Courtesy of US “Catholic” Magazine and with an HT to Matthew S at Catholic Dads is a great story by a couple of alleged marriage and theology experts, who explain that most likely, the current Catholic understanding that says cohabitation is “living in sin,” is wrong.

Recent focus groups of young Catholic adults on “problematic aspects of church teaching” found that they disagreed with church teaching on premarital sex and cohabitation and do not see a fundamental difference in a loving relationship before and after a wedding. Our experience with young adults leads us to doubt the claim that they are living in sin. It would appear closer to the truth that they are growing, perhaps slowly but nonetheless surely, into grace.

There’s mistake number one: believing that the Catholic Church gives a flying flip about what focus groups of young adult “Catholics” say. Our two editorialists go on to explain how commitment is more important than actually being married. They go on to propose how they think we ought to handle marriage in the Church:

Our pastoral proposal is straightforward: a return to the marital sequence of betrothal (with appropriate ritual to ensure community involvement), sexual intercourse, possible fertility, then ritual wedding to acknowledge and mark the consummation of both valid marriage and sacrament.

Since these couples will have already initiated their marriage through betrothal, their intercourse would not be premarital but marital, as it was in the pre-Tridentine Catholic Church. We envision a marital process initiated by mutual commitment and consent lived in love, justice, equality, intimacy, and fulfillment in a nuptial cohabitation pointed to a wedding that consummates the process of becoming married in a public manner. Such a process would meet the legitimate Catholic and social requirement that the sexual act must take place only within a stable relationship.

The process would be:
Betrothal: The couple’s betrothal, which would involve a public ritual highlighting free consent to wed in the future, would be witnessed and blessed on behalf of the church community. The betrothal ritual would differ from the present wedding ceremony in that the consent would be to marry in the future. Such betrothal, as it did in earlier Catholic tradition, would confer on the couple the status of committed spouses with all the rights that the church grants to spouses, including the right to sexual intercourse.

Nuptial cohabitation: During this period the couple would live together as spouses, enjoying the approval and support of the community, and continuing the lifelong process of establishing their marital relationship as one of love, justice, equality, intimacy, and mutual flourishing. During this time the church would assist the couple with ongoing marriage education aimed precisely at clarifying and deepening their relationship.

Sex/Fertility: This is the part of our proposal that may cause the most unease. Catholics who believe that all premarital sex is wrong believe that the ritual requirement of a wedding has always been the norm in the Catholic tradition. It has not. Since betrothal is already part of the Catholic tradition, it cannot be argued that it is antithetical to the tradition.

Today those couples whom we call nuptial cohabitors are beginning their stable, marital, sexual relationship prior to their wedding ceremony. They fully intend to marry when the restrictions—social, economic, educational, and professional—that contemporary society imposes on them are removed. Their nuptial cohabitation is the first step available to them toward a future marriage.

Okay, hopefully your jaw hasn’t quite hit the floor, because they also somehow use JPII’s words to justify their heretical positions.

In his 1981 encyclical Familiaris Consortio (On the Family), Pope John Paul II taught that conjugal love “aims at a deeply personal unity, the unity that, beyond union in one flesh, leads to forming one heart and soul; it demands indissolubility and faithfulness in definitive mutual giving; and it is open to fertility.” This describes the commitment not only of married spouses but also of nuptial cohabitors who have definitively committed to a loving relationship with one another but who have not yet celebrated their wedding. They come to the church to be married precisely to celebrate the gift of their love for each other and to give it a religious, sacramental permanence.

?!?!? I can’t get my mind around this logic. The sacrament of matrimony celebrates the gift of commitment and love, rather than validating it according to the Church and in a public testimonial sort of way?

Notice how they talk of “possible fertility?” They won’t make any statements about what happens to children produced by a couple who has “restrictions” imposed by society that makes it impossible for them to marry at the present time…or do the Church’s teachings on artificial contraception only apply to those who have been married in the Church?

You gotta read the whole thing.

Thanks to the Curt Jester for the h/t.  Read some of the comments from his readers!