Today is the last class of the 7 weeks long marriage PREP course and I have learned a lot from it.  Every Catholic couple has to take the marriage PREP course in order to have a Catholic wedding.  The Catholic church run this program to prepare the couple for the marriage life, as a mean to fight the raising divorce rate.  The course is very practical, with useful tips on communication techniques, financial planning, family consulting, etc.  Since the course is run by the church, it slips a couple boring talks by a priest on the role of God in marriage, which is kinda expected.  The course is run by the church after all.

I found the talk about marriage as a sacrament is quite interesting.  It talks about the theological meaning in the union of man and woman.  It also talks about trivial knowledge in the cannon law relate to marriage.  Other than informative talks, the course invited couples that have been married for years to share about their experience with us.  It is good to see how marriage work in other family and draw reference form their stories.

Take aside the useless religion stuffs, the course itself is very useful, I highly recommend it to all engaged couples. The increasing divorce rate is quite alarming, almost half of the marriages ended in divorce in Canada.  In sociology, family is one of the four major social institutes that builds the society.  Failure in the family institute will make the society less stable and hinder long term economic growth.  If people have to do a driving test in order to get a driving license.  Why can’t the government make everyone take some kind of marriage PREP course in order to get their wedding license?