September 15, 2010

Colorado-based marriage prep program expanding

By John Gleason

The popular Colorado-based nonprofit organization, Catholic Marriage Prep Inc., is growing.  Dedicated to building Christ-centered Catholic marriages through solid classroom and online marriage preparation, the organization offers classes in 82 dioceses in the United States as well as around the world and on the Internet. 

Catholic Marriage Prep Inc. will now also be offering additional classes in English and Spanish in the Archdiocese of Denver.

Christian Meert, who along with his wife Christine, founded the organization, told the Denver Catholic Register there was a need for more classes in Spanish and they responded.

“We’ve held the program (in English) at Holy Family Church (in Denver) for years now,” he said. “This month, we’ve expanded that to include classes at St. Thomas More Parish in Centennial.  It’s the first of four separate classes we’ll be holding there in the coming year.”

Due to the increasing number of Spanish speaking couples who are seeking marriage prep, CMP will be training more instructors for that purpose.

“We began formation at Centro San Juan Diego last December and trained eight Spanish-language instructor couples, who started to lead classes at seven parishes around the archdiocese in January,” Meert said. “Last Saturday, our Spanish-certified instructor couple started another training session for seven more couples.”

Parishes offering the Catholic Marriage Prep Inc. course in Spanish are: St. Augustine in Brighton; Ascension in Denver; St. Catherine of Sienna in Denver; Holy Trinity in Westminster; Annunciation in Denver; St. William in Fort Lupton and St. Théresè in Aurora. 

Online one-on-one classes in either English or Spanish are also available.

The Catholic Marriage Prep Inc. program, which began in Denver in 1999, is based on Pope John Paul II’s theology of the body and the teachings of the Catholic Church. It satisfies steps one and three of the Denver

Archdiocese’s requirements for marriage preparation. Classes for Catholic Marriage Prep Inc. are $180 for the four-week program and $150 for online classes, which includes all course materials.

For more information on class location and schedules, call 1-866-425-7193 toll free, or visit online at www.CatholicMarriagePreponline.com.