A Catholic priest is calling on couples to avoid premarital sex and cohabitation. Fr. Matt DeGance has noted an uptick in marriages at his church, St. Helen’s Church in Vero Beach, Florida, something he told Fox News Digital he attributed to an ongoing religious revival in the Catholic church. However, for those engaged couples that come to him prior to their wedding, DeGance has a recommendation that may cause some chagrin: he advises they avoid having sex for six months prior to the wedding, even if the couple is already living together.

DeGance estimates that around 70% of the couples that come to him for premarital counseling are living together, a high majority that is actually down from previous years. He attributes the dwindling number to work done by Communio, a Catholic nonprofit started by his brother, JP DeGance. Communio’s work focuses on helping churches strengthen their family outreaches. “Eighty-five percent of all churches through our commissioned research with the Barna Group said that they spend nothing in the area of marriage and relationship ministry. And just 28% of churches have something substantive in this area of marriage and relationship ministry,” said JP during an episode of the “Lighthouse Faith” podcast.

Many couples cohabitate under the assumption that it will help them prepare for marriage, helping them to see if they can live together compatibly before getting married and having a lot of awkward concessions about living with another person. JP, however, noted that the data shows just the opposite. “For 40 years, they’ve looked at [this], and the data shows that couples that cohabitate have a much higher, up to a 60% to 80% higher divorce rate,” he said. A big problem with cohabitation, he said, is that it allows couples to keep from fully committing, a major key of marriage. “And 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,” he said.

Practicing self-control and avoiding sex before marriage helps couples to focus less on physical intimacy and more on building up communication, creating shared goals, and on truly knowing one another. The statistics bear this out as well, with marriages that involved individuals who had multiple sexual partners before the marriage, were sexual with one another prior to the marriage, or lived together first reporting lower rates of marital satisfaction, higher divorce rates, and higher conflict. In order to shift the focus from simply prohibiting sex, the brothers hope to help couples see chastity as a way of developing deep interpersonal intimacy. “I think a lot of our young people are seeing, unfortunately, the fruits of the sexual revolution, a lot of the painful realities of the decades past,” said Father Matt. “And they want stability. They want something better than what’s been given [to] them, sadly, either in their own homes or in society in general.”