F.A.Q.

We thank you for your interest in joining a WCI married couple group!  
God's love is everlasting and His blessings know no end!  He invites us to dive deep into a relationship with Him together with your spouse.  Deepening your conjugal spirituality is so exciting! 

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What a great question! In this context, a “rule” would be a way of life or a set of guidelines to help direct your path, like a lantern on a dark road. When we first hear the word “rule,” it may come off as negative and oppressive, but this is just the opposite! St. John Paul II knew, even fifty years ago, that living our Christian faith in an increasingly anti-Christian culture, would require a higher level of virtue. In other words, we would need extra help! This Rule was meant to be that extra help, to guide spouses to know “how” to live the truth. It is one thing to understand “why” something is true intellectually, but to know “how” to live it out in the messiness of everyday life is more challenging. The Rule is the key to unlocking that “how” and moving beyond the struggle and find lasting joy!
St. John Paul II points the way to the profound holiness possible for spouses, and as this conjugal spirituality grows, he says, spouses can be so united that they have but one interior life!
Our book introduces the Rule, helps unpack it and examine what applying this rule to your marriage might look like.

Yes! It is so exciting! All three texts were part of a collection of works of St. John Paul II that were only recently rediscovered during the cause for his canonization. Our book includes the “Rule for Married Couple Groups” in Part One and two other texts: “Reflections on Marriage” & “Love is the Moral Foundation of Marriage” in Part Two, which were written within the same decade as the Rule.
Our book uses St. John Paul II’s own words from these other two texts to more fully understand what he meant within the Rule. The Rule itself is only six points.

St. John Paul II’s Rule gives spouses the key to unlock how to authentically live out their faith, grow in conjugal spirituality (their united relationship with God), and find lasting joy!

St. John Paul II’s Rule for Married Couple Groups is simple, but profound. He begins by explaining that this Rule was prompted by the promulgation of Humanae Vitae. He desires, through this Rule, to help couples live out this beautiful teaching that contains the theological core of all teaching on human love and sexuality. He also explains that it was created from understanding the experiences of actual couples he has helped as well as the theology of the Church, so we see this balance between the real and the ideal (something we see in his other writings as well). The following points explain the involvement of both spouses, and that this is not anything new necessarily, but simply allowing couples to more fully live out their Christian faith. The Rule’s main purpose is to build the couple’s conjugal spirituality, which is their united relationship with God. He says, spouses can be so united that they have but one interior life. (How beautiful would that be!) Prayer, going outward in loving service, and a formal commitment to the Rule are all part of the Rule as well.

St. John Paul II wrote the Rule right after HV was promulgated. He saw HV as containing the core of truth of all teaching on love and sexuality and the Rule’s purpose then is to help couples “actuate,” or make real within their everyday life this teaching. He himself said that the Married Couple Groups that live out the Rule could also rightly be called Humanae Vitae Groups.

Reading the Rule and his other two texts, you would be surprised they were written fifty years ago! He speaks of an increasingly anti-Christian culture and of the world pressing in upon faithful couples, and how it can feel like a “dead end” for us to hold onto the truth of our faith. He did write this over fifty years ago, but reading it, it sounds like it was written for married couples today! Perhaps God saved it for exactly the time it would be most needed. (The late Dr. Stanisław Grygiel, personal friend of JPII, said exactly this in his endorsement of our book: “Great texts are like treasures that are excavated from hidden places often after many years, yet precisely in the time that has need of them and, in which, they can be best understood.  This text is "The Rule for Married Couple Groups” written by St. John Paul II, which spouses, Theresa and Peter Martin, offer us in The Rule; they offer it together with their own wise reflection, born of their experience of the spiritual life, proper to married and family life.”)

Conjugal spirituality is the relationship between God and the spouses, united as one. This new relationship is formed through the Sacrament of Marriage. This real spiritual union can be so profound, John Paul II says, that the spouses have but one interior life! Conjugal spirituality is also the key to finding unshakable joy and peace in your marriage. The Rule helps unlock this amazing gift of grace!

The uniqueness of the WCI is found in The Rule for married couple groups written by St. John Paul II.  
He wrote The Rule in order to help couples support each other in living the truth of Humanae Vitae.  He recognized the need for community so that couples could share their real struggles and support each other in our path to holiness.  
The Rule allows couples to not merely follow the rules of our faith, but orient our whole selves to Christ, deepen our conjugal spirituality and live our faith with lasting Joy!  No other community exists in the Church which has taken The Rule of Cardinal Wojtyła and implemented it in a formal way.