A Note From Our Pastor: August 23, 2026

In last week’s Pastor’s Note, I wrote on the topic of love: the many (mis)understandings of the word and its meaning, and how love and sex are often equated with one another. I sought to offer some distinction between them. I’ll continue on this topic.

Roughly 85% of the couples that come to us seeking marriage, are cohabitating. When I meet with couples, the question inevitably comes up. When I learn that they are, I tell them that while I don’t condemn that decision, I have a responsibility to help them enter marriage as best we can.

I explain that if they are to continue living together (though not my preference), they must strive to live as brother and sister, setting up ‘new’ boundaries of intimacy, partnering and be strength for one another to maintain chaste living.

I then spend about twenty minutes walking them through why we believe they will be better served living chastely when they encounter God in the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony. More than just a rule, it’s a path of grace. Finally, I present them the following purity agreement and ask them to go home, to pray over it, discuss it and to let me know how they feel about it.

Pledge to God Prior to Holy Matrimony

Our faith tells us that God intended for marriage to be a reflection of Christ’s love: that it would free, total, faithful and fruitful. And so our Church teaching still holds that the beautiful human expression of sex finds its proper place in the context of marriage. Sex outside of marriage can’t be all four of those things. It is when a man and woman have formally pledged the entirety of their lives to one another that the expression of sex truly makes sense.

As a man and woman who intend to marry in the Church and to formally enter into a covenant with God, as husband and wife, we desire to do it with as much sincerity of heart and integrity of our actions as possible. We desire for our wedding night to be what God intended it to be.

Therefore, I pledge my intention to abstain from sex until after we have formally pledged to give ourselves to each other completely and we have entered into our covenantal relationship with God, and have become ‘one’ in the bond of marriage. If we continue to live together prior to our wedding date, we will work together, help each other and communicate to create and foster boundaries that uphold chaste living.

And should I fail in this pledge, I seek to reconcile, to pick myself up and to recommit.

So, what’s our hang-up with sex outside of marriage? More to come on that in due time.

Yours in Christ,

Father Todd O. Strange