Pre-Cana Vent (for those living together)

I went to Pre-Cana last night for the first time. It wasn't as bad as FH and I thought it was going to be. Mostly becuase we were pleasantly surprised to walk in and see a couple that we are very close with. They are getting married in September, so I never even thought to ask them abotu Pre-Cana

Anyway, I thought the section of the Focus test that was directed at 'couples cohabitating' was very insulting. The statements changed dramatically. Some of them (ie., I feel obligated to get married because we are living together) seemed fair to ask, but most of them (I understand why my church does not approve of couples cohabitating before marriage, and I feel that since we are living together I must submit to sex on demand) were offensive. I get that the church disapproves, but in light of all of the scandals facing the Catholic Church these days, they should be a little less judgmental.

Can't wait until the night we have to talk about sexuality.

Re: Pre-Cana Vent (for those living together)

At my precana they were also not happy that we were living together. We could tell by the facial expression. Anyway, nothing was said to us

Whats funny is John came out & said we were living together , John didn't mind being honest, I was like
but it worked out OK

Re: Pre-Cana Vent (for those living together)

Please not only did I fess up about living together I mentioned our son as well. I didn't care!! My opinion is that the ONLY person that can judge me is God!! They didn't have a problem at all!

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We didn't even tell them we are living together!

Hmmm...what's a worse sin, cohabitation or lying?

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It was never asked or brought up at our pre-cana. Our priest at the church however gave us a lecture about people who live together befroe marriage actually have a higher statistic of divorce and suggested that we not live together for about 6 months before the wedding (needless to say we did not take his advise)

Re: Pre-Cana Vent (for those living together)

We didn't tell them we were living together...they don't need to know.

Re: Pre-Cana Vent (for those living together)

...I dont think it is lying if they didn't ask and you didnt tell. See the dont ask dont tell policy works

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We are going to lie about living together at pre-cana, just as we have done with every other church aspect of this wedding. We don't care to hear the lectures and frankly, it's none of their business. The only one who knows is the priest marrying us and he chose not to make an issue of it.

Re: Pre-Cana Vent (for those living together)

I think it's funny that John & I didn't live together for our own moral reasons yet we aren't religious and didn't get married in the church (even though i'm a lapsed Catholic)... ironic.

I say you should not have to lie.. but I guess with any religion comes strange rules.

Re: Pre-Cana Vent (for those living together)

THe church I went to didn't even have that part in our book.
We did the one day course though, so they actually skipped over a few parts.

Re: Pre-Cana Vent (for those living together)

I kind of followed the don't tell policy but when it came up I did not hide it and they didn't seem to mind. I guess it depends on the counselor. I didn't have to take any test with questions like you did!

Re: Pre-Cana Vent (for those living together)

We have our last class Tuesday night .

The only person that asked us if we lived together was the Deacon at our first interview. No one asked us in FOCUS or PreCana.

Re: Pre-Cana Vent (for those living together)

I thought FOCUS and Pre-Cana are the same thing-no?

I have to start calling churches to see if we can do Pre-Cana in their parish since the diocese charges WAY too much!

Re: Pre-Cana Vent (for those living together)

FOCUS is a scantron test that you each take seperately (156 questions).

Pre Cana is a group thing. We go with 5 other couples for 2 hours 1 night a week for 6 weeks (1 class left ). You talk about all sorts of issues.

Re: Pre-Cana Vent (for those living together)

We did BOTH Pre-cana and FOCCUS. They are similar but different mandatory classes for Catholic faiths getting married. They were both time consuming but very helpful and useful as a benefit to our marriage. Pre-cana has been around since the 50's and FOCCUS since the 1990's. The Catholic Church requires these due to the high divorce rate they want couples understand each other better. Pre-cana is like a group discussion that requires at least 1 full weekend. However, FOCCUS (Facilitating Open Couple Communication Understanding Studies) is about 200 questions multiple choice exam. There's no right or wrong answer and it does not prevent you from getting married if the answers are wrong. There's 3 answers: agree, disagree, and not sure. You sit in a room with about 15 other couples, but you cannot sit NEXT to your fiancé. After the exam, it's graded and you're contacted for an appointment with a married couple as the leader for discussion on the conflicting answers that you and your fiancé have. Such conflicting answers are: you answered one question with agree while your fiancé answered disagree that is a conflict. Many of these 200 questions we thought were stupid, didn't make sense, and funny. There were numerous categories such as: communication, sex, children, interfaith marriage, our families, having friends whom your future spouse may not feel comfortable to be with, etc…

Our FOCCUS discussion was a 3 hour one night session at St. Bridgid's Church. Our Pre-cana was with Diocese of Rockville Centre, http://www.drvc.org/departments/fammin.htm because St. Bridgid's never contacted us in time for the dates which we available.

No, we were not living together at this time when we were having our FOCCUS and Pre-Cana classes, although we purchased our cooperative apartment but was not in a condition where we can live together since we had no furniture.

Good luck!

Re: Pre-Cana Vent (for those living together)

we were living together during pre-cana and no one had a problem with it. In fact 75% of the couples at our Engaged Encounter were living together.

For the questions on the FOCCUS test, you're supposed to agree, disagree or not sure. So for those questions you found offensive, you would simply disagree. Its supposed to be a conversation starter to identify areas where the two of you disagree. So if your FH felt you needed to submit to s-e-x becuase you live together - it'd be better to get that out now. I don't think they're implying thats the church's view. At least I didn't take it as such.

I was against the whole pre-cana thing. But looking back I appreciate the time we put into it. Not because it helped us any (no red flags were uncovered) but because it was time dedicated soley to our relationship without any outside distractions (I'm referring to the Engaged Encounter part - meeting with our priest was a whole other story...)

Re: Pre-Cana Vent (for those living together)

So do we do FOCCUS with the same parish we would be doing Pre-Cana?

Re: Pre-Cana Vent (for those living together)

We did

Re: Pre-Cana Vent (for those living together)

I am Jewish and we also have a pre maritial counseling encounter, and let me tell u, the rabbi made us feel like we were creating the biggest sin, but we realized this is modern times and and we just took it with a grain of salt. I know exactly how u feel.

Re: Pre-Cana Vent (for those living together)

Ohhhh.
We didn't do that FOCCUS test.
Guess our church didn't require it??