Catholic and Protestant leaders praised the Bush administration for making $100 million in new funds available to programs that strengthen marriage in America.

After four years of rejecting President George W. Bush's Healthy Marriage Initiative, Congress passed the proposal May 16.

Five religious leaders and marriage advocates spoke about the initiative at a May 25 press conference in Washington hosted by Marriage Savers, a nonprofit organization that aims to reduce the nation's growing divorce rate.

"Marriage is the community's responsibility," said Bishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Knoxville, Tenn., chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Marriage and Family Life. "Good marriages cannot exist in a vacuum. We need to ... take action."

Bishop Kurtz said churches should have a sense of urgency about supporting healthy marriages. "We need more local parishes of hope and help for marriage," he said.

Mike McManus, founder and co-chair of Marriage Savers, said the purpose of the press event was to encourage Protestant and Catholic leaders to apply for federal aid to fund marriage programs and to urge their colleagues to consider doing the same.

According to McManus, efforts by Marriage Savers have decreased the rate of divorce and cohabitation in 100 cities.

Since 1986, McManus and his wife, Harriet, have created 202 Community Marriage Policies involving 10,000 pastors and priests. Under the policy, a pastor sends three couples to a marriage training program to learn how to help other couples.

With half of all marriages in the country ending in divorce, McManus believes churches need to take action.

Churches teach that marriage was the first institution created by God but they have been doing more work in areas other than marriage, according to McManus, who is Presbyterian.

Church leaders cannot just maintain "marriages between a man and a woman," but must "strengthen marriage," McManus said.

He hopes his Community Marriage Policies will encourage churches to "give marriages a shot in the arm." He suggested Catholics and Protestants work together to organize programs in their cities.

One Catholic parish with a successful marriage preparation program for engaged couples is the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception Parish in Portland, Maine.

Steve Beirne is a co-volunteer coordinator of the Unitis marriage preparation program at the Portland parish and is president of the National Association of Catholic Family Life Ministers.

The goal of Unitis is to welcome people into a faith community that will support their marriage, he said. It follows the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults model, which is a multistep process.

The core of the Unitis program is a seven-week marriage prep program, Beirne said. For every two or three couples, there is a sponsor couple who instructs them as a group and stays with them for the seven weeks, he told Catholic News Service in a telephone interview. During that time, relationships between the couples are formed, he added.

"Our parish (Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception) averages 40 to 50 weddings a year," Beirne said.

At Immaculate Conception, every couple is required to go through some sort of marriage preparation, Beirne said. Ninety percent of people married in Catholic parishes are required to go through some preparation before getting married, he noted.

Beirne said sponsor couples are currently being trained to help engaged couples with their wedding rehearsals.

A final feature of Unitis is a reunion at the parish, held six months after the group program. It allows sponsor couples and newlyweds to go over wedding albums and discuss anything the newlyweds need help with, he said.

After five years of running the program, Beirne said, he has seen a significant number of couples stay connected to the church and ongoing relationships develop between some of the newlywed couples and the sponsoring couples.

Each year couples who have been through the program become sponsors themselves, he said.

Restoring and strengthening heterosexual marriages was foremost in the minds of the religious leaders at the Washington press conference, and they said it is up to churches to help make this happen. In addition to the Catholic Church, other denominations represented were the Southern Baptists and evangelicals.

"Marriage is an endangered species," said Harry Jackson, chair of the High Impact Leadership Coalition of major black churches. "If we don't do something about (marriage), it will disintegrate. Two thirds of black couples were married in 1970; only a third are today."

---CNS