Question about living together

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eatpraylove11

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I have a question about living together before marriage. I realize it is a sin to live together before marriage…

Does the church think it is good if the couple gets married in the church, even if they’ve been living together for a few years? I would think having a catholic wedding with cohabitation beforehand is better than no catholic wedding at all.
 
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Of course the Church thinks is good if a couple gets married in the Church. It is better to be in the Church than outside of it.

Marriage (religious, not civil) is a sacrament and as all sacraments confers sanctifying graces.

@jackfitz:

Chaste cohabitation is not sinful. However, it may be scandalous - people have imaginations and people talk.

Chastity is about refraining from sexual relations.

What are sexual relations? Simple: any intimate behaviour that would be inappropriate with someone who is not your spouse.
 
I didn’t know that we were responsible for their imaginations.
 
I think it is better to get married than to persist in living in sin.
 
I would talk to the priest, tell him what the truth about your relationship,so you may put yourself at peace about being married in the church. I don’t believe you will be turned away. you are doing the right thing. God Bless you.🦋🦋🦋
 
jackfitz316 said:
I didn’t know that we were responsible for their imaginations.
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Let’s get real. The vast majority of couples who live together before marriage are not remaining totally chaste while they are doing so. The handful that may be remaining chaste and just living together out of economic necessity or some other special circumstance, like one party needing to escape from parental abuse, are the exception, not the rule.
 
Get married in the Church before living together. Living together without benefit of marriage leads to temptation.
 
Surely the average parishioner isn’t going to know where others live.
 
jackfitz316 said:
Wait, is living together a sin even if there is no sex?
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Scandal is giving an example that will either deliberately induce another to sin or be likely to lead another to commit sin. That includes unchaste (impure) thoughts about a person that you live with.

Modern Catholic Dictionary
SCANDAL. Any action or its omission, not necessarily sinful in itself, that is likely to induce another to do something morally wrong. Direct scandal, also called diabolical, has the deliberate intention to induce another to sin. In indirect scandal a person does something that he or she foresees will at least likely lead another to commit sin, but this is rather tolerated than positively desired. (Etym. Latin scandalum, stumbling block.)
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Are we responsible for other people’s thoughts? I would say: No, unless through our actions we have caused scandal - with the CCC defining scandal as:
2284 Scandal is an attitude or behavior which leads another to do evil. the person who gives scandal becomes his neighbor’s tempter. He damages virtue and integrity; he may even draw his brother into spiritual death. Scandal is a grave offense if by deed or omission another is deliberately led into a grave offense.
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I know some Evangelical pastors who would do something like that too. Essentially, if the couple didn’t stop cohabitating (having sex or not), the pastors would refuse to marry them and excommunication for the couple could also be a possibility.
 
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When we got married in the early 1990s we expected to be asked cohabitation questions by the priest. He never brought it up. I don’t know whether we looked too over-the-hill and responsible for that sort of thing, or if he didn’t want to “go there” and just wanted to get us married.

He would have known me by sight as a regular Sunday mass-goer. I was a fairly regular church goer at that point and made sure I did not miss Masses when engaged because I wanted to make sure I was known as a parishioner so there would not be any difficulty with having the wedding at church.
 
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