Married or unmarried, all are called to live virtuously

The word “chastity” suggests the notion of someone being “as pure as the driven snow.” What exactly does this mean? The Catechism makes it crystal clear: “Chastity means the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of a person in his or her bodily and spiritual being…The virtue of chastity therefore involves the integrity of the person and the integrality of the gift” (ccc 2337).
 

Chaste people (married and unmarried) are integrated people who “govern their passions and find peace” (ccc 2339). They “tolerate neither a double life nor duplicity in speech” (ccc 2338). Chastity includes what the Catechism calls an “apprenticeship in self-mastery” (ccc 2339), which “one can never consider acquired once and for all” (ccc 2342), because it is “a training in human freedom” (ccc 2339), the work of a lifetime.
 

“Chastity is a moral virtue…a gift from God, a grace, a fruit of spiritual effort. The Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, enables one whom the water of Baptism has regenerated to imitate the purity of Christ” (ccc 2345). The effort requires changes from one period of life to another. It can, for example, “be more intense in certain periods, such as when the personality is being formed during childhood and adolescence” (ccc 2342).
 

Like all things that are good, our loving Father provides the means to assist us in acquiring all the virtues, including that of chastity. Those who remain faithful to their “baptismal promises and resist temptations will want to adopt the means for doing so: self-knowledge, practice of a self-discipline…obedience to God’s Commandments, exercise of the moral virtues, and fidelity to prayer” (ccc 2340).
 

On the negative side, there are also offenses against chastity that are outlined in this section of the Catechism, the first of which is “lust,” described here as a “disordered desire for or inordinate enjoyment of sexual pleasure” (ccc 2351). Why strong language like “disordered?” The passage explains: “Sexual pleasure is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated from its procreative and unitive purposes” (ccc 2351). In 1976, when President Jimmy Carter famously admitted to having “looked upon a lot of women with lust”, he was likely reflecting on the words spoken by Christ: “I tell you that anyone who looks on a woman with lust in his heart has already committed adultery” (Mt 5:28).
 

The Church teaches that “the deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose” (ccc 2352). Therefore, the whole pornography industry has no support from those who seek to follow Christ, because it “does grave injury to the dignity of its participants [actors, vendors, the public], since each one becomes an object of base pleasure and illicit profit for others” (ccc 2354). As well, fornication, the “carnal union between an unmarried man and an unmarried woman [is] gravely contrary to the dignity of persons and of human sexuality which is naturally ordered to the good of spouses and the generation and education of children” (ccc 2353). Prostitution, too, “is a social scourge. It usually involves women, but also men, children, and adolescents” (ccc 2355).
 

Finally, rape is a crime; a forcible act and the worst of sins, that “deeply wounds the respect, freedom, and physical and moral integrity to which every person has a right. It…can mark the victim for life” (ccc 2356).

The next topic mentioned is “Chastity and Homosexuality,” which, the Catechism explains, refers to those “who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex” (ccc 2357). Many of us know people who identify as having same-sex attraction, whether in our own families, or among our friends or associates at work. The Catechism speaks forcefully that those with same-sex attraction “must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity” (ccc 2358).
 

Consistent with Church teaching from the Word of God (Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition), however, the Catechism teaches that homosexual acts or behavior are “contrary to the natural law. [Such behavior] … closes the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved” (ccc 2357).
 

The wording here is very specific. Contrary to popular belief, the Church does not teach that a person with a homosexual disposition is sick or depraved or evil. In fact, the Catechism explicitly refers to people with homosexual tendencies when it states: “Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided” (ccc 2358). Additionally, we are taught to show our support for those with such tendencies because, like everyone, they “are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter” (ccc 2358).
 

The Catechism concludes this section by stating: “Homosexual persons are called to chastity” (ccc 2359). The word “self-mastery” is again invoked here as in 20 paragraphs previously: “By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom … [homosexual persons] can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection” (ccc 2359). That earlier paragraph concludes: “The alternative is clear: either we govern our passions and find peace, or we let ourselves be dominated by them and become unhappy” (ccc 2339).

In short, all God’s people, whether married or unmarried, are called to live chaste lives. “The Christian has ‘put on Christ,’ the model for all chastity” (ccc 2348). As such, all are to pursue whatever “form” of chastity that makes sense for them. “There are three forms of the virtue of chastity”, the Catechism tells us. “The first is that of spouses, the second that of widows, and the third that of virgins” (ccc 2349). By way of example, those preparing for marriage “should reserve for marriage the expressions of affection that belong to married love” (ccc 2350). Others are called by circumstance or vocation in life to practice chastity, which is a “gift from God, a grace, a fruit of spiritual effort” (ccc 2345), which must not be taken for granted or otherwise dismissed out of hand.
 

Father Hillier is Director of the diocesan Office of the Pontifical Mission Societies, Censor Librorum and oversees the Office for Persons with Disabilities