Once upon a time (maybe still today) there were fiancés and fiancées

Monseigneur Giampaolo Dianin, bishop

The term “engagement” seems like a word that time has consumed, an experience of other times, or on the contrary a vague term that simply defines a couple who are together, but without any other immediate purpose than to enjoy the joy and gratification that comes from being together. Freedom and spontaneity seem to be the real rules implicit in the love experience, without realizing that love grasps and involves the protagonists and that keeping the right distance without committing too much is only a theory, while reality leads far beyond the custody of its own borders. It is not a discovery to note the strong emotional involvement and the equally superficiality in making plans that accompanies the path of many young couples who arrive at the wedding especially with the concreteness of practical tasks, but little attention to the inner foundations of their bond. Cohabitation is the new name of the engagement that has now also taken into account a certain premarital internship, which finds several reasons upstream: for some the rejection or insignificance of an institution such as marriage; for others the search for a “fixed time” as a guarantee of a bond “indefinitely”; for the most part…