ANALYSIS OF THE SPIRITUAL AND MORAL MATURITY OF THE PARTICIPANTS OF MARRIAGE PREPARATION COURSES REPRESENTATION AND IMPORTANCE OF GOSPEL VALUES IN PREPARATION FOR MARRIAGE

Today, the discourse on marriage and marital life is no longer as straightforward as it may have been about 50 years ago. Namely, different forms of cohabitation have been increasingly coming to the forefront: extramarital cohabitation, or living together with-out getting married, premarital cohabitation, trial marriages, and other various forms of free love. These >> emerging << and increasingly prevalent forms of cohabitation have been becoming more attractive and accepted, arousing the interest of society, and par-ticularly the Church, which stands before the community as a sacrament of the closest union with God, seeking to fulfil her mission in the world - the salvation of people. This departure from the traditional form of marriage is not a natural course of action for the Church, but rather a spiritual and moral concern caused by a departure from God. Therefore, even this research, in which 1688 engaged couples from the Archdio-cese of Zagreb took part, showed that despite the traditional view of marriage, there is still a practical concern that encourages the Church to further reflect critically on her pastoral approach to marriage preparation. Thus, the article presents a research of attitudes, views and relation of engaged couples toward marriage and requirements of marriage. At the same time, the authors attempt to present how the traditional vision of marriage in the Church as divine right affect, or fail to affect, engaged couples, and how much they agree with or accept the reality that marriage is above all a divine right.