Worldwide Marriage Encounter is the largest pro-marriage movement in the world and promotes a weekend experience for couples who want to make their good marriage even better.
Marriage Encounter is designed to give married couples the opportunity to examine their lives together . . . a time to share their feelings, their hopes, disappointments, joys and frustrations . . . and to do so openly and honestly in a face-to-face, heart-to-heart encounter with the one person they have chosen to live with for the rest of their life. The emphasis of Marriage Encounter is on communication between husband and wife, who spend a weekend together away from the distractions and the tensions of everyday life, to concentrate on each other. It's not a retreat or marriage clinic, or group sensitivity. It's a unique approach aimed at revitalizing marriage. This is a time for you and your spouse to be alone together, to rediscover each other and together focus on your relationship for an entire weekend. Every marriage deserves that kind of attention!
Our name defines who we are (worldwide) and what we do (encounter another). “Worldwide” means open to all, but it also reflects our unity. Throughout the world, wherever Worldwide Marriage Encounter is present, there is conformity to the same concepts and values. “Marriage” refers to the spousal relationship between a married man and woman. In the wider sense, it also refers to the spousal relationship of priests and religious with the people of God. “Encounter” means “to meet” and it reflects the exposure of married couples and priests to the full meaning of their sacrament as they meet each other and Christ within their sacramental relationships.
Worldwide Marriage Encounter (WWME) has this name because couples are "encountered" through weekends in over 2100 weekends per year. With over 31,000 couples and 650 priests completing these weekends, we are truly the largest pro marriage movement in the world.
The Worldwide Marriage Encounter Weekend is an incredible tool to strengthen your marriage and family and stay connected to your faith, surrounded by others who support this lifestyle.
Cardinal Anotonelli, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family, while discussing the importance of the sacrament of marriage, said that the world is trying to divide the family. "Children should have the right to have parents that are married and united". This is a deep interest for not only the children, but for society. This is a strength of what WWME offers couples, the Cardinal said. WWME emphasizes that marriage. in the love of a man and woman is not just physical, but also a spiritual union. According to Blessed John Paul II, the image of God is best reflected in the love of a man and a woman.
WWME gives couples tools to grow in love and become one in their sacrament when the world gives them challenges such as illness, loss of job, infertility. Their unity and faith help them to become the strongest they can be to bear witness of Christ’s love in marriage. Statistics show that while almost 50% of today’s marriages end in divorce, only 2% of couples who have experienced a Marriage Encounter weekend fall to divorce.