diocese.
Last week the area pastoral council heard Fr Charles Vella, of the Italian International Centre for Family Studies, explain how a team of married and engaged couples could be built up in a parish as a means to make lay people responsible for the pastoral care of the family.
Fr Vella explained how the team could begin with two married couples, a moderator and a priest, with five or six couples preparing for marriage. In Italy where the scheme has been put into practice, the teams are given guidelines in a training folder and take part in residential workshops before becoming the parish's future agents responsible for marriage preparation.
Fr Vella commented: "The engaged couples are not only involved in the group, but the group helps them to make a gradual revision of their lives regarding their present spiritual lives and their lives in future together as a Christian couple in the community of the local Church. Their contact with the married couples in the team often continues after marriage and, through their witness, they often enter other family groups."
Fr Vella said that in Malta there were 50 family groups involved in the Christian Family Movement scheme for preparing couples for marriage. In this way, he said, they share in the "priestly role which the Christian family can and ought to exercise in intimate communion with the whole Church," as Pope John Paul outlined in his document on the family, Familiaris Consortio.
6th form talk
ELEVEN OUT of the 12 Catholic sixth form colleges principals took part in their first residential conference at Upholland Northern instituir recently. The conference was organised by Mr J. L. Lipscombe of St Dominic's Sixth Form College, Harrow, Middlesex. Among those taking part in discussions of the future and religious education were Mr Simon Lambert, Fr Vincent Nicholls, Fr J H Stratton and Mr J N Winstanley,