A Rich Book for Marriage Preparation

Say “marriage preparation” and no small number of Catholics would likely say “a hoop the priest made us jump through” to let us marry in the Church; some would say, “a waste of time.” Many marriage prep programs are talks. Rarely is there any reading; and if there is, it’s usually Fr. Joseph Champlin’s booklet “Together for Life.” That, in turn, is less of a theology of marriage than a catalog to pick out the readings for your wedding.

I have a book priests ought to be putting into the hands of every couple preparing for marriage: Eduard Habsburg’s Building a Wholesome Family in a Broken World. I’d also have catechists putting it into high schoolers’ hands.

Eduard Habsburg is Archduke of Austria, which would put him in line for the Austrian throne if there still was one. It’s why the book is advertised as “the royal guide to building a happy, healthy, holy family.” He’s also Hungary’s ambassador to the Holy See. He’s a faithful Catholic, a married man, and a father.

Don’t imagine all European royalty through the prism of British kings’ questionable approaches to marriage; while not without blemishes, the Habsburgs, in general, lived as Catholic royals. Their secret—as is apparent from the book—is not the noun but the adjective: it wasn’t that they were royal but that they were Catholic.

Eduard starts out with finding a spouse, a process he lards with practical advice far more concrete than the “search for a soulmate” so ethereally commonplace today. Tops among that concrete advice is commonality of religion: find a Catholic spouse.  Pace the vow of silence we encounter from Catholic priests who ignore this question until they need some canonical waivers to permit the marriage, Habsburg minces no words: faith is “the first, best, and most important thing to look for in a spouse” (p. 31). You two know not what the future holds: 

You and your spouse have no idea how your decades of life together will unfold…Putting God at the center of your life will give you the best chance of handling whatever comes your way, particularly with the help of the Catholic Church. (p. 32)  

He also talks about the importance of premarital chastity at a time when fornication is considered a normal preliminary to marriage preparation.

He talks about engagement—especially in terms of committed decision—and marriage. But his focus is not on the readings for the nuptial Mass but rather the meaning of the sacrament of marriage itself.  

And, most importantly, he doesn’t leave off on the wedding day. Habsburg assumes what the Church has always assumed—an assumption increasingly under pressure in modern society—that the normal marriage turns into a family. Becoming a family is not some independent post-marital step that requires a separate justification: in fact, if you foreclose the possibility of parenthood, your marriage is invalid. Normal Catholic marriages lead to families. Marriage and procreation, in the ordinary course of things, go together. Again, Habsburg minces no words: “I strongly advocate for having children, having them as soon as possible, and having many” (p. 63, emphasis original).

He goes on to talk about building a family, including its extended dimensions—for example, the role of grandparents. He discusses things as varied as family traditions, cooking, outdoor activities, and schooling (including homeschooling).

Perhaps to some people’s surprise, he also devotes a chapter to death. That shouldn’t be surprising because we marry “until death do you part.” But Habsburg addresses the question of the family and death—death of parents and the increasingly rare experience by families of a family member’s death and how the family together engages it.

I’d send readers to pages 137–42, five pages of one-liners titled “A Habsburg Guide to Happiness.” They’re a good summary of the book itself; and, as pithy aphorisms, they capture the insights this book contains. The publisher should laminate them on a card to hand out in marriage prep courses.

Building a Wholesome Family is short: 145 pages. It reads well and personally. Eduard draws from his family’s history and his own experiences to reflect on what being a married Catholic means. It addresses marriage not just as a ceremony but as a lifetime, built around a Catholic vision of the person, his vocation, and his destiny. And everybody likes royal advice—especially successful royal advice.

Some might be surprised that a book I’d recommend for marriage preparation is titled Building a Wholesome Family. The increasing fraying of marriage and parenthood perhaps makes that connection seem more tenuous in the modern mind, but it is a connection Catholics make and celebrate. It’s why popes seem to need to remind people they should have kids.  

Put this book in the hands of couples preparing for marriage. Parents, give it to your teen kids. St. John Paul II called for “proximate” preparation for marriage—when people were old enough to be interested in the opposite sex but when there still was not a particular other in the picture—as a time to address these issues. It’s why this book belongs in religious education. Let’s be honest, though: with Confirmation preparation as the de facto sacrament of exodus from the Church until marriage and the paucity of young Catholics in high school catechesis, it may be tricky to see where to fit this in.

Full disclosure: I met Eduard Habsburg 36 years ago, when both of us—much younger and then unmarried men—spent a summer together at the Catholic University of Eichstätt in Bavaria. He was our group’s guide. I could see even then his love for his family tradition and, even more so, his love for his Church and faith. This book is a wonderful service to all of them.