Love and Chastity

In Pursuit of Love: Catholic Morality and Sexuality (Vincent Genovesi, po. 144-145)

• For many centuries the meaning and the morality of human sexual expression were defined primarily in terms of natural law with emphasis on the procreation and education of children. Only in more recent years have we come to a fuller, richer, and more personal understanding of human sexuality, an understanding that makes clear who we are, not only biologically but also psychologically, socially, affectively, and theologically.
• Sexuality is an integral or essential element in the challenge we face of becoming fully human. It is also a crucial factor in the mission we enjoy as Christians, namely, to continue proclaiming and manifesting the reality of God’s love for all people, which became flesh in Jesus Christ.
• It is our nature as sexual beings that enable us to be lovers, and it is love that must provide the context for our expressions of genital sexuality.
• True loving involves concern and caring for the other and embodies a willingness to work on behalf of the other’s well-being.
• Infatuation, immature love, or simply “being in love” provides no justification for genital expressions of sexuality. It is not enough to say simply that only true love justifies genital expression. What is needed, rather, is that special kind of true love that is shared by two people who honestly pledge themselves to the building of a life together.

Chastity

Chastity is the virtue or habitual disposition of a person which keeps order ion the sphere of his or her sexual activity.
• In the past, chastity was rather narrowly identified with continence and abstinence from unlawful sexual desires and pleasures. The virtue of chastity was identified simply with renunciations and denials. Presented negatively, chastity did not exert much attraction or awaken enthusiasm. It was seen as a burden.
• Chastity neither disdains sexuality not absolutizes it. Chastity reverences sexuality and directs its expression according toward personalization.
• Chastity is rooted in an attitude of reverence for the mystery of life and for the personal dignity of other human beings, including sexual partners, who should not be treated selfishly but rather should be nurtured and protected.
• Chastity shapes and orders the sexual powers in such a way that they truly serve the goal of humanization, either through a conjugal relationship or through consecrated life of virginity or celibacy, or in single blessedness.
• Unchastity is the dehumanizing and therefore unlawful use of one’s sexual powers, whereby sexuality is isolated from the total context of human love. Sexual satisfactions may not be sought in a way that disregards the person of human beings and degrades them to subhuman animal level.

CCC 233 1-2400 THE VOCATION TO CHASTITY
2337 Chastity means the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being. Sexuality, in which man’s belonging to the bodily and biological world is expressed, becomes personal and truly human when it is integrated into the relationship of one person to another, in the complete and lifelong mutual gift of a man and a woman.
The virtue of chastity therefore involves the integrity of the person and the integrality of the gift.
2338 The chaste person maintains the integrity of the powers of life and love placed in him. This integrity ensures the unity of the person; it is opposed to any behavior that would impair it. it tolerates neither a double life nor duplicity in speech.
2348 All the baptized are called to chastity. The Christian has “put on Christ,”35 the model for all chastity. All Christ’s faithful are called to lead a chaste life in keeping with their particular states of life. At the moment of his Baptism, the Christian is pledged to lead his affective life in chastity.