Cohabitation

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aball1035

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I’m in my last 1.5 months of college and just realized yesterday that it’s forbidden to have other-gender housemates. I was told that this is what they call “cohabitation”. I’ve always believed that cohabitation was when a boyfriend and girlfriend lived together in the same room.

All last year, I lived (separate rooms, of course!) with a couple girls and another guy. This semester I’m living with 2 guys and 1 girl, until I’m moving out this mid-December.

I have 2 questions.
  1. If I didn’t know that it was sinful to do this, is it sinful? Should I confess it?
  2. Is it OK to keep living at my current location for the next 1.5 months if there’s also a girl living there?
To give you some background, I have never had a sinful problem with girl housemates, and the current one is never around. That is part of the reason I’ve never known it was forbidden.
 
aball1035 said:
I’m in my last 1.5 months of college and just realized yesterday that it’s forbidden to have other-gender housemates.
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Told by whom? This is not correct. Forbbiden by whom? Not the Church.
aball1035 said:
I was told that this is what they call “cohabitation”. I’ve always believed that cohabitation was when a boyfriend and girlfriend lived together in the same room.
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Cohabitation, in the strictest definition, is inhabiting the same household with anyone– family, friend, spouse, etc. To co-habit, i.e., to live in the same place. This is not sinful.

Cohabitation is commonly a euphemism for a boyfriend/girlfriend living together sexually without benefit of marriage. This is sinful.

Living in the same house with opposite sex roommates not related to you might be a near occasion of sin. Therefore, it is an area of prudential judgment as to whether or not it is wise in an individual case. It seems that for you, that has not been the case.
 
aball1035 said:
I’m in my last 1.5 months of college and just realized yesterday that it’s forbidden to have other-gender housemates. I was told that this is what they call “cohabitation”. I’ve always believed that cohabitation was when a boyfriend and girlfriend lived together in the same room.

All last year, I lived (separate rooms, of course!) with a couple girls and another guy. This semester I’m living with 2 guys and 1 girl, until I’m moving out this mid-December.

I have 2 questions.
  1. If I didn’t know that it was sinful to do this, is it sinful? Should I confess it?
  2. Is it OK to keep living at my current location for the next 1.5 months if there’s also a girl living there?
To give you some background, I have never had a sinful problem with girl housemates, and the current one is never around. That is part of the reason I’ve never known it was forbidden.
Click to expand...
1ke is correct. It’s not forbidden, though in general many are happy to claim that it is. At most, all that could be said is, assuming that you are automatically tempted to jump in bed with any woman who happens to be around you, and assuming that all women around you are automatically tempted to jump in bed with you, then perhaps having women live in the same house as you is a near occasion of sin (because naturally everyone will just jump in bed with each other as soon as the chance arises).

On the other hand, if you’re an adult about sex and have some measure of self-control, then the near occasion of sin really only arises when you live with your girlfriend.

The other claim that tends to get made in this situation is that it constitutes (or risks) the sin of scandal: teaching (by example) others to sin – in other words, by having male and female housemates in one household, one teaches immature Christians that men and women can live together, which leads to immature Christians living together with those of the opposite sex, which (naturally, according to the suspicious types) leads to the immature Christains having sex out of wedlock.

My response to that is: teach them to keep their pants on. As for the other kind of scandal, call them housemates and not girlfriends. That should pretty much take care of it.
 
aball1035 said:
I’m in my last 1.5 months of college and just realized yesterday that it’s forbidden to have other-gender housemates. I was told that this is what they call “cohabitation”. I’ve always believed that cohabitation was when a boyfriend and girlfriend lived together in the same room.

All last year, I lived (separate rooms, of course!) with a couple girls and another guy. This semester I’m living with 2 guys and 1 girl, until I’m moving out this mid-December.

I have 2 questions.
  1. If I didn’t know that it was sinful to do this, is it sinful? Should I confess it?
  2. Is it OK to keep living at my current location for the next 1.5 months if there’s also a girl living there?
To give you some background, I have never had a sinful problem with girl housemates, and the current one is never around. That is part of the reason I’ve never known it was forbidden.
Click to expand...
Of course not. It is not immoral, it is not scandalous, it’s not sinful.

WHO ARE THOSE PERSONS WHO SAY : IT IS BANNED BY THE CHURCH, IT IS MORALLY WRONG, IT IS IMMORAL, IT IS SCANDALOUS…etc.

WHO ARE THOSE CATHOLIC LAYS PERSONS?

WE ARE NOT EVANGELICAL, NOT MORMON, NOT PURITAN, NOT PURITANIST, NOT VICTORIANIST, NOT VICTORIAN, NOT MUSLIM, NOT ORTHODOX, NOT PROTESTANT, NOT … etc.

WE ARE CATHOLIC.
 
ftp, do you want their address too? lol

I heard it from a friend of mine who knows a lot about the faith, so I trust him naturally.

I appreciate all of your responses
 
aball1035 said:
I’m in my last 1.5 months of college and just realized yesterday that it’s forbidden to have other-gender housemates. I was told that this is what they call “cohabitation”. I’ve always believed that cohabitation was when a boyfriend and girlfriend lived together in the same room.

All last year, I lived (separate rooms, of course!) with a couple girls and another guy. This semester I’m living with 2 guys and 1 girl, until I’m moving out this mid-December.

I have 2 questions.
  1. If I didn’t know that it was sinful to do this, is it sinful? Should I confess it?
  2. Is it OK to keep living at my current location for the next 1.5 months if there’s also a girl living there?
To give you some background, I have never had a sinful problem with girl housemates, and the current one is never around. That is part of the reason I’ve never known it was forbidden.
Click to expand...
Maybe you have been misinformed what is sinful is to carry on marital life without the sacrament.
So living in a house sharing with others but not engaging in improper relations is OK
in my college years eons ago 😃 I shared a house with 1 guy we bunked in the same room and 1 girl that had a separate room. We never engaged in any improper behaviour and were like brothers and sister.

Not an issue.
 
aball1035 said:
ftp, do you want their address too? lol

I heard it from a friend of mine who knows a lot about the faith, so I trust him naturally.

I appreciate all of your responses
Click to expand...
Sorry for my message. But i am very surprised by this type of moral view.

My questions were in reaction. It was as an indirect joke!!!
 
What you’re describing is not sinful. It’s not “cohabitating” in the modern usage of the word. You aren’t sharing beds or bedrooms.

I grew up sharing a house with my sisters! Oh no! :doh2:

A roommate who’s never home is the best kind 👍

One warning, though, based on personal experience. I had a female housemate for a couple months. It was agreed up front it was a temporary arrangement. I moved out as planned but a few months later, she was pregnant, and everyone started looking at me. No matter how much I said, “It ain’t mine. I’m positive. It’s impossible that it’s mine,” there were always some who didn’t believe me. Until she finally named the father.
 
Richard320 said:
What you’re describing is not sinful. It’s not “cohabitating” in the modern usage of the word. You aren’t sharing beds or bedrooms.

I grew up sharing a house with my sisters! Oh no! :doh2:

A roommate who’s never home is the best kind 👍

One warning, though, based on personal experience. I had a female housemate for a couple months. It was agreed up front it was a temporary arrangement. I moved out as planned but a few months later, she was pregnant, and everyone started looking at me. No matter how much I said, “It ain’t mine. I’m positive. It’s impossible that it’s mine,” there were always some who didn’t believe me. Until she finally named the father.
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So scandal can still ensue from these arrangements…
 
St_Francis said:
So scandal can still ensue from these arrangements…
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OTOH, that could probably be said about a lot of things. I’ve had a friend who found out too late that her roommate had been dealing - talk about scandal, everyone assumed she had been involved!
 
The catholic acception of the definition of scandal??? For a catholic, the acception of definition of scandal is very strict.

Our acception of scandal does not have to be full of puritanism… (christian heresies, or ideologies) or is in function of other non christian religions. It is does not matter the bad culturalism.

Mormon view, Evangelical view, protestant view,… I do not care. Only the objective scandal is wrong.
 
aball1035 said:
I’m in my last 1.5 months of college and just realized yesterday that it’s forbidden to have other-gender housemates. I was told that this is what they call “cohabitation”. I’ve always believed that cohabitation was when a boyfriend and girlfriend lived together in the same room.

All last year, I lived (separate rooms, of course!) with a couple girls and another guy. This semester I’m living with 2 guys and 1 girl, until I’m moving out this mid-December.

I have 2 questions.
  1. If I didn’t know that it was sinful to do this, is it sinful? Should I confess it?
  2. Is it OK to keep living at my current location for the next 1.5 months if there’s also a girl living there?
To give you some background, I have never had a sinful problem with girl housemates, and the current one is never around. That is part of the reason I’ve never known it was forbidden.
Click to expand...
It is normal and healthy not to get hung up on gender in living situations. It is really more about mutual compatibility. I have had plenty of single gendered life, and I can say that I prefer to be around both genders.

Adultery is sinful. Living together communally is not.

However… a lot depends on the maturity of the folks involved. If there is a problem with temptation, then it is wiser to avoid such living conditions. That is probably why your college has a blanket policy. It is for the protection of students who might not be mature enough to handle a co-ed situation. By maturity, I mean acting in a way which is respectful to everyone. So, for example is a same gendered house, someone in undies or even nude when appropriate is a non issue. In a mixed gender setting, everyone needs to respect each other as far as that sort of thing goes. And that is not hard to do, at all. Not much different than ordinary family life.

You, however, are the best judge of how you want to live. However, if you are a student at a college which prohibits such living arrangements, even though they might not be sinful, then I would encourage you to follow your college’s regulations. You should find a new living situation as soon as you can, without acting precipitously and jumping into the wrong situation just to get out of the one that you are in now.
 
St_Francis said:
So scandal can still ensue from these arrangements…
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People probably assumed that my now wife and I were sleeping together back when we were just boyfriend and girlfriend or engaged. Why? Oh I don’t know, probably because everyone was sleeping around in college! We never did anything to lead them to these conclusions, but I surely did get some “Dude she’s hot, how’s the sex?” inquiries from college acquaintances. I told them to mind their own business and left it at that.

Suffice it to say that anything and everything you do could cause people to jump to conclusions. And they’ll jump to conclusions even if you DON’T do anything. So don’t worry about what other people think and you just live Christ’s example.

By the way, how many scribes and priests in Christ’s time thought He was engaged in improper behavior because he would dine with prostitutes and tax collectors? Likely nearly all of them. Were they right? No. You going to go after Christ for causing “scandal”?
 
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