It’s one of the most common concerns new sponsor couples raise: after going through Sponsor Couple® training, many feel unprepared to know exactly what they should be teaching an engaged couple about marriage and Catholic teaching before that couple takes their vows. Some are even caught off guard by the invitation to serve as a sponsor couple in the first place, and only realize afterward how much responsibility the role carries.
The good news is that this concern, while completely understandable, points to a misunderstanding of what sponsor couples are actually there to do. Here’s how to think about it.
Everything They Need Is in For Better & For Ever®
For Better & For Ever® was written to address everything a couple should talk about with one another before marriage — both in the text itself and in its open-ended questions. As you study each chapter and work through the homework together with your engaged couple, pay attention to whether anything feels missing, either in the text or in the questions. The material is designed to be comprehensive on its own.
There’s Additional Content on the Website
The chapters were kept intentionally brief, but more in-depth content is available for couples who want to go further — for example, resources on Natural Family Planning. Part of a sponsor couple’s role is simply making sure their engaged couple knows this additional content exists.
Sponsor Couples Are Not God, and Not the Couple’s Parents
Sponsor Couple® ministry exists to help engaged couples learn Church teaching and marital communication skills — it is not a sponsor couple’s job to compel an engaged couple to comply with their own ideas, or even with “the teaching of the Church.” Engaged couples are designed by God to be free to learn what they choose to learn, when they’re ready to learn it. A sponsor couple team’s role is to share their own experience of learning hard truths and living with the consequences of their own poor choices — not to replace an engaged couple’s decisions of conscience with their own.
The Unique Value of Dialogue
Dialogue — covered especially in Chapter 9, along with more information and video links on the website — is a proven way to open up conversation about anything an engaged couple is willing to risk discussing at this point in their lives. If a couple keeps certain topics secret from one another, and from their sponsor couple, they — not their sponsor couple — will be the ones who have to live with the consequences of that choice.
God created us with the freedom to make choices that aren’t in our best interest. God doesn’t encourage us to make bad choices, even sins — but God is always ready to help us when we come to our senses. (See Luke 15:11–32.)
