Key Takeaways

• Fox News published a major feature on June 15, 2026, on Fr. Matt DeGance and Communio founder J.P. DeGance, examining what the data says about chastity, cohabitation, and marital strength.

• Seventy percent of engaged couples seeking pre-marital counseling at Fr. Matt’s Florida church are currently living together, down from nearly 100% just five years ago, which he attributes directly to Communio’s work.

• Couples who cohabitate before marriage have a 60 to 80% higher divorce rate, according to 40 years of research cited by J.P. DeGance in the article.

• Despite the countercultural nature of the message, Fr. Matt says most couples are willing to try chastity once they understand what is actually at stake and why it matters for the marriage ahead.

• J.P. DeGance argues that the sexual revolution didn’t just change behavior. It decoupled marriage from sex, sex from parenting, and parenting from partnering, and those shifts are directly traceable in religious non-affiliation data a generation later.

The Story: A Countercultural Message Getting a National Hearing

When Fr. Matt DeGance tells engaged couples at St. Helen Catholic Church in Vero Beach, Florida, that they should refrain from sex during the six-month waiting period before their wedding, the room goes quiet.

“The majority of the reactions are kind of a quiet pensiveness,” he told Fox News. Some couples laugh it off. Some are dismissive. But increasingly, he says, something different is happening: they’re listening.

On June 15, 2026, Fox News published a feature by Lauren Green, the network’s chief religion correspondent, spotlighting Fr. Matt’s pastoral approach and the research behind it, drawing on the work of Communio and the growing body of social science data showing that couples who practice chastity and avoid cohabitation before marriage may be building significantly stronger unions.

The article is one of the most significant pieces of national media coverage Communio has received to date, placing the ministry’s message at the intersection of faith, data, and a cultural moment that is clearly shifting.

The Core Finding: Cohabitation Doesn’t Prepare Couples for Marriage. It Works Against It.

The conventional wisdom has long held that living together before marriage is a sensible test run. Try before you buy. Get to know each other in the everyday reality of shared life before making a lifelong commitment.

Forty years of data says otherwise.

As J.P. DeGance told Fox News, couples who cohabitate before marriage have a 60 to 80% higher divorce rate than those who don’t. The research doesn’t support the trial run theory. It consistently contradicts it.

J.P. explains why with an image that is both simple and precise: two people in a rowboat, each sitting on the edge with a leg hanging over the side, ready to jump out. “The boat doesn’t move very well, and it’s unstable, and many people learn through long-term cohabitation, they learn not to be committed.”

Cohabitation doesn’t build the habits of marriage. It builds the habits of conditional commitment, which is exactly the opposite of what a lasting marriage requires.

Fr. Matt adds the theological dimension: marriage in its foundational state is sacrificial. It is the loss of individualism and the creation of a whole-life oneness with another person. That reorientation is significantly harder to make when a couple has already been living as independent individuals sharing a space, rather than growing toward genuine covenant.

Yet Fr. Matt’s church numbers suggest something encouraging is happening. Seventy percent of his engaged couples are currently living together. Five years ago, he says, it was essentially everyone. The shift he attributes directly to the work Communio has been doing to help churches rebuild a culture of intentional, formation-based relationship ministry.

The Counterintuitive Angle: The Sexual Revolution’s Damage Isn’t Just Moral. It’s Measurable.

Here is the argument J.P. DeGance makes in the Fox News piece that reframes the entire conversation, and that every pastor needs to sit with.

The sexual revolution didn’t just change individual behavior. It systematically decoupled three things that were never meant to be separated: marriage from sex, sex from parenting, and parenting from partnering. As those separations took hold in the 1960s and 1970s, and as non-marital households grew, the consequences showed up in data a generation later. The rise of the “nones,” Americans with no religious affiliation, is directly traceable to the family fragmentation that began decades before.

This is not a moral argument dressed up in social science language. It is a causal claim supported by longitudinal data. When the structures that transmit faith, stable marriages, intact families, two engaged parents, weaken at scale, the next generation shows up in church at dramatically lower rates. Or doesn’t show up at all.

Fr. Matt frames the pastoral response to this moment with clarity: “A lot of our young people are seeing, unfortunately, the fruits of the sexual revolution. They want stability. They want something better than what’s been given to them.”

That desire is the opening. And the church is the institution best positioned to answer it, not with condemnation of the past, but with a compelling, data-grounded vision of what a healthy marriage actually requires and what it makes possible.

What This Means for Your Church

At Communio, the Fox News feature captures something we see in churches across the country: young adults are not hostile to the Church’s vision of marriage. Many of them are hungrier for it than any previous generation. They have watched the fruits of a different approach, and they are quietly looking for something better.

The challenge is that 85% of churches, according to Communio’s commissioned research with the Barna Group, spend nothing on marriage and relationship ministry. Just 28% have anything substantive in this area. The cultural need is significant and growing. The church’s institutional response has not kept pace.

That is the gap Communio exists to close. Not by replacing pastoral wisdom with a program, but by equipping churches with a strategic, data-informed approach to relationship ministry that reaches couples before the patterns of cohabitation, conditional commitment, and drift become entrenched, and that gives engaged couples, newlyweds, and long-married couples alike the formation they need to build marriages that last.

Fr. Matt’s approach to pre-marital counseling is pastoral and practical. He introduces couples to John Paul II’s theology of the body, helping them understand that sexuality is not something to be disdained but something to be honored and reverenced. He gives them a vision of chastity that is not about restriction but about preparation. And increasingly, they respond.

“The women seem to take it a little bit more deeply and seriously than the guys,” he says. “But I do find the guys will follow a good lead.”

That is the pastoral opportunity in front of every church right now. Young adults are searching for exactly the kind of clarity, community, and formation that the Church has always been equipped to offer. Communio helps churches build the culture and the strategy to meet them where they are.

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 Fox News article → foxnews.com

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

Frequently Asked Questions

Does living together before marriage affect divorce rates? Yes, significantly. According to research cited by Communio’s J.P. DeGance in the Fox News feature, couples who cohabitate before marriage have a 60 to 80% higher divorce rate than those who do not. Forty years of social science data consistently point in the same direction: cohabitation does not prepare couples for lasting commitment. It tends to work against it.

Is chastity before marriage a realistic expectation in today’s culture? According to Fr. Matt DeGance, it is more realistic than most people assume. While only 5 to 10% of couples getting married in the United States are virgins at the altar, he finds that the majority of engaged couples, once they understand what is at stake and why it matters for their marriage, are willing to try. The key is presenting chastity not as restriction but as preparation for the kind of covenant love that lasts.

Why does cohabitation tend to produce weaker marriages? J.P. DeGance explains it this way: cohabitation teaches the habits of conditional commitment. When both partners maintain an exit ramp, emotionally, financially, and logistically, the psychological orientation of the relationship remains fundamentally different from the total self-gift that marriage requires. Over time, couples learn not to be committed, which is precisely the wrong formation for a lifelong covenant.

What is Communio’s role in helping churches address these issues? Communio partners with local churches to build proactive, data-informed relationship ministry that reaches couples before crisis, equips them with practical skills, and creates a church culture where investing in marriage is normal, not stigmatized. Rather than waiting for couples to come forward in distress, Communio helps churches build the pathways that strengthen marriages at every stage, from singles and engaged couples to long-married households.

How does the sexual revolution connect to the decline of religious faith? J.P. DeGance argues that the sexual revolution systematically decoupled marriage from sex, sex from parenting, and parenting from partnering. As non-marital households grew in the 1960s and 1970s, children raised in those environments began showing up in religious non-affiliation data a generation later. The decline of faith in America is, in significant part, the downstream consequence of the breakdown of the married family over the preceding decades.

Credit: This post draws on reporting by Lauren Green for Fox News Digital, published June 15, 2026. Read the original Fox News article here.