Possible to Live Without
Robert Hart on Putting the Premarital House in Order
Fifty years ago it would have been terribly rude to ask this question,” I said, “but these days I have to ask it.” Opposite me was a young woman with the face of innocence itself, about the age of my daughter at the time, and a young man. “Have the two of you already begun to have a sexual relationship?”
People coming into a church they have not been attending, because they want to be married, bring with them the errors of the time. Authority figures have held them to a very low standard for almost three decades, giving them no relief from the influence of peers and the personalities of popular entertainment. It seems almost a sin not to be “sexually active” outside of marriage.
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Robert Hart is rector of St. Benedict's Anglican Catholic Church in Chapel Hill, North Carolina (Anglican Catholic Church Original Province). He also contributes regularly to the blog The Continuum. He is a contributing editor of Touchstone.
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