MARRIAGE POLICY UNDER REVIEW IN PERRYVILLE

PERRYVILLE -- For as long as Kevin Fausz has been pastor of St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church in Perryville, the church required every couple married there to attend classes and counseling sessions for six months before the ceremony. In the near future, 15 churches in Perry County could have similar requirements.

The community's churches are joining "Marriage Savers," a multi-denominational movement to reduce the divorce rate.

A similar year-old agreement among churches in Cape Girardeau provided the inspiration for Perry County, said Rev. Jonathan Brown of the First Baptist Church of Perryville.

The Perry County Ministers' Alliance hasn't approved the final draft of its first unified marriage policy. The individual congregations would have to approve the policy for it to go into effect.

If the policy is approved, Perryville will be the second city in the state with the policy.

The tentative policy would require couples to attending at least four counseling sessions over a four-months before marriage and training couples in each congregation to to work as role models and counselors for engaged and newly married couples.

Congregations would be encouraged to set up "engaged encounter" retreats similar to existing marriage encounters, and to set up at least one counseling session with clergy or a mentoring couple six months after the marriage.

The sessions would include having the prospective husbands and wives fill out an inventory separately that could show possible problem areas. Brown said this could discourage couples from going through what could be disastrous marriages.

The policy would discourage premarital sex and cohabitation before marriage, but would not prohibit couples who are sexually active from getting married, Brown said.

"There's a real problem with divorce in our community," Brown said. Other communities that have implemented community marriage policies have markedly reduced the divorce rate after five years, he said.

Michael McManus, a syndicated columnist, minister and founder of Marriage Savers, wrote that community-wide efforts prevent couples from "church-hopping" when looking for a place to marry.

The community plan would be a minimum goal. Churches like St. Vincent de Paul would be free to set more stringent standards, while churches with limited resources that may not be able to support the full program would do what they could.

If a couple wants to get married within a week, pastors would be encouraged to refuse, and would know that other ministers in the alliance would do so also, said Rev. Craig Otto of the Immanuel Lutheran Church.