The Tablet uses The Royal Wedding to bash Catholic teaching on cohabitation...



The Tablet editorial is trying to sell this formula; Catherine and William are the golden couple who long-term cohabitated (we assume), but went on to get happily married, and that therefore a high-profile example of cohabitation-leading-to-marriage has been set. And we should all follow… Because as The Tablet in its usually patronising way concludes; “This intriguing feature of their story raises questions. They are marrying in accordance with Christian teaching, which regards marriage as a lifelong commitment. The Church no longer denounces cohabitation as “living in sin”, and many of its clergy prefer to turn a blind eye to what is increasingly regarded as a sensible precaution against incompatibility. In this respect, society seems to have figured out something about stable marriage that the Churches have, officially, yet to grasp.”
The ‘something about stable marriage’? That ‘something’ is cohabitation? That ‘the Churches’ should cotton on to this ‘something’, and start promoting cohabitation as practice for good marriage?
Is it just me, or does anyone else have the sense that The Tablet is written without any regard to real-life, and even secular research?  The book The Case for Marriage: Why Married People are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially* gives a very frank account of how society, as a whole, dreams that cohabitation will be much better for us, than ‘traditional’ dating and saving sex for marriage. The authors Waite and Gallagher portray that the more often, and the longer that men and women cohabit, the more likely they will be to divorce later.
* Waite, L. and Gallagher, M., The Case for Marriage: Why Married People are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially, New York: Doubleday, 2000, p. 46.

Comments

  1. Thanks for this blog Mary. Why on earth The Tablet is still being sold at the back of our churches! Do you mind if I post your blog on my facebook page?

    Hope you are well.

    God bless,
    James

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  2. Anthony Corner20 May 2011 at 05:23

    The Tablet's looney! I'd rather have a video response to this :)
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVErKZGzNNM

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  3. Thanks for this post Mary, and for your very insightful commentary.

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  4. It doesn't matter how long you live with a person, once you get married, darn near everything changes. I speak from experience, not because we wanted to test the waters, but because we thought it made good financial sense and after 6 years or so of dating, I knew my wife wasn't kidding when she said "The only thing that will get us out of this marriage will be a matter of death." So we moved in together for our first year of graduate school, right before we got married the following June. And despite feeling like we had been married ever since we met, things were different when we finally did get married.

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  5. Hi James,

    Yes, go for it, post my blog on your Facebook page. I look forward to seeing it.
    God bless always,

    Mary

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  6. Thanks so much for this Mary....one extra reason to tell people to avoid The Tablet!!! What they've written is ...NOT AT ALL CATHOLIC!! Or even Christian...I've yet to find co-habitation being condoned in the Bible! :) So thank you so much for writing this and bringing our attention to it...as always, your views are truly Catholic in the proper sense. Not to be seen as the view of a group of priests and bishops, but the voice of God speaking through the Holy Spirit in our day and age. It is nice to know therefore, that God is unchanging, and so too, are the moral teachings of the Church!!
    I hold nothing against those who co-habitate, but feel as strong as you do (as you know!) against it being promoted as a 'precaution against incompatability'.
    Lots of prayer is needed! :)
    God Bless you always,
    Maryja

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