Extramarital Sex: Forgiveness, Admonishment, and Our Future

Extramarital sex.

This is definitely a huge issue for the unmarried Catholics.

Over on the CatholicDating board, any posts regarding this topic are much more emotionally charged, with a TON more comments, than the other topics. Especially if someone posts about a couple where one had extramarital sex, and the other never did.

There's typically two main groups in the issue:

1. Those who believe past mistakes should be forgiven. Sinners should be welcomed back with open arms.

2. Those who believe sinners should be admonished. Believe people who wait for sex until marriage are getting a bad deal when they marry people who didn't.

Seems like one group wants to portray extramarital sex as a terrible thing, in order to prevent others from having premarital sex. Another group wants to preach forgiveness, so that those who did sin in premarital sex can feel welcomed as a Catholic.

What's the best way to deal with the issue, overall? So that those who are not yet married and haven't had sex yet can be steered towards a healthy and strong Catholic life and marriage.

The best approach may lie within a combination of the two.

Possibilities on how to address this:

-Address the issue occasionally at a typical Sunday homily? Extramarital sex seems to be too deep of an issue and the direct applicable audience is small, I rarely find this issue addressed.

-Do more to offer continuing education, discussions, or speakers on the subject for young people?

-Those living in successful Catholic marriages at the moment could give mentorship / talk with unmarried Catholics?

In summary: what's the best way to address Catholics who have had premarital sex?

More importantly, what's the best way to make sure our future married Catholics do the right thing, in regards to sex?

Edit:grammar.