In July of 1999, a group of marriage-imrpovement gurus made a pilgrimage to the University of Notre Dame to celebrate 50 years of the Christian Family Movement. Publisher Sheed & Ward helped mark the occasion by printing a history of this modern movement heard round the world, a revolution of a different sort that got its start on American soil.

The CFM Grandmother, Patty Crowley, still holds forth in her Chicago high-rise home on the shores of Lake Michigan. She and her late husband, Pat, were co-founders of CFM.

Though she prefaces any comments about good marriages with the disclaimer that she's been a widow for years, she's quick to respond when asked to name a crucial ingredient for a strong marriage.

"Common interests," Crowley says. "If spouses are interested in many of the same things, they do things together. And when spouses do many things together, they grow together."

It wasn't always so in Catholic groups. In fact, in the beginnings of CFM, Crowley says, the men and women were separated, like the Knights of Columbus and the Daughters of Isabella. Only later did the wisdom surface that marriages might benefit by spouses actually working on projects together.

But what other wisdom has 50 years wrought?

Well, the fact that there are no guarantees, for one thing. Crowley says one of her children is going through a divorce right now, and there's no way to reverse it or take away the pain. Successful marriage is not necessarily hereditary, and decades of marriage-enrichment groups may have collected insights, understanding, and experiencebut not how-to manuals.

Second, people need to know early on that marriage requires work. Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn puts it well: "We promise to work to stay together not because we think things between us will never change, but because we know they will."

As the numbers and different styles of marriage-enrichment groups increased, different flavors and emphases emerged: CFM, Cana, Pre-Cana, Engaged Encounter, Marriage Encounter, Retrouvaille, Rainbows for All God's Children, and other such groups brought together like-minded people to try to improve, save, resurrect, or recover from a marriage.

The common wisdom is that half of all marriages these days fail, both in and out of the church. One can ask why those that do make it succeed. What lessons have the marriage gurus learned that can be passed on to those just beginning a marriage, or perhaps to those just about to end one? After all, the church at every level (parish, diocese, national, worldwide) has given serious attention and applied serious resources to help couples succeed. Clergy, family-life ministers, and guidance counselors have struggled with struggling couples; and they do have some telling reflections, if not answers.

Invested interests
Kay and Gary Aitchison, of Ames, Iowa, are the current executive directors of the Christian Family Movement. Not surprisingly they second Patty Crowley's plea for common interests in a marriage, and Kay Aitchison says couples also have to nail down those interests on the family calendar. A marriage simply won't make it in a couple's spare time; and shared activities with just the spousesare the lifeblood of marriage growth. Also not surprisingly, the Aitchisons make a strong case for the need for a spiritual base for a Christian marriage, not just church but shared prayer at home.

Quite often, say the Aitchisons, couples' involvement in the Christian Family Movement or similar enrichment groups works in quiet and indirect ways. The small-group dynamics of workshops or parish programs can show a couple how other couples communicate, build a spiritual base, and help create shared goals and values. It's caught, as much as taught. As new couples grow in their shared values, they inevitably start to reach out to others, to share their joy and their love. And the circle just gets bigger.

Kay Aitchison also makes the point that groups such as CFM provide a comfortable and safe place for couples in interfaith marriages.

"The small group is much more inviting to the non-Catholic spouse than the larger community. We find that CFM involvement helps interfaith (or interchurch) couples feel more comfortable with the church. It provides a lot of catechesis. In many cases the non-Catholic spouse ends up joining the church."

But it takes time for that sort of small-group comfort to kick in, according to Han and Megan Huang of Evanston, Illinois.

They completed a one-day Pre-Cana session last fall before their wedding. Despite an overall positive reaction to the content of the mandatory pre-wedding training, they said there really wasn't much interaction with the other couples. And Han, who is not Catholic, said they left the topic of interfaith marriage until late in the day when everyone was pretty tired. They have not continued with any sort of group involvement since the wedding.

Group dynamics
Marilyn Zieserl, of Wilmette, Illinois, talked over a chorus of grandchildren when I asked her about all of this. ("No this isn't Zieserls. This is Jeremy!" said the preschool voice answering the phone.)

"Yes, CFM helped us a lot in the '60s, early in our marriage. It not only helped us hook up with an established community of good people, but led us into areas of communication we otherwise might have avoided or overlooked. They didn't spoon-feed us pat answers but led us to ask important questions of ourselves.

"It also gave us an appreciation of the spiritual element in our marriage as crucial for development.

"We also saw others go through what we were going through or would face someday," says Zieserl. "Any marriage of some years has learned the painful interplay of growth and suffering in a familykids, crises, sickness, deaththat both test and temper a married relationship.

"Dedicated spouses support each other through the turmoil and survive as stronger people, stronger partners, a stronger couple. That which does not kill us makes us stronger!"

A quiet but consistent lesson begins to emerge: couples who want to strengthen their marriages will take pains to seek out groups of couples who have been there, done that, and grown through the experience.

If that is so, why aren't newly married couples knocking down church doors to get into such groups?

A bunch of reasons. Father Thomas Lynch, a Stratford, Connecticut pastor and former representative for family life of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, sets up an intriguing interplay of marriage growth.

Couples, he says, begin as housemates, grow into heart-mates by sharing with each other their deepest emotions, and a very few "take the journey to become soulmates." At the spiritual level the average couple remains in a constant state of need and looks for their spouse to fill these needs.

"They do not know who their God is nor how to relate to him in ways that are life-giving for themselves and their relationship." Lynch says most couples settle "somewhere between the state of being housemates and heartmates as their only option of living together." For couples to make the leap needed to become soulmates, they simply have to surrender to the need for Jesus Christ to become real enough to them for his love to make all the difference.

Most marital problems are rooted in past hurts and within their family-of-origin story, says Lynch, "and only the power and love of Jesus Christ can heal those hurts and wounds." When couples have a distorted vision of what a marriage can be, parishes can help couples "frame a new vision and develop maps and strategies to realize this vision."

But Mary Jo Pedersen, of the Omaha, Nebraska Family Life Office, questions whether any sort of vision can enrich some marriages. She claims that anyone who has done marriage preparation knows some marriages are doomed from the start: "running away from your family of origin, rebounding from another relationship, or 'saving' your mate, etc. etc. etc.

"If you enter marriage for the wrong reason or with the wrong person there's not a chance in you-know-where that the marriage will ever be strong, no matter what you do by way of enrichment."

Pedersen says couples need to start with the right attitude, a mutual promise "to take at least as good care of this marriage relationship as we take of our cars." She tells of a couple who went through two job changes in one year, serious illness, a move across the country, the death of one spouse's brother, and a period of unemployment.

"Now that's a marriage that's been rode hard and put up wet!" But couples cannot assume that they can weather such storms automatically. "There's nothing automatic about growth in marriage," says Pedersen, and couples have to work at it and seek out enrichment opportunities.