Deacon Capaci: My best friend is my bride

Maybe it’s the Italian or the Y’at or the former furniture salesman in him, but when Deacon Drea Capaci spots a friend – or even a stranger – all bets are off for those who might prefer going through life with a 10-foot pole. He presses forward, flashing a smile as wide as the sofas he once sold for Walter Thorn Inc., and delivers, machine-gun style, words of spiritual affirmation and New Orleans street wisdom.

Deacon Capaci, who claims he graduated 246th out of 268 seniors at De La Salle High School, has never met Pope Francis. But if he ever does, he knows exactly what he would tell him. Something like, “Hey, brother, keep it real.”

“I think the spirit is definitely leading that guy,” said Deacon Capaci, who retired June 30 from the archdiocesan Family Life Apostolate after spending nearly a quarter-century, including the last nine as director, helping families and marriages survive and thrive. “I just like his whole deal: Get out of the rectories, sell those fancy cars and go meet the people where they are with the message of Jesus Christ.”

A regular guy
Deacon Capaci was ordained as a permanent deacon in 1985, but he is quick to point out he’s “no goody two-shoes” and “can drink a martini or two with the best of them.” Like Pope Francis, he’s a sinner, unworthy of the mysterious call to holy orders.

In many ways, Deacon Capaci and his wife Brenda represent the focus of Pope Francis’ two upcoming synods on the family in the fall of 2014 and 2015. These gatherings of the world’s bishops will invoke the Holy Spirit to provide a balance between justice and mercy when it comes to the pastoral care of real married people going through real struggles.

For many years, Deacon Capaci carried the pain of the dissolution of his first marriage. He had resigned himself to never marrying again because he did not want to separate himself from the grace of the Eucharist if he were to remarry without an annulment.

It took a priest with a listening ear – Father Ken Richard – to provide him with the hope that Deacon Capaci himself has tried to dispense over the last 23 years.

“He sat with me, literally, for 20 hours over a period of five or six days,” Deacon Capaci said. “I felt that pastoral care.”

After the annulment came through, he and Brenda married, and a few years later, he felt a stirring to enter formation for the permanent diaconate.

“Brenda went to every class with me,” said Deacon Capaci.

In 1991, Deacon Capaci joined the staff of the Family Life Apostolate and shared with Archbishop Francis Schulte what he thought could be done for Catholic couples who were divorced but who did not truly understand the annulment process. From that vision, the Archdiocese of New Orleans became the first in the country to offer annulment writing workshops.

“You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand why these other churches are growing, especially in Catholic areas,” Deacon Capaci said. “Many people who got married as young people got divorced and remarried. The annulment process in many cases is so drawn out and painful, and it’s cut many people off from being in full communion with the Catholic Church.

“Pope Francis is not saying he’s going to change the rules. He just wants us to look at some other ways we can improve and shorten the process. He’s talking a lot about the consolation of God. He just wants the bishops to discuss it.”

Marriage takes ‘three’
Deacon Capaci is now 73, and looking back at his own life and at his decades of marriage training, he says a great marriage takes three.

“The first thing is being a committed Roman Catholic,” Deacon Capaci said. “How can marriage work if we don’t use the grace given to us through the sacrament of matrimony? Every one of us has major problems – children, finances and worrying about all that stuff. How do we make it work without God being there?”

Since he and Brenda were married in 1977, they learned they needed to work hard on their marriage if it was to prosper.

“I love my wife, but what makes it work for us is that we work at being best friends,” Deacon Capaci said. “Are we the best friends all the time? Heck, no. I can get on anybody’s nerves. But we really work at being best friends. That’s a key for me.”

Deacon Capaci said part of that is self-awareness. As he shows in his daily conversations, he is a touchy feely person.

“My ‘love language’ is definitely touch and feel, but Brenda’s is not,” Deacon Capaci said. “Hers is spending time together. She’s open to my love language – touch and feel, and I’m not talking about sex. I have made a great effort to spend at least some time together watching a television program with her that I don’t even like. Knowing each other’s love language and knowing what the other needs is very important.

Importance of time together
“And, she keeps me to this – every week, we have a date night. We finally decided on a Wednesday night. Only Jesus can make us do something else that night. We’re also part of a strong, elder couple marriage support group that meets twice a month. We’ve been doing that for about 12 years. The oldest couple has been married for 58 years, and the youngest for 35. That’s been a powerful key to our success.”

Finances and intimacy are two of the most important things a married couple must get right, he said.

“There are a lot of forces out there,” Deacon Capaci said. “There’s a big problem with pornography and with the idea that sex is just an activity and not a commitment. Another thing is that even our Catholic culture seems to have accepted living together before marriage, even though we have proven that does not work. Most people say 45 percent of marriages end in divorce. If you’re living together before marriage, it’s almost 75 percent. These are not our marriage surveys. These are secular surveys. But even with that, parents are actually encouraging that. I speak out on that strongly.”

What’s the difference between living together and being married?

“Once you get married and you get mad, you can’t go away for two or three days or a week,” he said.

Even with all their self-awareness and training, the Capacis still get on each other’s nerves. Drea says he has a real problem with “over-scheduling” things, cutting into their couple time. Brenda, a school teacher, is a perfectionist who tries to return tests and homework assignments the very next day so her students can learn better, but that means a lot of late nights.

“The best advice I could give anyone is to live your faith and to spend time together,” Deacon Capaci said. “When we do the Days of the Engaged, we try to tell people that marriage is more than a contract between two people. We talk about the graces of the sacrament in comparison with baptism and confirmation. Some of the couples get it. They look up and realize, ‘Here’s this 70-year-old guy talking with his wife, and they actually seem to like each other.’’’

Retrouvaille: There is help
Deacon Capaci said the Retrouvaille program of the Catholic Church for couples with serious marriage problems is a true life-saver. The next Retrouvaille weekend is July 18-20 at Lumen Christi Retreat Center in Schriever in the Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux. Contact the Family Life Apostolate at 861-6243 for more information.

Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at [email protected].