•	The MPCs
Origins of the MPCs

The Christian communities and the preparation for the marriage

The Marriage Preparation Centres (MPCs) are a Church service aiming the attendance of the future couples towards the religious celebration of the marriage and the constitution of a family, according to the spirit of Jesus Christ Gospel. They become involved therefore in the complexities and challenges of the ecclesial life and their mission in the world.

The MPCs were born in the ecclesial atmosphere having given rise by Vatican II, and they developed themselves after the Council, participating in the progresses and challenges of contemporaneous ecclesial life. During this period, the MPCs appeared in different countries in spite of the languages, the different characteristics and very distinct traditions. For these reasons, the MPCs face the necessity of a particular attention from different experiences' elements.

The ecclesial frame of action of the MPCs

1.	The addressees of the action of the MPCs are the bridal pair requiring the marriage to the Church. They are impregnated by our world spirit and evidences: a rational, sometimes agnostic, individualistic, secular and post‑modem spirit. They possess an undeniable sensibility towards liberty, justice, equality, personal rights and are marked by a consuming mentality. They live in a world most of the times far away from faith and the Church. In spite of this, lots of ecclesiastic rites subsist, among them the marriage.
2.	The dealt themes by the MPCs are related to couple life, sexual life, the creation of a family. The Christian way of living of these subjects represent one of the most sensitive challenges of today Christian communities.
3.	The action of the MPCs is inscribed in the new evangelisation applied more specifically to the future couple and the new families.

What characterises the MPCs: their identity

The MPCs identity relies on two supports: team life and the work with the future couples. It's a fundamentally ecclesial effort because the Church is defined, from one side, as a Jesus Christ community, and from the other, as a way of divulging His Spirit.
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The MPCs team 

Some aspects define the MPCs team:

•	the participation of married couples and the priest (the deacon, the religious sisters), all of them with a sincere preoccupation, a real "calling" for the well being of the future couple;

•	the disposability to redirect his/her personal life and the couple life, too, according to the Gospel Spirit;

•	the interest for the reflected deepening of the conjugal ties experienced according the Gospel;

•	the communitary attitude to build a small community, ecclesially mature;

•	the capability of communicating with young people of different milieus and cultural status.

The MPCs teams live a more and more enlarged reality in the Church: their diversity shows itself, for instance, in their attitude towards the hierarchy, the doctrine, and the understanding of the Gospel too. The MPCs teams try to find a way to the communion through this diversity. What seems fundamental and is required to achieve this communion: an attitude of participation in the team's life, a faith in the marriage and a deep interest for the future couple; a sincere will of revising their life and growth in the Gospel way.

The MPCs teams are called to an autonomous and intense life. After a formation period, every team must create a frame of work and life, in order to put in practice and realise the characteristics adequate to the Christian spirit: reflection upon the personal and couple life, deepening of the pastoral duty with the future couple, pray, liturgical celebration, festive meetings, etc. The contact with other MPCs teams and the participation at the MPCs meeting life are, among others, privileged ways in order to assure an adequate permanent formation.

2.-	The team work with the future couple: an attendance in the faith and in love

If there's a place where it is possible to meet the extreme complexity of our ecclesial reality, it is really in the meeting of the future married couples who apply for the sacrament of the marriage. The MPCs open themselves completely to the sociological reality of our modern, rational, secularised world, with all its evidences and its question marks. Young people constitute a privileged resonance box.

Regarding our actual world, the Church, and therefore the MPCs, understands its mission as a duty of a new evangelisation. This mission consists of accompanying the future married people, so that they can live the sacrament as a mutual gift, as an engagement in love, for the life and an opening to the world. An important characteristic of the MPCs in the fulfilment of this calling, that starts with the cultural, social and Christian reality of the couples.

For all this, an unconditional welcome and the dialog must mark the atmosphere of the meetings with the future married people. In this atmosphere, the couples are invited to reflect, to assume a critical attitude towards the involving evidences, the revision of everyone's projects, looking for an authentic life according the Gospel, to a personal decision and also to the enlargement of the dialog as the basis of the their future married and familiar life. The MPCs include the welcome and the dialog not only as a pastoral method, but also as an actualisation of the Gospel.

Laic, priests, and future couples walk together towards the discovery and deepening of the faith and love. For the MPCs, it's their way of defining themselves, of loving our world, of announcing Jesus' Gospel, of promoting a more human and fair life, and of offering an image of the Church in its turn open to the world and faithful to our Lord.

A conviction enlivens the MPCs: the importance of a personal maturing process and of making people responsible for the personal and the couple life, regarding specially the evolution of the marriage and the family, of the Christian experience in our pluralistic world and the adhesion to the Church in its variety.

•	The FICPM

Aims and characteristics

The International Federation of the MPCs (FICPM) is the assembly of the MPCs from several countries, which desire a service from the Church enlivened by the laic and the priests, who, inside a pastoral of the assembly, consecrate themselves more particularly to the pastoral of the marriage.

The aims of the FICPM are, in a general way, identified with the possibility of the MPCs of several countries members of it of knowing each other, and of meeting themselves in a more particular way to:

•	give an answer to the necessity of communication and exchange of experiences;
•	help to discern the evolution of the preparation for the marriage;
•	enlarge everyone's vision at the level of the universal Church;
•	promote the reflection and research about everything that regards the pastoral of the marriage; 
•	publish all the documents considered inside the frame of its aims; 
•	maintain and develop the ties among the MPCs and Church authorities; 
•	promote the relations with other similar international associations and organisations in order to promote and defend their ideals in such a way;

We can identify the main characteristics of the FICPM by the following elements:

•	a crossroad of the MPCs approaches, inside the preparation for the marriage in the universal Church; 
•	an opportunity to discover the diversity, encouraging the exchanges among different cultures;
•	an opportunity of consolidating the knowledge’s about young people, the couple, the marriage;
•	an opportunity of giving value to the benevolent laic engaged in the Church for the preparation for the marriage and their co‑responsibility with the priests;
•	an organisation laying specially on the goodwill and the support of its different member countries.

•	The FICPM Organisation

In order to attain its aims and objectives, the FICPM encourages motives of exchanges and shares, adequate representations and realisations.

Motives of exchanges and shares

Encouraging the transmission of information, documentation, experiences and methods among the MPCs members.

Motives of representations

Making the MPCs known, their role and realisations.

Increasing the value of their experience and actions among Church authorities and international social institutions.

Every year, our couple‑ambassador at the Vatican has the duty of meeting the responsible for three institutions, which are the Pontificium Concilium pro Familia, the Pontificium Concilium. pro Laicis and the State Secretary.

In the quality of a member of the Family Committee of Non‑Governmental Organisations in Vienna, it promotes actively the Christian values of the couple and family at an international plan as well.

In a more punctual way, the FICPM, and often in the presence of its members, participates in international Christian’s meetings regarding the laic, the couples and the families.

Motives of realisations

Two activities mark in a very particular way the FICPM life.

The International Days (Journées Internationales), organised every year, in partnership with a country member, are intended to be a meeting of MPCs animators of different countries sharing a similar vision of the nature, aimed objectives and certain modalities to the preparation for the marriage, according the MPCs spirit.

The three meetings of the “Bureau” (country member’s delegates) and the yearly delegates meeting.

These two instances reveal to be democratic spirit of the International Federation. In these meetings are taken the decisions regarding the administration, orientations and development of our organisation.

The FICPM, directly or through one of its members, has the charge of answering to the specific needs or requests of national MPCs, such as thematic meetings and national formations. About this subject, we would like to underline the leadership assumed by the Indian Ocean MPCs, which has conducted to the creation of the Indian Ocean MPC Federation.

The FICPM Functioning

Endowed with reduced financial means coming most of them from quotations of the countries members, the FICPM functions thanks to the engagement of the countries members and to the animators benevolence engaged in the preparation for the marriage.

Not having a permanent secretariat, this one is taken as a charge by a secretary couple supported, generally, by the permanent MPC of its country.

The current management belongs to an executive committee, chosen by a delegates meeting and composed by a president couple, by an almoner and a secretary couple. The executive committee may count on the precious help, and voluntary itself, of a responsible for the financial affairs.
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The members

The FICPM recognises two categories of members: the active members and the partner members.

Every request to become an active member or a partner must be addressed to the FICPM Executive Committee. It will be presented to the delegates meeting, at its yearly meeting, to accept every new member.

Active Members

They identify themselves with the national or international catholic associations and organisms (either for a national or an international Episcopal conference), whose members activity is tied up with the preparation for the marriage, and are voluntary in order to participate in the FICPM life. They must have the support of the competent ecclesiastic authority.

At he general meeting of the delegates in April 1999, the FICPM included the following active members :
The national MPCs of 	Belgium,
Canada,
Spain,
France,
Italy,
Luxembourg, 
Madagascar, 
The Netherlands, 
Portugal, 
Slovenia, 
Switzerland.

The partner members

They are the Christian associations and organisms, interdiocesan, national or international, whose activity is very close to that of the active members, and share the aims of the MPCs, accept the reciprocal exchange relations and collaborations, but collaborate at the FICPM without adhering to it completely.

At the General Meeting of the delegates in April 1999, the FICPM included the following partner members:	Malta Cana Movement and 
The Indian Ocean MPC Federation.
•	Theological Foundation

Reflections about the spiritual and theological foundations of our engagement

In the basis of our engagement is found a rich and global experience and a mystery as well: the mystery of the human person, man or woman, before him‑/herself and before the others, in the Spirit of God.

This mystery starts from a deep and fundamental experience. It is constituted of several aspects. Everyone among us lives his role without realising the totality of this experience. But everyone is called in order to deepen his/her interior reality and to share his/her part in order to enrich her‑/himself and complete her‑/himself mutually.

In this global experience, it is to be considered the following aspects:
1.-	The evangelical experience 
2.-	The opening to the world 
3.-	The option for the couple 
4.-	A specific ecclesial taking of conscience 
5.-	The mission experience

1.-	The evangelical experience

•	The evangelical experience means communion with Jesus Christ's Spirit. It is the experience of an absolute of love and experience, the nature and force of life as a whole: the experience in this Spirit and of the love for God the Father.

•	The mystery of death and resurrection of Jesus reveals the meaning of life as a whole, as a gift of love that does not withdraw before difficulties to become faithful to the Father. Indulging himself to the Father and to men, His life gets the plenitude of the resuscitated life. For us too, the experience of this gift is not chiefly that of getting lost but essentially of finding life. Our open and generous human love is communion with Jesus Christ, participation in His death and resurrection lived in the mystery of our everyday life.

•	The Spirit of the Gospel of Jesus: it's love, with all the nuances of its message: peace, happiness, demand of justice, magnanimity of soul, pardon, but also: the personal relation with God, pray, confidence.
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The Christian experience takes us to the conviction that the true way to open one's heart is found living in love and injustice. This way takes to the authentic plenitude of the human life.

•	The communion with our Lord Jesus means necessarily the opening to the others and to the world. For the MPCs, this is translated in an attitude of unconditional welcome of all, no matters who they are in a real service for the good of all our sisters and brothers, mainly those that choose to engage in a couple life.

2.-	The opening to the world

•	The evangelical experience takes to the research of what is truly human and to the communion with everything that is noble and veracious in human real life.

•	In this sense, the Gospel and human reality enlightens them mutually. On the one hand, the Gospel is the guide towards a comprehension and love of the present world; on the other, the life of men and women helps us in the rediscovery of a deep sense of Jesus Gospel and takes us to turn away from all the limits imposed by our traditions, often too narrow.

•	For the MPCs, young people's world is the privileged echo of actual reality. The MPCs are intended to be attentive to everything that young people possess as values and life: young people, according to the signs of the times, knock at the Church door desiring to free the Gospel of every comprehension that is understood to be limited and closed.

3.-	The option for the couple

•	The option for the wellbeing of the couple, the marriage and the family are constituent parts of the MPCs' specificity. It is a service facing the fundamental choices in a realisation of the personal and of social life.

•	The engagement of the MPCs for the success of the couple and the family means the consolidation of the evangelical love and the service spirit for the wellbeing of men and women, society and Church.

•	The marriage among Christians is regarded as a particular calling for love and fidelity in all its aspects.

•	The family established in the evangelical spirit opens perspectives which allow the true manifestation of one's feelings and heart to everyone else of its members.
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A specific ecclesial taking of conscience

•	The human being does not live turned to himself but in group, in community. For the Christian, the communitary sense is essential. The familiar life allows the discovery, in its bosom, of a first experience of the ecclesial conscience. The family and the ecclesial conscience enrich themselves mutually out of the reality of the human experienced according to Jesus' Spirit. The Christian community is important because it is the frame in which men may become the diapason of the Gospel, in order to find anchorage’s for their belief and personal liberty, as well the communion with other people.

•	Man does not work for himself, but as a member of a community. The MPCs are members completely dedicated to the ecclesial life and are one of the Church service for the development of couples and families.

•	The MPCs stress particularly the importance of the team work in their pastoral, not only at the local level, but also at the national and international level. If the MPCs stress so much the team work, it is not only because of its efficacy in terms, but more fundamentally in function of the basic ecclesial experience that springs out of it. The MPCs are purposed to live a communitary experience and the share of the human and spiritual enrichment in the frame of the team life.

•	A good infrastructure and the use of multiple resources are necessary to the animators in order to perform an efficient action with the bridal pair. Notwithstanding, advanced techniques must not prevail upon the welcome quality, that is the animators' main aim.

5.-	The mission experience

•	The Christians have a mission towards other people. For the MPCs, it deals with an ecclesial mission, in the multiform, secularised and post‑Christian world that surrounds us and to which we belong. The MPCs stress strongly the importance of becoming aware of this reality and about the necessity of questioning regularly our way of living this mission.

•	The MPCs mission must be found in the welcome, the dialog, the reflection and the promotion of the personal adhesion of the bridal pair to the human and evangelic values. It must be accomplished in respect taking support from the living experiences of the bridal pair, in order to propose an evangelical approach, with no idea of imposing it. The MPCs accompany the young in their way ‑ the same in which all its members are involved.

•	This way of understanding the accompaniment of the bridal pair is not for any reason a particular choice: it is an ecclesial mission in the world, nowadays. The Church proposes the light of the Gospel as a contribute to a common research: that is the new evangelisation of our world.

•	The MPCs are intended to be attentive to everyone's personal procures. They are persuaded that the faith in Jesus Christ enriches the couple and the family life. First of all, the human experience is easier to be understood than the Christian one. Because of that, it must be valorised in that very sense: it is a challenge to be taken: the experience of love, of service, of the human dialog is already an experience of a lived communion. It is imbued with the evangelical spirit. Even if the Christian expression lacks, the personal relation with God and the confession of the faith, a true communion is meanwhile surely lived. Starting from this experience of love and service, it is possible to make the discovery of the sense of Jesus Christ's Gospel and the faith in God.

Gaspar MORA 
FICPM Almoner 
E‑BARCELONA 
February 2000