Sydney
21 July 2002
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Changing face of Pope’s soldiers
Vinnies SOS for cash to fight gambling ills
Priest’s anniversary wish – that more young men take up cloth
Simon’s still in need of a home
Excitement as pilgrims are blessed
Politics and prayers
International court is ‘crucial’ for East Timor
The icon of Our Lady of Kazan
Amnesty condemns attacks by Palestinian suicide bombers
Church unity theme for cardinal at Ryde mayor’s prayer breakfast
Aust gifts set charity record
Danger if teens are ‘running on empty’
Editorial: Romance in marriage
Letters: Jesus is the centre, not the clergy
Conversation: ‘Unreal’ love? Not if your love is real - Anne and Peter McGowan, family delegates
Reflections: Hunger – righting an imbalance
Becoming Catholic ‘a turning point’
Opinion: A return to the genuine ‘good old days’?
Schools fight to keep up with demand
Chaldean leader blesses new church
Helping hand for Sydney pilgrims
‘Big kids’ in new role as Seniors
Inspirations: Students rally to Winter Appeal
Conversation: ‘Unreal’ love? Not if your love is real - Anne and Peter McGowan, family delegates
Anne and Peter McGowan (pictured above), who will be the bishops’ delegates at the Fourth World Meeting of Families in the Philippines in January, reckon they know a bit about being happily married.
Not only will they have been married for 37 years this October, but for more than 20 years they’ve been actively involved in pre-marriage education.
“A priest that we knew,” says Anne, “rang and asked us would we do a talk at a pre-marriage program that he was running about how to be married and happy.
“And so we spent ages preparing this talk and really trying to make sure it was interesting.
“And we gave it and we asked him what the feedback was, and he said the couples said we were ‘unreal’ because nobody could really be as romantic as (Peter). And could we make it a bit more real.
“We laughed and said that is real. We told it like it was.”
That said, marriage is not all hearts and flowers. A good marriage is based on survival, Anne says.
“It’s got to be based on the fact that life’s not perfect,” she says.
“Nothing’s perfect. We talk (to couples) about the times we have fights, and what happens.
“Sometimes they’re resolved very well and other times they aren’t.
“We talk to the couples about (when) our first child was born and … going through hospital and coming home, and then being told that our child was a Down’s Syndrome … and how you’ve got to readjust your life as a couple and as parents.”
Anne says the advice she gives to young couples is to learn some skills.
“Have some communication skills and some conflict resolution skills – if you’ve got those, you can get through almost anything,” she says.
“But you’ve got to be prepared to give and take.
“I think everybody – I don’t care how good a couple they are – gets times where it’s all doom and gloom, and it depends what you do about it.
“You can allow it to be doom and gloom or you can say: ‘Here I am in this situation, do I want to stay married or not? Yes, I want to stay married. I remember all the good times, so what are we going to do about getting through the bad ones?’ ”
A lot of young couples go into marriage with unrealistic expectations, Anne says.
“They believe that once they’re married everything will be perfect; they’re not going to have the problems they had beforehand,” she says.
“(But) if they have problems beforehand they’re going to have them afterwards. We try to help couples see that they’ve got to work at it; that the day you get married is not the day you stop trying.”
Peter describes ‘personal witness’ as an effective method of education.
“You have to say truthfully what it’s been like for you. You can talk about various theories and principles and that’s fine, but I think it’s always the stories (that get through),” he says.
Personal witness for Anne and Peter includes not only the story of their Down’s Syndrome daughter, but that of their second son, a chronic asthmatic.
“When he was about two he had his first asthma attack and he had to be in intensive care,” Anne recalls. “And once a month he’d be in intensive care for a couple of days and then in hospital for a week. He was even more draining than (our daughter) was.
“That again is something we take with us; it’s part of our marriage – being there in intensive care, not knowing whether your child’s going to survive the night.”
But their son and their marriage survived … and thrived.
Peter puts it down to “digging your teeth in” and “hard work”.
While the rate of marriage break-up in modern society continues to climb, Peter says that couples who participate in marriage education programs have a greater than average chance of survival.
“People who have participated in pre-marriage programs have a much better success rate at five, 10, 15 years,” he says.
“People who have some sort of religious affiliation in which they are active … and have done some sort of marriage preparation have (statistically) very low rates of break-up.”
He says the Catholic Church has a responsibility to prepare couples choosing to marry – which it is recognising more and more.
“A lot of the priests and the bishops have been saying for a long time ‘we’re reluctant to marry you without at least some preparation’,” he says. “Before you join people in marriage you have the responsibility to say: ‘Think this through very thoroughly because this is a major step for the rest of your life’.
“I guess people who come to a marriage preparation course are at least open to the idea that they’re getting into something very serious. What I wonder about is the ones that really don’t have any preparation.”
The Church – and, in particular, Pope John Paul II – places a big emphasis on marriage and the family.
The theme for the World Meeting of Families 2003 is The Christian Family: Good News for the Third Millennium.
The Pope will be calling on families to share their love and so make God’s love ever more relatable in every corner of human existence.
Anne and Peter are eagerly looking forward to the World Meeting – especially the possibility of meeting the Pope. They missed out on his two visits to Australia because of unforeseen circumstances, so they see this as probably their last chance.
“We might get to meet (the Pope) in person because we’re the bishops’ delegates,” says Anne.
“I wouldn’t be upset if I couldn’t shake his hand, but I’d really like to get close.”
Anne adds: “I would say ‘thank you’ for promoting family and family life. Because I think he really is trying to make people think about it.
“In Familiaris Consortio he talks about husbands and wives loving each other into life … I love Peter enough to really try to breathe life into him.
“I want him to live; to be the person he can be, and I think that’s what he wants for me, too.
“It’s not easy, but to me that’s what I’ve taken from Familiaris Consortio, that we have a responsibility to try to give life to each other; that it’s part of our relationship.”