cohabitation, the new norm?

[Contarini]

A moral burden? In what way? I’ve always understood one of the purposes of a public (not big) wedding

Exactly. I’m talking about the months of preparation necessary. My wife and I dealt with it OK, partly because I spent several months of that time in Germany and after I returned she was living in New Jersey and I in North Carolina. But there seems to be a very widespread phenomenon of young people having intercourse while engaged because they feel as if it is OK. Sure, it would demonstrate more self-control for them to wait (I have great admiration for the Victorians who sometimes had engagements of ten or twenty years, though the reasons for the delay were frequently materialistic), but there is no particular moral reason why they should, if they are actually ready to make binding vows.

Edwin

 

[JimG]

Exactly. I’m talking about the months of preparation necessary. My wife and I dealt with it OK, partly because I spent several months of that time in Germany and after I returned she was living in New Jersey and I in North Carolina. But there seems to be a very widespread phenomenon of young people having intercourse while engaged because they feel as if it is OK. Sure, it would demonstrate more self-control for them to wait (I have great admiration for the Victorians who sometimes had engagements of ten or twenty years, though the reasons for the delay were frequently materialistic), but there is no particular moral reason why they should, if they are actually ready to make binding vows.

Edwin

Yes, if they are ready to make binding vows, they should marry. No need to wait and save up for a huge wedding at great expense. Small public weddings are still weddings, and equally binding.

 

[ArchRemmy]

My grandparents didn’t cohabitate before marriage. My parents, aunts, and uncles did not (mostly) and now my cousins who are married, as well as myself, did not cohabitate. I give my grandparents a lot of credit.

 

[kbharbert]

Exactly. I’m talking about the months of preparation necessary. My wife and I dealt with it OK, partly because I spent several months of that time in Germany and after I returned she was living in New Jersey and I in North Carolina. But there seems to be a very widespread phenomenon of young people having intercourse while engaged because they feel as if it is OK. Sure, it would demonstrate more self-control for them to wait (I have great admiration for the Victorians who sometimes had engagements of ten or twenty years, though the reasons for the delay were frequently materialistic), but there is no particular moral reason why they should, if they are actually ready to make binding vows.

Edwin

i’m not sure i understand what you mean when you say there is no particular moral reason to wait if a couple is ready to make their vows.
being ‘ready to’ doesn’t mean they ‘have’ so the morality of the situation isn’t negated.

 

[edwest2]

It should not be a norm when it includes fornication. Sin is sin, period. If money is an issue, then get married in a small service. What, a big ceremony and reception is more important than a proper, holy commitment before God and man?

God bless,
Ed

 

[topcat71]

Hi everyone. I’m new here because I’m looking for answers for my teenage son. He believes that living with someone before marriage is ok. He says that he does not plan to have sex before marriage but living with someone is ok. He believes that he can overcome the temptation and not ever have sex with the woman he lives with. I tried to explain although temptation isn’t a sin, putting yourself in temptations way is a sin. Am I wrong here? Am I saying the wrong thing? I need some back up!

How can I explain that living together before marriage is not the way to go. The child is highly intelligent, he completed school and is now attending college. He demands facts. I personally, am not a fact person. I believe and have faith. I need something to back up my beliefs. Can anyone tell me where in the Bible or other writings where it would address this issue? He needs to see this in order to believe it is wrong.

I would appreciate any help in the matter. Thanks in advance.
~Sky

 

[topcat71]

My wife and I have been married for 51 years. We did not live together or even talk about that kind of thing. Now after all these years we both are real proud of ourselves for thinking of God before the usual norm. When it comes time for us to pass on we look forward to at least entering Purgatory. Satan says “do it” so he may have your soul. Let your conscience be your guide. It will come back to haunt you dearly.

 

[Contarini]

i’m not sure i understand what you mean when you say there is no particular moral reason to wait if a couple is ready to make their vows.
being ‘ready to’ doesn’t mean they ‘have’ so the morality of the situation isn’t negated.

What I’m saying is that if they have decided for sure that they are going to commit themselves to each other for life, there is no reason not to go ahead and do so. And if it takes months to get family and friends together for a big celebration of this commitment, well then that celebration should be clearly marked as a celebration of something that has already happened. This isn’t a big deal for everyone, and indeed not everyone is ready to get married as soon as they propose–I think for me it was helpful to have a year after proposing to make sure that I really wanted to do this (and obviously in that context sexual intercourse would have been immoral). I also agree with the point that a public ceremony helps cement the irrevocable nature of what has happened (the witnesses to the marriage are, rightly considered, responsible for helping the couple stay together), and God knows we don’t need anything that would weaken people’s sense of the irrevocability of marriage.

My point is simply that if people find self-control before marriage difficult, a long engagement pending elaborate wedding arrangements (in our case it wasn’t anything fancy or extravagant in itself, but a lot of people were invited and the place we chose was in high demand) is an unnecessary moral burden. Redefining the “big” ceremony as a blessing of what has already occurred, and having an earlier marriage ceremony in front of a few witnesses, might solve the problem to which the article in question is referring. I agree that the authors’ approach and terminology is confusing at best. Particularly annoying is the assumption that all these nice modern young people can’t possibly be doing anything immoral, so we must find a way to make their existing practices OK.

Edwin

 

[JimG]

Somehow I suspect that having a small wedding ceremony (not just a ‘betrothal’), followed somewhat later by a larger celebration acknowledging what has already occurred–i.e. that they are married–would not be all that popular with many couples.

It could be that they prefer simple cohabitation precisely because of its lack of commitment.

 

[edwest2]

I agree. No matter how many commitment-like words are exchanged, either person is free to walk out at any time.

God bless,
Ed

 

[fellowChristian]

There is still hope!

My grandmother and father always stressed the importance of marrying in the church and prayed for me.

My husband and I have stressed it with our own children and pray for them also.

Our daughter’s boyfriend spends every Sunday with us going to Mass and spends time with us after.

After letting his parents know (Catholics who don’t think church is vital) his intentions of asking for our daughter’s hand, he came to us and asked for permission to marry our daughter!

Then he asked her.

She said YES!

They will be engaged for year and 2 months before the wedding.

The thing is they are both 17. And everyone has told them to just live together.

Including lots of family!!! His father and mother even bribed him with a new car! I tell people all the time “Don’t put them in your shoes they are nothing like you.”

Everyone says “marriage is to serious” they should party and fool around. They might as well send them straight to hell. And my husband and I have had to say that to a few people.

As her mother it has been my job to ready her for the real world. But also I desire heaven for her. This is their vocation in life. They both signed up for RCIA so as to learn more about their faith. Even though she finished all her sacraments. He wants to receive Communion and be Confirmed.

He has even started bringing his two younger brothers to CCD and Youth Group and Mass with us. He is now working on his parents.

The effects of the sacrament of Matrimony are: first, an increase of sanctifying grace; second, the special help of God for husband and wife to love each other faithfully, to bear with each other’s faults, and to bring up their children properly.

Both will be finished with high school and their A.A. degree next June. He helps sell houses through Century 21. They are smarter then some adults I know.

I am very thankful to God for His many blessings He has placed upon our family. And for allowing me the priviledge of being her mother. I have been truly blessed. Oh and you should meet him!
God picked a winner for her!

 

[Contarini]

Somehow I suspect that having a small wedding ceremony (not just a ‘betrothal’), followed somewhat later by a larger celebration acknowledging what has already occurred–i.e. that they are married–would not be all that popular with many couples.

It could be that they prefer simple cohabitation precisely because of its lack of commitment.

We can’t know people’s hearts. I honestly think this is not true in some cases. We have a social pattern in which marriage is supposed to happen only after a lot of preparation and when people have reached a certain age and a certain degree of financial stability, etc. Cohabitation has come to be accepted as a normal stage on the way to marriage, and we need to find a way to separate between those who are cohabiting because they don’t want irrevocable commitment and those who are cohabiting because they have been told by society that they aren’t ready for marriage yet (or because marriage as currently defined is really impractical).

This is not a new problem, by the way. In the early modern period journeymen were expected not to marry until they became “masters,” which meant that you had lots of young unmarried men running around chasing women. The Protestant Reformers, in one of their smarter initiatives, tried to break this social-economic custom and encourage earlier marriage, but they weren’t very successful. (I would suspect that the Catholic Reformers also took this approach, but I know less about the Catholic side on this particular issue.)

Edwin

 

[kbharbert]

What I’m saying is that if they have decided for sure that they are going to commit themselves to each other for life, there is no reason not to go ahead and do so. And if it takes months to get family and friends together for a big celebration of this commitment, well then that celebration should be clearly marked as a celebration of something that has already happened. This isn’t a big deal for everyone, and indeed not everyone is ready to get married as soon as they propose–I think for me it was helpful to have a year after proposing to make sure that I really wanted to do this (and obviously in that context sexual intercourse would have been immoral). I also agree with the point that a public ceremony helps cement the irrevocable nature of what has happened (the witnesses to the marriage are, rightly considered, responsible for helping the couple stay together), and God knows we don’t need anything that would weaken people’s sense of the irrevocability of marriage.

My point is simply that if people find self-control before marriage difficult, a long engagement pending elaborate wedding arrangements (in our case it wasn’t anything fancy or extravagant in itself, but a lot of people were invited and the place we chose was in high demand) is an unnecessary moral burden. Redefining the “big” ceremony as a blessing of what has already occurred, and having an earlier marriage ceremony in front of a few witnesses, might solve the problem to which the article in question is referring. I agree that the authors’ approach and terminology is confusing at best. Particularly annoying is the assumption that all these nice modern young people can’t possibly be doing anything immoral, so we must find a way to make their existing practices OK.

Edwin

ah…now i see what you mean…i agree.

 

[JimG]

We can’t know people’s hearts. I honestly think this is not true in some cases. We have a social pattern in which marriage is supposed to happen only after a lot of preparation and when people have reached a certain age and a certain degree of financial stability, etc. Cohabitation has come to be accepted as a normal stage on the way to marriage, and we need to find a way to separate between those who are cohabiting because they don’t want irrevocable commitment and those who are cohabiting because they have been told by society that they aren’t ready for marriage yet (or because marriage as currently defined is really impractical).

Perhaps we should then be encouraging early marriage. [e.g. fellowChristian’s post about the two 17 year olds]

If couples are going to be cohabiting and having sex, I can’t see any reason why they should not also be married. What’s going to change when they get married? In fact, the reverse may occur: they will think, well, we’re already living together, what’s the point of getting married?

 

[Contarini]

Perhaps we should then be encouraging early marriage. [e.g. fellowChristian’s post about the two 17 year olds]

If couples are going to be cohabiting and having sex, I can’t see any reason why they should not also be married.

That’s exactly my point.

And yes, by and large I’m in favor of early marriage (even though in my case I’m glad I didn’t marry early, since I didn’t meet my wife till I was 27 and she was 29). The problem is that our social and economic structure doesn’t favor it. Simply throw two people in their late teens together and tell them to get married, and you have a recipe for divorce. There is no easy answer. I think Stanley Hauerwas’s dictum that everyone marries the wrong person is a good place to start. If we could beat this into every young person’s head (well, not literally), we might get somewhere.

Explanation: what I mean by the above is that there is always going to be some good reason we can come up with why we married the wrong person–no one is actually a “perfect” fit (my wife is pretty close, by the way!). Marriage depends not on “compatibility” but on covenant. So if you marry someone and later begin to “grow apart,” this is not inevitable or something to be celebrated as a sign of maturity. Rather, by getting married you have committed to grow old together (in the lovely phrase of Tobias), and that means that whatever maturing you do needs to be done in the context of that relationship.

Edwin

 

[edwest2]

I think you’re trying too hard here. Why late teens? Why not later in life? I think self control is the problem here and not just economics. And this whole thing about marrying the wrong person, in my view, is not a good starting point either.

Dating is almost non-existent in the secular world. Family involvement? What’s that? The message is: “They (your kids) are going to have sex anyway so let them, with knowledge of birth control of course, and don’t bother them the microsecond they turn 18 because they magically become adults.”

Speaking as a Catholic. Date. Involve your parents and relatives in your life. Don’t cut them off the minute you turn 18 because you can do what you want to do and nobody can tell you different. Well, the world is telling you what to do whether you realize it or not. Wake up.

Make a plan. Figure out the financial side of things. Make sure you’ve got a decent job and she does too. Take some time to get to know each other. If it’s just about sex it’s going to go nowhere. Add God to the equation. Pray. Get advice from people you know and trust. Talk to a priest. Be patient.

There was a time when married couples sometimes lived with a parent. When the ceremony was small and the honeymoon was also. They scrimped and they saved and worked toward a goal.

Deal with any alcohol, drug, gambling and other addictions now. Be realistic. And yes, it is a solemn promise before man and God. A covenant. A sacrament.

God bless,
Ed

 

[Contarini]

I think you’re trying too hard here. Why late teens? Why not later in life? I think self control is the problem here and not just economics. And this whole thing about marrying the wrong person, in my view, is not a good starting point either.

Dating is almost non-existent in the secular world. Family involvement? What’s that? The message is: “They (your kids) are going to have sex anyway so let them, with knowledge of birth control of course, and don’t bother them the microsecond they turn 18 because they magically become adults.”

Speaking as a Catholic. Date. Involve your parents and relatives in your life. Don’t cut them off the minute you turn 18 because you can do what you want to do and nobody can tell you different. Well, the world is telling you what to do whether you realize it or not. Wake up.

Make a plan. Figure out the financial side of things. Make sure you’ve got a decent job and she does too. Take some time to get to know each other. If it’s just about sex it’s going to go nowhere. Add God to the equation. Pray. Get advice from people you know and trust. Talk to a priest. Be patient.

There was a time when married couples sometimes lived with a parent. When the ceremony was small and the honeymoon was also. They scrimped and they saved and worked toward a goal.

Deal with any alcohol, drug, gambling and other addictions now. Be realistic. And yes, it is a solemn promise before man and God. A covenant. A sacrament.

I agree with everything you’re saying, and I’m not saying people have to marry in their late teens. I’m less enthusiastic about dating than you are, though I agree that in many parts of society today it has given place to far more destructive patterns. I think that 1950s-style dating was probably harmless, but the serial (non-sexual) monogamy that relatively conservative, serious Christian young people engage in does (as the more radical conservatives are fond of claiming) set them up for divorce, because they come to expect to move through one relationship after another and think that this is the path to maturity.
Why do you think that warning people against the superstition of the “right person” (not the same thing as a pious trust in divine Providence) is not a good place to start?

You are right that basic moral principles and character-building are the most important thing, but it’s also important to think about how our society constructs marriage and sexuality, because this sets us up to fall into certain kinds of temptations.

Edwin

 

[kbharbert]

Dating is almost non-existent in the secular world.

**boy if THAT isn’t the truth!!!:clapping:
almost 30 years ago there was ‘liking’ someone, dating, going steady, engaged.and married.
living together WITHOUT marriage was in there of course but still…
each were very different things with very different meanings.
NOW people seem to start OUT at the ‘going steady’ section, skip the engagement and go straight for the bedroom.
i dated a number of people, went steady with a few, became engaged to 1 or 2 and STILL knew that i wanted to marry the person i decided to give myself bodily too.
and i did.
children grow up WAY to fast in the world today.
*man that makes me sound quite ‘elderly’ doesn’t it? *
**

 

[JimG]

Marriage depends not on “compatibility” but on covenant. . . . . Rather, by getting married you have committed to grow old together (in the lovely phrase of Tobias), and that means that whatever maturing you do needs to be done in the context of that relationship.

Edwin

Now that is the message we need to beat into every young person’s head!

Committing to another person sexually is the bodily equivalent of committing to them permanently in marriage. That’s why we can’t separate those two aspects. Consummation without commitment to permanence is a damaging lie.

 

[bobzills]

Committing to another person sexually is the bodily equivalent of committing to them permanently in marriage. That’s why we can’t separate those two aspects. Consummation without commitment to permanence is a damaging lie.

How would the concept of marriage annulments fit in with this line of thinking. Under the present teaching of marriage annulments, as it is practiced by the American tribunals, just about anyone can ger their marriage officially annulled for the most trivial of reasons, even after having several children or after having been married for ten or fifteen years. This would appear to be contrary to what you have written.