PMRC
The Pastoral and Matrimonial Renewal Center (PMRC)
Father Chuck Gallagher, S.J. Founder
The Pastoral and Matrimonial Renewal Center (PMRC) is an international network of priests and couples founded by Fr. Chuck Gallagher, S.J. who design, develop, promote and facilitate life-changing and empowering parish-based programs, retreats, and resources focused on the Sacrament of Matrimony as a model and prophetic sign to the church. Funded in the spirituality of St. Ignatius of Loyola, we integrate the latest research from the sciences with the rich wisdom of the church. Our approach is to provide practical applications of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body presented in the language of the culture and fleshed out with authentic witness.
The heart of the PMRC is a growing base of couples striving to live passionate sacramental marriages in order to evangelize the next generation while making Christ’s presence manifest in our own families and parishes.
The mission of the PMRC extends to the entire Body of Christ and is focused on evangelization, conversion, empowerment, and lay leadership training.
The PMRC is the repository of all the works of Fr. Chuck Gallagher and seeks to preserve these in their original form for historical purposes while continuing to update and repackage his timeless insights and prophetic vision to impact those embracing the sacrament of marriage in the current age. Original hardcopy manuscripts, audio, and visual artifacts are in the process of being converted to digital media formats and will be posted to this website as they become available.
You may access Fr Chuck’s work here.
Ron and Kathy Feher
Current Leadership
The current Directors of the PMRC are Ron and Kathy Feher. Working directly Fr Chuck since 1983, Ron and Kathy officially incorporated the PMRC as a non-profit, publicly funded charitable organization (IRS 501 (C)(3)) in the State of Pennsylvania in 2001, and have served as Officers of the Corporation and Members of the Board of Directors ever since.
Access more about Ron and Kathy here.
Current Programs
Today, the PMRC is primarily focused on promoting the Living in Love suite of programs that provides a comprehensive and systematic program of marriage education for teens, engaged, newlyweds, and married couples. These programs build on over 40 years of lived experience and predecessor programs that have been used effectively throughout the world.
Every Day in Love – A new “out of the box” video-based marriage enrichment series featuring four upbeat, engaging, and empowering three-hour sessions with state of the art printed material:
• “Smart Loving”
• “The Passionate Couple”
• “Talking with Purpose”
• “Living the Dream”
Each session is packed with practical strategies, everyday skills, liberating insights, and experiential exercises. The perfect date night and ideal adult learning experience based on the popular Living in Love Every Day skills course but with many more engaging, simpler exercises, razor-focused concepts, and no required retreat prerequisite. While the ideal is to make all four sessions, each can stand alone and is open to all.
Living in Love – A day and a half retreat workshop for married couples created in 1989 and originally conceived as a follow on to Marriage Encounter. Marriage Encounter is however not a pre-requisite for this parish-based experience of sacramental empowerment that is completely complementary to the Marriage Encounter experience and offers a uniquely male friendly, positive, back-to-basics approach to living the sacrament of marriage as a joy-filled Theology of the Body lifestyle.
Preparing to Live in Love – A 14 hour program of parish-based marriage preparation designed to be delivered in 7 two-hour sessions by a trained married Mentor couple working one-on-one with an engaged couple in the comfort and privacy of their living room. Created in 2003, Preparing to Live in love teaches Theology of the Body life skills within the framework of Catholic marriage preparation. It builds on and is intended to replace Engaged Encounter and Evenings for the Engaged as the preferred program for marriage preparation.
Matrimony, an Invitation to Live in Love – A program of 11 one-hour sessions of remote marriage education for teens designed to be presented by a married couple who is authentically living in love to small groups of teens in a living room, parish facility, or high school classroom. Developed in 2013, the Matrimony course for teens uses the same paradigm as the earlier Matrimony, Jesus Invites Us To Love, but adds
the insights from the Theology of the Body that were not available in the earlier program.
History
The Pastoral and Matrimonial Renewal Center grew out of the early Marriage Encounter Movement. By the mid 1970’s, Fr Chuck had started gathering couples who had experienced Worldwide Marriage Encounter and were interested in applying the developing insights about relationship to a wider variety of church and family contexts. In conjunction with these couples, Fr Chuck began writing and producing programs including but not limited to the Crusade for Parents (Hooray for Parents), We the Parish, and Matrimony, Jesus Invites Us To Love. Around 1978, Fr Chuck set up an Office in Elizabeth, NJ and started answering the phone, “Pastoral and Matrimonial Renewal Center.”
After ten years of full time Marriage Encounter Ministry, 1968-1978, Fr Chuck devoted himself to a new wave of parish-based programs focused first on the Parish Renewal Experience aka Call to be Catholic. He personally trained 10% of the priest population in the United States to facilitate the Parish Renewal in their home parishes as well as making a huge impact in the Philippines and Australia where Ron and Mavis Pirola began promoting all of Fr Chuck’s programs in the name of the PMRC.
Working with a core group of couples and priests in the early 1980’s, Fr Chuck and John and Kathy Colligan (first Co-Directors of the PMRC) produced the Parishioner Empowerment Weekend, Barnabas (for single adults), Luke 18 (for middle school children), Calling Disciples, the Parish Family Weekend, and the Parish Healing Weekend which are all considered PMRC programs.
In 1989, Fr Chuck and Ron and Kathy Feher created Living in Love aka Celebrate Love which Fr Chuck followed up with a series of Celebrate Love booklets and Evenings of Joy and Inspiration for Parish Leaders. In 2003, Ron and Kathy introduced Preparing to Live in Love and soon followed with Living in Love Every Day in 2005. Most recently, Ron and Kathy created Matrimony, An Invitation To Live in Love.
Francine and Byron Pirola, Kathy and Ron Feher
Byron and Francine Pirola of Syndey, Australia experienced Living in Love in Dec 1989 and assisted Fr Chuck and Ron and Kathy Feher in documenting the early program. When they returned to Sydney in 1992, they took the program with them and repackaged it for the Aussie culture keeping the original name, Celebrate Love. In 2003, Francine did the graphic design layout for the Preparing to Love Couple Pack. Since then, they have formalized and expanded the PMRC in Australia rebranding as the Marriage Resource Center and focused on engaging the culture with high quality media production.
Access the PMRC Australia here.
