Key Takeaways

• KOTA Radio, a news radio station serving the Rapid City, South Dakota region, picked up the Fox News story on Fr. Matt DeGance and Communio founder J.P. DeGance, extending Communio’s message to local radio audiences across the Midwest.

• J.P. DeGance argues that dating apps are structurally harmful to healthy relationships because they commodify human beings, training users to evaluate potential partners the way they shop for shoes on Amazon.

• Cohabitation is now the norm: 70% of engaged couples seeking pre-marital counseling at Fr. Matt’s church are currently living together. Five years ago it was nearly 100%, a shift Fr. Matt attributes to Communio’s work with the church.

• The DeGance brothers credit their parents with modeling the kind of faith-filled, marriage-anchored family life that the Passing the Torch report identifies as the strongest predictor of children retaining faith into adulthood.

• 85% of churches spend nothing on marriage and relationship ministry, according to Communio’s commissioned Barna research. The need has never been greater, and the opportunity for local churches has never been clearer.

The Story: A National Message Reaching Local Airwaves

Communio’s work doesn’t just live in major metro markets and national media outlets. On June 15, 2026, KOTA Radio, a Fox News affiliate serving Rapid City, South Dakota and the surrounding region, picked up the story of Fr. Matt DeGance and J.P. DeGance, bringing the conversation about chastity, cohabitation, and healthy marriages to a local radio audience in the heart of the Midwest.

That reach matters. The family stability crisis is not a coastal phenomenon. It is playing out in every zip code in America, in rural communities and small cities as much as in major metropolitan areas. When a local radio station carries Communio’s message, it signals something important: this conversation is relevant everywhere, and the local church is the solution in every community.

The story, originally reported by Fox News chief religion correspondent Lauren Green, centers on Fr. Matt’s pastoral approach to pre-marital counseling at St. Helen’s Catholic Church in Vero Beach, Florida, and on the growing body of research Communio has assembled connecting cohabitation, chastity, and the long-term health of marriages.

The Core Finding: Dating Apps Are Training People Not to Commit

The KOTA Radio coverage includes an angle from J.P. DeGance that deserves its own moment of attention, one that speaks directly to the relational formation crisis facing young adults today.

Dating apps, J.P. argues, are not a neutral tool. They are structurally harmful to the kind of relational orientation that healthy marriages require, because they treat potential partners as commodities.

“It’s causing us to treat human relationships like a product we pay for,” he told Fox News. “And then you shop for that person like you’re shopping for shoes on Amazon.”

The business model of cost-benefit analysis, optimized for consumer choice and frictionless exit, is the opposite of the commitment orientation that marriage requires. When young adults spend years forming their relational instincts on platforms designed to keep them swiping rather than committing, they are being trained, whether they realize it or not, in the habits of conditional engagement rather than covenant love.

This is a formation problem before it is a marriage problem. And it points directly to the local church as the institution that can offer a counterformation: a community where relationships are built slowly, intentionally, and in the context of shared faith rather than curated profiles.

The cohabitation data confirms the pattern. Seventy percent of engaged couples seeking pre-marital counseling at Fr. Matt’s church are currently living together. As J.P. notes, couples who cohabitate have a 60 to 80% higher divorce rate than those who don’t. Both dating apps and cohabitation, in different ways, train the same habit: keep one foot out of the door.

The Counterintuitive Angle: The Best Marriage Preparation Isn’t a Program. It’s a Family.

Here is the personal dimension the KOTA Radio coverage surfaces, one that is often missing from discussions of marriage ministry strategy.

Fr. Matt and J.P. DeGance grew up in a family of six siblings, five boys and one girl. Their parents, they say, modeled exactly the kind of faith-filled, marriage-anchored family life that the Passing the Torch report identifies as the most powerful predictor of children retaining faith into adulthood. Mass every week. The rosary every day. The sacraments practiced as a family. Parents plugged into charitable work in their community.

That formation didn’t produce perfect people. It produced people oriented toward commitment, service, and the kind of faith that stays with you through the hard years of adult life.

This is the counterintuitive insight that their story brings to the cohabitation conversation. The best preparation for a healthy marriage isn’t a pre-marital course or a counseling session, as valuable as those are. It is a family. Specifically, the daily witness of parents who are committed to each other and to their faith, practiced openly in the rhythms of ordinary life.

Which means the most strategic thing a church can do for the marriages of the next generation is to invest in the marriages of the current one. The formation a child receives at home, watching parents love each other and live their faith, shapes what they look for, what they expect, and what they are capable of building when it is their turn.

That is the chain Communio is working to strengthen, one church and one family at a time.

What This Means for Your Church

At Communio, the KOTA Radio coverage is a reminder that this conversation is not confined to urban parishes or large denominational networks. It is relevant in every community where young adults are navigating a dating culture that is working against them, where couples are entering marriage carrying the habits of cohabitation and conditional commitment, and where the local church is the most capable institution to offer something better.

Fr. Matt’s approach is pastoral and practical: introduce couples to a vision of chastity that is not about restriction but about preparation, help them understand what marriage in its foundational state actually requires, and trust that when they understand what is at stake, most of them are willing to try.

The broader challenge, as J.P. makes clear, is institutional. Eighty-five percent of churches spend nothing on marriage and relationship ministry. Just 28% have anything substantive in this area. The cultural pressure on young adults and engaged couples is enormous, and most churches are not yet equipped to meet it with the intentionality and strategy the moment requires.

Communio exists to change that, partnering with churches of every size and context to build proactive, data-informed relationship ministry that reaches couples before habits of conditional commitment become entrenched. Not just in Vero Beach, Florida. Not just in major cities. In Rapid City, in rural Pennsylvania, in suburban Ohio, and in every community where a pastor is asking what the church can do to strengthen the marriages and families God has placed in their care.

Take the Next Step

Communio partners with churches across Evangelical, Protestant, and Catholic contexts to build data-informed relationship ministry that equips couples well before marriage and strengthens families long after.

► Read the full KOTA Radio article → kotaradio.com

► Explore Communio’s resources for churches → communio.org

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does J.P. DeGance say dating apps are harmful to healthy relationships? J.P. DeGance argues that dating apps structurally train users in habits that work against commitment. By treating potential partners as commodities to be evaluated and discarded, apps build a consumer orientation toward relationships rather than a covenant one. The same instinct that makes it easy to swipe left makes it harder to stay when marriage gets difficult.

What does the data say about cohabitation and divorce? According to 40 years of research cited by J.P. DeGance, couples who cohabitate before marriage have a 60 to 80% higher divorce rate than those who do not. Cohabitation builds the habits of conditional commitment, with both partners maintaining an emotional and logistical exit ramp, which is the opposite of the orientation a lasting marriage requires.

How is Communio’s message reaching communities beyond major cities? Communio’s media presence, including coverage by outlets like KOTA Radio in Rapid City, South Dakota, reflects the national reach of the organization’s message. The family stability crisis affects every community in America, and the local church is the solution in every context, from rural communities to major metropolitan areas.

What role did the DeGance family play in shaping Communio’s mission? Fr. Matt and J.P. DeGance both credit their parents with modeling the kind of faith-filled, marriage-anchored family life that shaped their formation. Mass every week, the rosary daily, the sacraments practiced together, and parents engaged in charitable service. That experience informs Communio’s conviction that the family home is the most powerful faith formation environment in the world.

Why aren’t more churches investing in marriage ministry? According to Communio’s commissioned research with the Barna Group, 85% of churches spend nothing on marriage and relationship ministry, and just 28% have anything substantive in this area. Many pastors recognize the need but lack a clear strategy, the right tools, or a proven model to implement. Communio partners with churches to fill exactly that gap.

Credit: This post draws on reporting by KOTA Radio, published June 15, 2026, which syndicated the original Fox News feature by Lauren Green. Read the full KOTA Radio article here.