Have you ever noticed how much rarer couples are nowadays than they once were, especially outside the Church?

Statistics show that fewer and fewer young people are forming lasting romantic relationships, or even non-lasting ones. Over the last few years, newspapers have chronicled this marked societal change with a series of salacious headlines ("Young People having less sex than ever before"), and most of us Catholics have, I believe, read them with comparative indifference.

"At least the youth are avoiding fornication," we have thought, "and besides, celibacy is no bad thing."