Youcat commented through CCC – Question n. 405 – Part I.

YOUCAT Question n. 405 - Part I. How can anyone live a chaste life? What can help?

(Youcat answer)  Someone lives chastely when he is free to be loving and is not the slave of his drives and emotions. Anything, therefore, that helps one to become a more mature, freer, and more loving person and to form better relationships helps that person to love chastely, also.      

A deepening through CCC

(CCC 2339) Chastity includes an apprenticeship in self-mastery which is a training in human freedom. The alternative is clear: either man governs his passions and finds peace, or he lets himself be dominated by them and becomes unhappy (Cf. Sir 1:22). "Man's dignity therefore requires him to act out of conscious and free choice, as moved and drawn in a personal way from within, and not by blind impulses in himself or by mere external constraint. Man gains such dignity when, ridding himself of all slavery to the passions, he presses forward to his goal by freely choosing what is good and, by his diligence and skill, effectively secures for himself the means suited to this end" (GS 17).

  Reflecting and meditating 

(Youcat comment) One becomes free to be loving through self-discipline, which one must acquire, practice, and maintain at every stage of life. It is helpful for me in this regard to obey God’s commandments in all situations, to avoid temptations and any form of double life or hypocrisy, and to ask God for protection against temptations and to strengthen me in love. Being able to live out a pure and undivided love is ultimately a grace and a wonderful gift of God.

(CCC Comment)

(CCC 2341) The virtue of chastity comes under the cardinal virtue of temperance, which seeks to permeate the passions and appetites of the senses with reason.

(This question: How can anyone live a chaste life? What can help? is continued)

Youcat commented through CCC – Question n. 404.

YOUCAT Question n. 404 - What is chaste love? Why should a Christian live a chaste life?

(Youcat answer)  A chaste love is a love that defends itself against all the internal and external forces that might destroy it. That person is chaste who has consciously accepted his sexuality and integrated it well into his personality. chastity and continence are not the same thing. Someone who has an active sex life in marriage must be chaste, too. A person acts chastely when his bodily activity is the expression of dependable, faithful love.

A deepening through CCC

(CCC 1766) "To love is to will the good of another" (St. Thomas Aquinas, STh I-II, 26, 4, corp. art.). All other affections have their source in this first movement of the human heart toward the good. Only the good can be loved (Cf. St. Augustine, De Trin., 8, 3, 4: PL 42, 949-950). Passions "are evil if love is evil and good if it is good" (St. Augustine, De civ. Dei 14, 7, 2: PL 41, 410). (CCC 1767) In themselves passions are neither good nor evil. They are morally qualified only to the extent that they effectively engage reason and will. Passions are said to be voluntary, "either because they are commanded by the will or because the will does not place obstacles in their way" (St. Thomas Aquinas, STh I-II, 24, 1 corp. art.). It belongs to the perfection of the moral or human good that the passions be governed by reason (Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, STh I-II, 24, 3).     

Reflecting and meditating  

(Youcat comment) Chastity must not be confused with prudishness. A person who lives chastely is not the plaything of his lusts but, rather, lives his sexuality deliberately, motivated by love, and as an expression of that love. Unchaste behavior weakens love and obscures its meaning. The Catholic Church advocates a holistic-ecological approach to sexuality. This includes sexual pleasure, which is something good and beautiful; personal love; and fruitfulness, which means openness to having children. It is the understanding of the Catholic Church that these three aspects of sexuality belong together. Now if a man has one woman for sexual pleasure, a second to whom he writes love poetry, and a third with whom to have children, then he is exploiting all three and really loves none of them.

(CCC Comment)

(CCC 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 (Cf. Mt 5:37).   

(The next question is: How can anyone live a chaste life? What can help?)

Youcat commented through CCC – Question n. 403.

YOUCAT Question n. 403 - How is sexuality related to love?

(Youcat answer)  Sexuality must not be separated from love; they must go together. The sexual encounter requires the framework of a true, dependable love.

A deepening through CCC

(CCC 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. 

Reflecting and meditating 

(Youcat comment) When sexuality is separated from love and is sought only for the sake of satisfaction, one destroys the meaning of the sexual union of man and woman. Sexual union is the most beautiful bodily, sensual expression of love. People who look for sex without love are lying, because the closeness of their bodies does not correspond to the closeness of their hearts. Someone who does not take his own body language at its word does lasting damage to body and soul. Sex then becomes inhuman; it is degraded to a means of obtaining pleasure and degenerates into a commodity. Only committed, enduring love in marriage creates a space for sexuality that is experienced in a human way and brings lasting happiness.

(CCC Comment)

(CCC 2349) "People should cultivate [chastity] in the way that is suited to their state of life. Some profess virginity or consecrated celibacy which enables them to give themselves to God alone with an undivided heart in a remarkable manner. Others live in the way prescribed for all by the moral law, whether they are married or single" (CDF, Persona humana 11). Married people are called to live conjugal chastity; others practice chastity in continence: There are three forms of the virtue of chastity: the first is that of spouses, the second that of widows, and the third that of virgins. We do not praise any one of them to the exclusion of the others.... This is what makes for the richness of the discipline of the Church  (St. Ambrose, De viduis 4, 23: PL 16, 255A).

(The next question is:  What is chaste love? Why should a Christian live a chaste life?)

Youcat commented through CCC – Question n. 402.

YOUCAT Question n. 402 - What is love?

(Youcat answer)  Love is the free self-giving of the heart.    

A deepening through CCC

(CCC 2346) Charity is the form of all the virtues. Under its influence, chastity appears as a school of the gift of the person. Self-mastery is ordered to the gift of self. Chastity leads him who practices it to become a witness to his neighbor of God's fidelity and loving kindness.        

Reflecting and meditating 

(Youcat comment) To have a heart full of love means to be so pleased with something that one emerges from oneself and devotes oneself to it. A musician can devote himself to a masterpiece. A kindergarten teacher can be there wholeheartedly for her charges. In every friendship there is love. The most beautiful form of love on earth, however, is the love between man and woman, in which two people give themselves to each other forever. All human love is an image of divine love, in which all love is at home. Love is the inmost being of the Triune God. In God there is continual exchange and perpetual self-giving. Through the overflowing of divine love, we participate in the eternal love of God. The more a person loves, the more he resembles God. Love should influence the whole life of a person, but it is realized with particular depth and symbolism when man and woman love one another in marriage and become “one flesh” (Gen 2:24).  

(CCC Comment)

(CCC 1826) "If I… have not charity," says the Apostle, "I am nothing." Whatever my privilege, service, or even virtue, "if I… have not charity, I gain nothing" (1 Cor 13:1-4). Charity is superior to all the virtues. It is the first of the theological virtues: "So faith, hope, charity abide, these three. But the greatest of these is charity" (1 Cor 13:13). (CCC 1827) The practice of all the virtues is animated and inspired by charity, which "binds everything together in perfect harmony" (Col 3:14); it is the form of the virtues; it articulates and orders them among themselves; it is the source and the goal of their Christian practice. Charity upholds and purifies our human ability to love, and raises it to the supernatural perfection of divine love.

(The next question is: How is sexuality related to love?)

Youcat commented through CCC – Question n. 401.

YOUCAT Question n. 401 - Is there a priority of one sex over the other?

(Youcat answer)  No. God endowed men and women with identical dignity as persons.

A deepening through CCC

(CCC 2331) "God is love and in himself he lives a mystery of personal loving communion. Creating the human race in his own image…, God inscribed in the humanity of man and woman the vocation, and thus the capacity and responsibility, of love and communion" (FC 11). "God created man in his own image … male and female he created them" (Gen 1:27); He blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and multiply" (Gen 1:28); "When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created" (Gen 5:1-2).  

Reflecting and meditating 

(Youcat comment) Both men and women are human beings created in God’s image and children of God redeemed by Jesus Christ. It is just as unchristian as it is inhumane to discriminate unjustly against someone because he is male or female. Equal dignity and equal rights, nevertheless, do not mean uniformity. The sort of egalitarianism that ignores the specific character of a man or a woman contradicts God’s plan of creation.

(CCC Comment)

(CCC 2335) Each of the two sexes is an image of the power and tenderness of God, with equal dignity though in a different way. the union of man and woman in marriage is a way of imitating in the flesh the Creator's generosity and fecundity: "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh." All human generations proceed from this union. (Cf. Gen 4:1-2, 25-26;  5:1).

(The next question is: What is love?)