"I had never heard of a Josephite marriage, a union inspired by the relationship between Joseph and the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus."

"And to this day, I am astonished that my parents undertook a similar path with the blessing of the Roman Catholic Church.... My father was a worldly 32 and my mother a winsome 19 when they met.... He was agnostic, though his parents were Presbyterian. She was Catholic.... [A] brush with death prompted him to convert to Catholicism.... Not long thereafter, my three siblings and I noticed that our parents’ double bed was replaced by twin beds.... What we didn’t know was that my father had been married before meeting my mother. His first marriage lasted about two years, and because the church refused to recognize the divorce and end of that union, my parents could not receive the sacrament of matrimony. During my father’s immersion into Catholicism, it was pointed out that without the sacrament of matrimony performed by a priest, my parents were technically living in sin. Mortal sin.... Mom and Dad, with the bishop’s permission, and after taking a solemn vow, could leave the marital bed and replace it with chaste cohabitation.... 'No one is to know of the brother-sister relationship except the Advocate Father O’Brien, the Pastor, the Tribunal, and the confessors of the parties,' the tribunal’s letter said....  [N]ine years after my father’s heart attack and their decision to have a celibate marriage, his first wife died. On an ordinary Tuesday evening in 1970, Mom and Dad were married in secrecy at our parish church...."

From "One Chaste Marriage, Four Kids, and the Catholic Church/A son reflects on his parents’ commitment, endorsed by the Catholic church, to cohabit chastely like 'brother and sister' to avoid mortal sin" by By Geoffrey Leavenworth (NYT).