While he’s been a licensed therapist for more than 30 years, working with audiences as diverse as hospice, crisis counseling and outpatient mental health, the author of the Catholic marriage programs Discovering Our Deepest Desire and Building a Eucharistic Marriage Greg Schutte began focusing on marriage in 2006. That’s when he joined the Elizabeth New Life Center (ENLC), a pro-life pregnancy resource center that forms the parent organization for Marriage Works! Ohio. In a rather unusual but prescient move, this ministry focuses not just on women facing an unplanned pregnancy but also prioritizes strengthening marriages and educating high school and middle school youth on healthy relationship building.

Greg joined ENLC as Director of Programming, which included relationship and marriage enrichment as well as teen sexual risk avoidance education. Its Youth Education department — through the use of the Go for the Gold program, as well as a few other curriculums — has served tens of thousands of middle and high school students in a seven-county region. Local priests began asking Greg to also start providing counseling to couples, which was not part of his original duties, as he was a trusted source in the area who aligned his techniques with Catholic and ecumenical Christian teaching.

In 2012 he took an inventory of materials available for marriage enrichment in his Archdiocese and found a dearth of good offerings.

“As a therapist I’m seeing marriages dying in the shadows of their homes,” he said. “People are desperate for something to help.”

The lack sparked Greg, with permission from his Executive Director, to write the original Discovering our Deepest Desire (DODD) marriage enrichment program. The course has since been translated into Spanish and both versions have received an Imprimatur from the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. (For those less versed in Catholic terminology, an Imprimatur serves as the official “seal of approval” that the information is in keeping with Catholic theology and doctrine.)

“The DODD program mirrors my own path to marital healing. That’s one way I know it works,” he said. “In therapy, most people complain about poor communication being their primary area of struggle, but I don’t focus on that first. They need some foundational issues addressed first. I ask them about time. Do you make time for each other? Anything else I teach you will be undermined if you won’t commit the time for your relationship. Are you intentional or complacent about investing in your marriage covenant? When we were dating, we listened, paid attention, figured out what the other person liked and didn’t like. We intentionally did things to win the other person’s heart and to build the connection between us. You need to be intentional about wooing each other throughout married life, because when you stop, you continue to divide.”

While trained as a therapist, Greg’s interest in supporting marriages also drew from a low point in his own. After ten years and four (of their now seven) children, he and his wife, Stephanie, had fallen into the pattern of busyness, frustration with each other, and disconnection. “Out of necessity, a lot of what we did was ‘divide and conquer,’ without making time to connect, which wreaked havoc in our relationship,” Greg said. “I approached my wife after going to confession one day, because I was at my wit’s end with the disunity in our marriage.” Stephanie laid out the ways he had fallen short and told him she was “praying to fall back in love with you.”

“What started out as an excruciatingly painful statement from my beloved turned out to be one of the greatest graces she could have given,” Greg said. “Her words started me on a journey of self-reflection, self-correcting, and eventual marital healing.” He knew that he, like Stephanie, needed to return to the source of true healing – God.

“There’s an abundance of grace that flows from the marriage covenant, and often we  don’t tap into it,” he said. “Prayer has to be at the center of that. Do you know what would save marriages today? Couples praying together!”

He admits that it’s a struggle to get couples who can’t even talk civilly with each other, to pray together. “It’s such an intimate thing to do. But God’s right there. You don’t have to win his heart or use a certain formula. Just talk to him – together.”

DODD is designed to be 12 sessions long. Greg believes the approach of learning over time offers couples the opportunity for lasting change through building new patterns of making time for their spouse on a regular basis. “So many people want to fix their marriage in a weekend,” he said. “A weekend inspires change, but when you start falling back in love you want more.”

Through some pushback from constituents about the 12-week length of the curriculum, Greg decided to utilize key components from it to make a seven-week course that could have a similar impact on strengthening marriages. As he started this process, reflecting on what he taught in the DODD program and also what he utilized in therapy, he realized how the connections between husband and wife greatly parallel their relationship with Christ in the Mass and sacraments.

So, in 2017 Greg gleaned from DODD to write a seven-session marriage enrichment course called Building a Eucharistic Marriage (BAEM), which addresses seven key areas to strengthen marriage, and is a skills-based course that also is based on the therapeutic model for change. In this course he connects seven areas for therapeutically strengthening marriage with seven areas of deepening relationship with Christ in and through the Eucharist. He combined evidence-based skills with Catholic doctrine and Scripture designed to develop both relationships. “We’re building two relationships at the same time,” he said.

Greg also has a similar curriculum to the 12-session DODD called Rekindling the Heart (RTH) that is specifically for those of non-Catholic Christian faith, which utilizes the same proven marriage-strengthening information connected to the Scriptural teachings of Christ. He also tailored a similar seven-week course out of RTH based on the Road to Emmaus experience.

He’s found that teaching while accompanying a couple as they wrestle with their problems and come out on the other side stronger in their marriage to be extremely lifegiving. One participant told Greg how grateful he was for going through the BAEM course. He and his wife had been struggling, but they found much benefit from working through the communication tool. Not long afterward, the wife succumbed to cancer and died six months after completing the course. The husband told Greg he was so thankful they had gone through the class because they were able to connect and enjoy the time they had left. “That’s what’s so meaningful,” Greg said. 

The Mass and the Eucharist are central to the Catholic faith, as we believe that the Eucharist truly becomes Christ. The Mass comes alive when we realize Christ’s sacrifice feeds us spiritually, and then we are called to go forth and feed each other,” Greg said.

Greg uses an example of the opposite of feeding when counseling couples who are stuck in finger pointing and blame. He’s asked, “If I gave you the opportunity to starve each other to death, would you do it?” Couples say, “No!” Greg points out that spouses are meant to be each other’s helpmate, to help feed each other’s needs. “After a while, when emotional needs aren’t met, people and marriages starve (emotionally). People get that concept of starving.”

He taught the BAEM courses locally for several years before a generous donor made it possible for him—with the help of Blackstone Films and Revive Parishes — to then develop an on-line video course in 2021. Since that time the Building a Eucharistic Marriage online course has been sponsored by more than 22 dioceses nationwide.

Sessions open with the Schuttes sharing their experiences of how they fell short in their own marriage. Greg then talks from his experience as a therapist on the key concepts in the program. After this, a priest connects the topic to our relationship with Christ and the Eucharist. Finally, Greg and Stephanie close with examples of how they’ve grown in each particular area of marriage.

At first Greg and Stephanie were skeptical that an online course could wield the same impact as one held in person. Then comments started popping up on the website. Two couples that went through the video series at their parish with a group of other couples and a lead couple stated that it “saved their marriage” from divorce. “Thank God!” Greg said. Another wife said she didn’t realize when she and her husband had stopped thinking the best of each other. In their difficulty, the other became the enemy. “So many people want the best for each other,” Greg said. “The problem isn’t the intent, it’s the method.”

The BAEM online course provides options for couples who want to purchase an individual copy or for parishes who would like to purchase a license for running the video series at their parish, which gives them the ability to download as many participant guides as they would need now and in the future. It also comes with instructions on how to run the program, advertising options, and includes a 50% off code for an unlimited number of individual packages of the video series, for those who go through the course who want to have it for their very own. Those interested can go to www.eucharisticmarriage.org and click the course description tab to view a portion of the video series and the couples guide.

“We just want to get it in people’s hands so they can experience it,” he said. “We are not only trying to build couples’ marriages with a faith-based connection, we are trying to build their relationship with Christ.”

A lesson he and Stephanie learned has found its way into their testimony: hurts healed by the Holy Spirit can be forgotten.

“We changed the pattern,” Greg said. “It’s when things are not dealt with and keep being brushed under the carpet that we fall back on old patterns and bring up the past.

“We did the work. We are not the same people. It’s natural to forget or rarely think about something because we are not dealing with it anymore. I tell that to people who are stuck in unforgiveness.”

He challenges couples with, “Are you willing to look inside yourself to recognize the patterns that need to change and then actively change them? Or do you want to continue to point the finger at your spouse?” The course helps couples change unhealthy or unhelpful patterns using a skills-based, cognitive behavioral method. “We don’t have to continue in the old way,” he reminds people.

“Until you forgive, you can’t rebuild trust, and you can’t move forward. You don’t have to be ruled by the past. You can create a new path forward!”

One technique he uses is to ask people if they would brush their teeth with their non-dominant hand if they knew it would fix their marital problems. (The concentration required is an intentional representation of how to try something different to get out of old habits and to build new muscle memory.) One couple shocked him when they both blurted out, “No!” “I was dumbfounded!” he said. But the admission sparked the couple to recognize their stubbornness and unwillingness to change. They came back to Greg later ready to work.

Greg believes that, through the power of the Holy Spirit, even couples facing egregious circumstances can heal. “If they are willing to do the work, there’s hope. But there’s little I can do if they are unwilling.”

Do the work. Find hope. Learn more at www.eucharisticmarriage.org, where you can also find podcasts and sign up to have Tuesday Marriage Tips delivered to your inbox.