Interview: National marriage ministry director speaks on new partnership with California bishops to combat statewide marriage crisis

The California Catholic Conference recently announced a historic partnership with Communio, a national marriage ministry, to provide every parish in the state with resources supporting marriage renewal, healing, and enrichment. The partnership is an investment in relational ministry, according to Communio Director of Church Growth Damon Owens, who said that such focus is urgently needed across the nation. 

“We’re witnessing a collapse in marriage right now,” he told CatholicVote in a Sept. 4 email interview. 

According to Owens, there has been a 61% decline in marriages since 1970. Many youths are growing up without married parents in the home, he added.  

“That has a direct impact on the faith,” Owens continued. “Literally every element of parish life ebbs and flows with the health and vitality of family life: Mass attendance, sacramental preparation, evangelization, parish engagement, schools, OCIA…you name it.” 

Communio also conducted a Nationwide Study on Faith and Relationships and found that one in five couples in the pews on Sundays report that their marriage is struggling. In its efforts to counter this trend, Communio’s relational ministry resources have helped a number of couples in crisis find healing.  

“One couple in Florida struggled for years with infidelity and substance abuse that all but destroyed their marriage,” Owens said. 

However, the couple continued going to church and ministry events run by Communio. 

Owens said that the wife told Communio, “We didn’t even realize it at the time, but we kept ending up at Communio events. They gave us these little moments of peace.” 

A turning point toward healing came when the couple went to a Communio-supported marriage enrichment retreat through their parish. The retreat gave them tools that they now credit “with giving them the motivation and path towards reconciliation,” Owens said. “Now they describe themselves as ‘better than we were even at the beginning of our marriage.’”

According to Owens, while many parishes invest in youth ministry, 82% of US parishes report spending $0 on relational ministry. Supporting the latter can help reinforce the former, he argued. 

“As crucial as youth ministry is to keep and nurture our kids in the faith,” Owens said, “we recognize the problem of youth leaving the church as really the ‘smoke’ from the ‘fire’ of the collapse of marriage and family life.”

The California Catholic Conference, which represents the Catholic bishops of the state in matters of public policy, announced the historic partnership with Communio in an Aug. 20 press release.

“In John 10:10, the Lord said that he came so that we would have life and have it more abundantly. We know that strong marriages and healthy families help us to have this abundant life, so we are excited to partner with Communio,” said Bishop Timothy Freyer, auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Orange and an executive officer for the CCC.

The release stated that “California needs targeted solutions to the family and population crisis now more than ever,” noting that reports indicate that the growth of the state’s population is historically low and that marriage and family stability in the state has “significantly worsened over the last several years.”

According to the release, Communio’s relationship ministry model, which every California parish will now have access to thanks to the partnership, is credited with a 24% drop in the divorce rate in Jacksonville, Florida. 

Owens told CatholicVote that he reached out to Kathleen Domingo, executive director of the CCC, after reading in March 2024 about the California bishops’ Radiate Love initiative, which offered pro-family and pro-marriage resources.

“I recall being deeply impressed by their collaborative vision and proactive efforts to strengthen marriage in a state historically hostile to marriage,” he said. 

He asked Domingo about the bishops’ long-term goals and explained Communio’s model, and said Domingo “immediately recognized Communio as a long-term strategy for success for Radiate Love.” 

He explained that Communio has worked with some of the California bishops before, but Domingo’s proposal to the bishops presented a united engagement with the ministry that would include every diocese. 

“Though a massive engagement on paper — 1,074 parishes 11.6 million Catholics, and the largest state in the US — it is precisely the unity of all of the bishops on the urgency of marriage renewal that makes this engagement so unique, exciting, and a model for other statewide bishop conferences,” Owens said.

With the bishops’ investment, California parishes can access customized surveys and analysis, planning, consulting, and technology at a significant discount, Owens explained. Parish leaders can use the tools to better assess and serve their parish’s relational health needs. The model also has “a dedicated Communio staff member assigned to the parish to build your local team, review your current offerings, and develop a custom plan to attract and serve new and current parishioners,” Owens said. 

According to Owens, parish partners that have used Communio Foundation experienced an average increase of 22% in Mass attendance, and 70% of couples in crisis marriages report “substantial improvement.”

There was a couple from Kansas whose marriage was “near collapse,” Owens said. They both came from divorced homes and “explained that their unhealthy communication and conflict resolution habits led them further and further apart, leading to a place of deep unfulfillment and seeking to combat loneliness through pornography. The wife reached a point where she wanted a divorce, but God had been working through her husband, restoring him spiritually so that he had the grace to fight to save their marriage.” 

“They began the journey of healing before Communio came to their parish, then continued with the ministry resources provided,” Owens said. “Today, they have shared their testimony with others and are actively involved as volunteers within the Communio-supported marriage ministry at their parish.”

For those interested in such relational support, the partnership with Communio will officially launch Sept. 26 at Radiate Love’s Love In Real Life Marriage Summit in Oakland, California.