Newlyweds
Sacred Sexuality: Energising the Prophetic Role of Matrimony
Sacred Sexuality: Energising the Prophetic Role of Matrimony – Dr Byron & Francine Pirola How does one present the wisdom of the Church to mainstream Catholics and families in today’s culture? Since the Second Vatican council, the social landscape has changed dramatically making the transmission of Catholic values more difficult. Open hostility from the secular…
Read MoreMeet Your Spouse’s Love Needs & Avoid Your Spouse’s Love Busters
If you want to love your spouse well you’ll need to focus on meeting his/her love needs and avoiding his/her love busters. It’s pretty simple really… once you know what they are! So make an action plan: a. List your spouse’s top five Love Needs and top five Love Busters. (To find out more…
Read MoreKnow Your Spouse’s Unique Love Profile
Falling in love is a conversion experience. Most of us start out as self-centred individuals and suddenly find ourselves caring more about someone else’s happiness than we do our own. Some of the joy that we associate with being ‘in love’ is really that freedom to be outside of ourselves, caught up in the goodness…
Read MoreNew Product: Grateful
Joy-filled Couples We all love to be around joy-filled couples. Their good humour and welcoming generosity make their homes places of hospitality for all their visitors and friends. People leave their presence refreshed and uplifted by their joyous delight in each other. A well-developed sense of gratitude is one of the distinguishing characteristics of happy…
Read MoreTwo of Us: Topics of Conversation
A couple exercise to examine the patterns of our communication Reflect Separately, say the prayer and spend some time reflecting on the questions. Write some notes so that you can share more fully with your spouse. Prayer Father, I thank you for you and I thank you for myself and I thank you for…
Read MoreTruth on Tap 2012
SmartLoving: Relationships that really work from dating to marriage Last week, Francine and Byron Pirola spoke to the youth at Truth on Tap in the Brookvale pub. They addressed key issues surrounding marriage breakdowns and focused on the concept of ‘Smart Loving’: how to love your spouse or fiancé so that both are cared for…
Read MoreThe Language of Love
A sacrament makes visible in a human way something that is invisible or spiritual. In other words, a sacrament images and reveals the mystery of God. Every sacrament has two key aspects which make the sacrament visible: words and gesture. In marriage, the sacramental words are the wedding vows, in effect “I freely give myself…
Read MoreThe Pill and Partner Choice
It has long been known that hormonal contraceptives diminish a woman’s natural sexual drive (also called ‘libido’). Now there is real life evidence that the Pill also affects a woman’s partner choice. In a study published in Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, the authors speculate that hormonal contraceptive use before marriage could have a long lasting impact…
Read MoreReconciliation
Love means more than saying “I’m sorry”. There’s a difference between the ‘I’ centred statement “I’m sorry”, and the other centred statement, “Will you please forgive me?” The ‘I’ centred statement simply acknowledges a fact. A person might recognise that they behaved poorly, inconsiderately, insensitively, thoughtlessly or carelessly. They might also just want to move…
Read MoreNew Product: Sexuality as Gift
In a world where sexuality is crassly exploited it can be difficult to connect with its giftedness. Yet gift it is: given by God to each man or woman to draw him or her into love. To be human is to be sexual. Sexuality is fundamental to being human – after all, every single cell…
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