Last Friday I was the subject of a Page One story by USA Today. It questioned my integrity, which has never before been challenged. Frankly, it has been a stunning experience, which has taken time for me to absorb. What's particularly painful, I write a column called ‘Ethics & Religion' and am guilty of an ethical lapse. How did this happen?

At the heart of the story are two facts. First, a non-profit group I am president of, Marriage Savers, received $10,200 from the Department of Health and Human Services to meet with local leaders organising Healthy Marriage Initiatives. HHS recognised that Marriage Savers has developed proven ways to reduce the divorce rate, by organising churches to adopt a Community Marriage Policy. HHS wanted to transplant this successful strategy to other cities.

Second, I wrote columns praising the Administration for its Healthy Marriage Initiative, without disclosing that Marriage Savers had received a consulting fee. In retrospect, that was a conflict of interest. I am truly sorry. I ask the forgiveness of newspapers publishing my column and of you, as readers. I was not hired to promote Bush Administration policies. Rather, Marriage Savers was compensated for time and travel to share an effective model for reducing divorce and strengthening marriage, a message I have shared since 1981 as a columnist and since 1996 as President and Co-Founder of Marriage Savers.

A Community Marriage Policy (CMP) is an agreement by a cross-section of clergy from many denominations in a local area to take steps in their congregations to strengthen marriage by offering thorough marriage preparation, marital enrichment, restoration of couples in crisis, helping the separated to reconcile and enabling stepfamilies to succeed.

According to an independent study by the Institute for Research and Evaluation, in the first114 cities with a CMP, divorces fell 17.5 percent on average over seven years, or double the 9.4 percent decline of similar cities. Dr. Stan Weed, president of the Institute, told the National Press Club that in the 114 cities “about 31,000 divorces were averted, and that is a conservative estimate. It is not at all unreasonable to say there were 50,000.” Those figures are through 2001, and do not include four additional years or the fact there are now 191 CMPs.

Furthermore, the study, published in Family Relations in October, reported that the cohabitation rate also fell in the CMP counties from 1990-2000 by 13.4 percent while it rose in comparable counties by 19.2 percent. No other marital intervention has been so successful. How were divorce and cohabitation rates reduced? With solutions I first began reporting in this column in 1981, my first year of writing it. For example, if churches give engaged couples “pre-marital inventory”, a detailed questionnaire offering an objective view of their relationship, a tenth of the couples decided not to marry. Studies show that those who broke up had scores equal to those who married and later divorced. Thus, those who separated avoided a bad marriage before it began. Second, if the inventory is reviewed by mentor couples, rather than a pastor, the divorce rate falls below five percent.

In 1983, newspapers publishing my column invited me to speak to local clergy about such marital interventions. I suggested that all churches in a city require every engaged couple to take an inventory and meet with trained mentor couples in a Community Marriage Policy. The clergy of Modesto, California - 95 pastors, priests and one rabbi - were the first to create a CMP at my suggestion in 1986. Its divorce rate is down 57 percent. I wrote a book which motivated pastors in many cities to start CMPs. My wife and I created Marriage Savers in 1996 to hire a small staff to manage the work.

By 1999 100 cities signed up, two years before George W. Bush was in office. As President, he proposed spending $200 million to promote “healthy marriages.” Congress never passed the bill, but HHS encouraged local leaders to create “Healthy Marriage Initiatives” built partly on the CMP model. As part of that effort, I was invited to speak to local leaders about how to organise the faith community. I perceived it as a natural extension of my work that conflicted in no way with this column that covered all major denominations and moral issues such as pornography, abortion, famine, Supreme Court cases, marriage and divorce. As a columnist, I thought I was balanced in my coverage of the Administration. I wrote columns condemning for not enforcing obscenity laws and its lack of a global warming policy during the campaign. I did praise its Healthy Marriage Initiative. But I did not disclose that I had received funding to help advance it. That was wrong. I ask your forgiveness.