A couple details on the marriage pastoral

I think that the Church needs to revisit the meaning of "intrinsically evil." It seems to be the period of not only creeping infallibilism, but also creeping intrinsic evil. Hmmmmmmmm...I wonder if there is some inverse relationship there.......hmmmmm.

I am supportive of that last change. There are cases where cohabitation per se is not intrinsically evil. However, in all practicality cohabitation is much more often than not a direct occasion of sin. It really is a matter of honestly approaching the issue and making sure people who, for whatever reason, need to cohabitate do so in a morally acceptable way and not cross that line into living in sin.

My own family, due to some hard situations, had to cohabitate for a while. That is, my mom and step-father bought a house together before they were married (and in fact my step father and his kids lived with us in a rental home for a short period prior as well). However, they checked with our priest on what was the best way to avoid scandal and make sure it would not hurt the moral upbringing of me and my siblings. Obviously, one of them spent 2 years sleeping on the couch and frequent mentions were made that we had to do this because of some money and custody and school boundary issues between my step-dad and his ex wife.

I also know of a priest who was helping two older men who had lived most of their lives in a homosexual relationship who were struggling with reconciling themselves with the Church. They told the priest that they were no longer romantically involved and were comitted to remain that way, but at their age and in the community in which they lived, they had no other meaningful relationships with other people. the priest advised them that if they were very attentive to working against slipping into old habits, he said it would be fine for them to cohabitate as housemates. That meant not only no sexual relations, but also not engaging in other aspects in the relationship as if it were a spousal union.

The only thing is that these situations, though there are numerically many in our nation and world, are relatively rare overall. It would seem that there would be a danger, unless the document were amended very skillfully, to present these exceptional circumstances out of pastoral concern, only to have people disingenuously pervert this concession of pastoral love as a loophole. I fully trust that our bishops have done that, but the concern is worth discussion nonetheless.