Key Takeaways

1. Beliefnet’s Stronger Marriages column published a feature on June 17, 2026, covering Communio’s work and Fr. Matt DeGance’s pastoral approach to chastity and cohabitation, reaching one of the largest faith-based online audiences in America.

2. Couples who practice chastity before marriage report measurably better outcomes: higher marital satisfaction, lower conflict, and significantly lower divorce rates than those who cohabitate or have multiple sexual partners before marriage.

3. Chastity is most effectively framed not as prohibition but as a pathway to deeper interpersonal intimacy, helping couples build communication, shared goals, and genuine knowledge of one another before physical intimacy takes center stage.

4. Fr. Matt DeGance attributes the decline in cohabiting couples coming to his church for pre-marital counseling directly to Communio’s work equipping churches to strengthen marriages before they begin.

5. 85% of churches, according to Communio’s Barna research, spend nothing on marriage and relationship ministry. Beliefnet’s coverage signals growing public appetite for exactly the kind of formation-centered approach Communio provides.

The Story: A Faith Audience Ready for This Conversation

Beliefnet is not a niche publication. With tens of millions of monthly readers across its faith, wellness, and family content, it is one of the most visited faith-based platforms in the English-speaking world. Its Stronger Marriages column exists for one reason: readers are actively searching for content that takes marriage seriously and offers something more than surface-level advice.

On June 17, 2026, that column published a feature by Cecilia Buchanan covering the work of Fr. Matt DeGance and Communio founder J.P. DeGance, placing the conversation about chastity, cohabitation, and marriage outcomes in front of an audience that is primed to receive it.

That context matters. Beliefnet readers are not being introduced to the concept of faith-based marriage. They are already looking for it. They are the couples in your congregation who are quietly asking whether there is something better than what the culture is offering them. They are the young adults who have seen the fruits of the sexual revolution in their own families and want a different path. They are exactly the people Fr. Matt describes when he says: “I think a lot of our young people are seeing, unfortunately, the painful realities of the decades past. And they want stability. They want something better.”

The Core Finding: Chastity Is Not Just a Moral Choice. It Is a Formation Strategy.

The Beliefnet coverage distills the research case for chastity with unusual clarity, and it is worth sitting with the full weight of what the data actually says.

Marriages in which individuals had multiple sexual partners before the wedding, were sexually active with one another prior to marriage, or lived together first report lower rates of marital satisfaction, higher conflict, and higher divorce rates. These are not small differences at the margins of the data. They are consistent findings across 40 years of social science research.

J.P. DeGance puts the cohabitation piece plainly: couples who live together before marriage have a 60 to 80% higher divorce rate than those who don’t. But the deeper point the Beliefnet piece draws out is not simply about avoiding certain behaviors. It is about what those behaviors do to the relational formation of the couple.

Practicing chastity before marriage shifts the focus of the relationship. When physical intimacy is held in reserve, couples are directed toward the harder and more important work of building communication, creating shared goals, and truly knowing one another. That process of formation, practiced intentionally during the engagement period, builds the relational foundation that marriage requires to endure.

Fr. Matt and J.P. DeGance both emphasize this reframe in the article. The goal is not to present chastity as a negative command but as a positive pathway. In the language of Pope John Paul II, whose theology of the body both brothers draw on, sexuality is not something to be disdained but something to be honored and reverenced. When it is honored in that way before marriage, it serves the covenant rather than substituting for it.

The Counterintuitive Angle: The Church That Talks About Sex Is the Church Young Adults Trust

Here is the insight that the Beliefnet coverage, and the broader media moment around this story, points to.

The assumption in many churches is that talking openly about sex, cohabitation, and chastity is either too controversial or too personal to address directly in a ministry context. The result is a pastoral silence on one of the most significant relational decisions young adults are making, often without any church input at all.

But the data, and Fr. Matt’s experience, tell a different story. When the church does address this directly, honestly, and with genuine care for the wellbeing of the couples involved, most people are willing to engage. Fr. Matt tells couples living together that he would recommend, if possible, that they sleep in separate rooms during the engagement period. He acknowledges it sounds countercultural. He says it works.

The women tend to take it more seriously, he notes. The men tend to follow a good lead. What makes the difference is not the message itself but the relationship of trust from which it is delivered, and the vision of marriage it points toward.

A church that is willing to have this conversation, backed by 40 years of data and a pastoral framework rooted in genuine care, is the church that earns the trust of young adults who are hungry for exactly this kind of clarity. The silence of most churches on these questions is not protecting anyone. It is leaving them without guidance at one of the most consequential decision points of their lives.

What This Means for Your Church

At Communio, the Beliefnet coverage represents something worth noting: the conversation about chastity and cohabitation is finding a natural home on faith-based platforms because the audience is already asking the question. They want to know if the Church’s teaching is supported by evidence. It is. They want to know if it is livable. According to Fr. Matt, it increasingly is.

The practical challenge for most churches is the same one J.P. names consistently: 85% spend nothing on marriage and relationship ministry, and just 28% have anything substantive in this area. The cultural formation happening outside the church, through dating apps, cohabitation norms, and the ambient messaging of the sexual revolution, is relentless. The church’s response, in most cases, has not kept pace.

Communio exists to change that. Not by adding another program to an already full ministry calendar, but by helping churches build a culture of intentional relational formation that reaches couples at every stage, from singles and young adults forming their relational instincts, to engaged couples making the foundational decisions that will shape their marriages, to newly married couples building the habits they will need for the decades ahead.

The Beliefnet audience is looking for what the Church already has. The local church is the place where they can find it. And Communio is the partner that helps churches make it available.

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 Beliefnet Stronger Marriages article → beliefnet.com

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

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the research say about chastity and marriage outcomes? Couples who practice chastity before marriage report measurably better outcomes than those who cohabitate or have multiple sexual partners before marriage. According to 40 years of social science research cited by J.P. DeGance, cohabitating couples have a 60 to 80% higher divorce rate. Marriages built on chastity tend to have higher satisfaction, lower conflict, and greater long-term stability.

How does chastity help couples build a stronger marriage? Chastity before marriage redirects the couple’s energy toward the foundational work of a lasting relationship: building communication, establishing shared goals, and genuinely knowing one another before physical intimacy takes center stage. This intentional process of formation builds the relational depth that marriage requires to endure through the hard seasons that inevitably follow.

Why is cohabitation counterproductive to a healthy marriage? Cohabitation builds the habits of conditional commitment. When both partners maintain an exit ramp, the psychological orientation of the relationship remains fundamentally different from the total self-gift that marriage requires. J.P. DeGance describes it as two people in a rowboat with a leg hanging over the side: the boat doesn’t move well, and many people learn through long-term cohabitation to not be committed.

How should churches talk about chastity with young adults? Fr. Matt DeGance’s approach offers a practical model: present chastity not as a prohibition but as a pathway to deeper intimacy. Rooted in John Paul II’s theology of the body, this framing helps couples understand that sexuality is not something to be disdained but something to be honored and reverenced. When the church speaks with genuine care, backed by data, most couples are willing to engage.

What role does Communio play in helping churches address these issues? Communio partners with local churches to build proactive, data-informed relationship ministry that reaches couples before crisis. This includes equipping churches to address cohabitation and chastity in pre-marital counseling, creating community events that build healthy relational culture among singles and young adults, and building the kind of church environment where investing in marriage is normalized at every stage of life.

Credit: This post draws on reporting by Cecilia Buchanan for Beliefnet’s Stronger Marriages column, published June 17, 2026, and the original Fox News feature by Lauren Green. Read the full Beliefnet article here.