Marital chastity

Aristotle remarked in the Nicomachean Ethics (1162a, 25-30) that while men and women marry for reasons of usefulness and pleasure, their "friendship may be based also on virtue, if the parties are good…. And children seem to be a bond of union (which is the reason why childless people part more easily); for children are a good common to both and what is common holds them together." Chastity, which embraces openness to children and the choice to stay together, is the key to a happy marriage.

The Bible makes it clear that married love is a great gift from God. This is the message of the Book of Genesis and the Letter to the Ephesians.

Genesis makes two enormously important points about human beings. First, they are made in the image and likeness of God. Second, seeing "it was not good for man to be alone" (Gn 2:18), God created woman and, by ordaining that the two become "one flesh" (Gn 2:24), made the love of husband and wife a visible sign of his love for the world. And, as Ephesians points out, by the redemptive activity of Christ, the love of husband and wife is a sign–a kind of sacrament–of the mystery of the love between Christ and his Church (Eph 5:32). In marrying, a man and woman establish a lifelong partnership, for their own good and the good of their children. Because Christian marriage is a sign of Christ’s covenant with the Church, its covenantal nature makes divorce impossible for a man and woman joined in sacramental marriage. "To bear witness to the inestimable value of the indissolubility and fidelity of marriage is one of the most precious and most urgent tasks of Christian couples in our time," according to Pope John Paul II. (Familiaris Consortio, 20)

Soon after becoming Pope, our Holy Father devoted a famous series of Wednesday audience talks to a theology of the body. It is a theology rooted in his philosophical studies and one of its key insights concerns the body’s "nuptial" meaning.

"Right from the beginning," he said, the human body in its masculinity or femininity includes "the nuptial attribute, that is, the capacity of expressing love…in which the person becomes a gift and, by means of this gift, fulfills the meaning of his being or existence." Does the Catholic Church take a negative view of sex and seek to deny people the pleasures of sexual expression? Critics say so, but they’re wrong. As Pope Paul VI wrote in Humanae Vitae –citing the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes–the Church teaches that conjugal relations between a husband and wife are "good and worthy of human dignity." Marital chastity preserves that goodness and protects that dignity.

Growth in friendship between husband and wife requires that they make constant efforts to grow in love of God and neighbor and avoid sin–not only sins against chastity but also sins like pride, anger, alcohol abuse, drug addiction, laziness, holding grudges, withholding forgiveness, and much else.

To do this, a Catholic couple must know their faith, receive the sacraments, and strive for the perfection of charity. With God’s grace, mediated especially through the sacrament of matrimony, as well as frequent reception of the sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist, wife and husband can conquer their sins and disordered inclinations and love one another as Christ loves the Church and the Church loves Christ. Then their marriage and family life become manifestations of great beauty, sources of happiness for themselves and their children, inspirations to others. Then they are on the way to being–I write these words gladly–married saints.

Contraception and natural family planning

The Catholic writer Flannery O’Connor called the Church’s doctrine on contraception "the most absolutely spiritual of all her stands." Then this tough-minded realist about human nature added a catch: "With all of us being materialists at heart, there is little wonder that it causes unease."

Pope Paul VI stated the teaching clearly in his prophetic encyclical Humanae Vitae (12): "There is an unbreakable connection between the unitive and procreative meaning, and both are inherent in the conjugal act. God established this connection, and man is not permitted to break it through his own volition." Even so, people–including many Catholics–do break that connection all the time. Does that have something to do with our being, as Flannery O’Connor said, "materialists at heart?"

But after all, what’s wrong with contraception? By contraception, people willingly act against both the procreative, life-giving meaning of conjugal intercourse and the unitive, love-giving meaning. Setting one’s will against, as well as acting against fundamental human purposes like these, is moral evil: sin.

It doesn’t help to say that one is avoiding procreation so that love can be more freely expressed. The two things are so intimately linked, Pope John Paul II points out, that "the conjugal act deprived of its interior truth, because artificially deprived of its procreative capacity, ceases to be an act of love."

What does someone who practices contraception communicate to his or her spouse? "I love you deeply–but not completely, of course. I give myself to you entirely–but only up to a point. I trust God unconditionally–but we’ve got to look out for ourselves." This is a badly mixed message, to say the least.

Things are very different with a husband and wife open to bringing a new life into the world. They are prepared to live even more fully in service to one another and to sacrifice for the common good of their family.

But what about couples who have a good reason to put off having a child? Then the morally right answer is Natural Family Planning (NFP). NFP today is not the calendar-rhythm method of the 1940s and 1950s. NFP refers to scientifically proven, morally acceptable methods by which a couple determines the woman’s fertile and infertile periods, with a view either to conceiving a child or postponing conception. Both artificial contraception and NFP can fail when not used properly, but the success rate of NFP is fully comparable to that of contraception. And the rate of divorce among NFP couples is much lower than among contracepting couples, thanks to the high degree of communication, mutual consideration, and respect that NFP involves.

Homosexuality and same-sex unions

Widespread acceptance of contraception paved the way for approval of the homosexual lifestyle and efforts to have same-sex unions accepted as marriages. As with many other bad ideas, the logic is unassailable once you grant the fundamental premise: that it is all right to separate the procreative purpose of sexual intercourse from the unitive purpose. Of course the same logic can just as well be used on behalf of other sexual practices that are still generally considered unacceptable.

If homosexual "marriage" ever becomes the law of the land, the views pronounced by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts when legalizing it in that state will be imposed on the rest of the country. For instance, these views include the notions that marriage is intended mainly to benefit adults; that children do not need a mother and a father; that other ways of raising children are as good as the mother-father way; and that marriage is the creation of the state.

Then society will attempt to condition us to stop speaking of "husbands" and "wives" and to speak of "partners." Children will have to be taught about homosexual sex in marriage-preparation and sex-education classes. Anyone who objects will be branded a "homophobe." Churches that teach the contrary doctrine of their sacred books and traditions will be called bigoted and threatened with legal coercion.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (2357) presents the teaching of the Catholic Church in these words:

"Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave disorder, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close 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."

Recognizing same-sex unions as marriages would be a serious blow to traditional marriage for it would demean the unique relationship of wife and husband. It would be like giving a diamond and a piece of glass the same name–"diamond"–and the same price.

Traditional marriage was already under assault–from cohabitation, contraception, infidelity, and divorce–before same-sex "marriage" came along. But traditional marriages and families are essential to a healthy society. For the sake of the common good, as well as individuals, they should be defended and preserved.

At the same time, people with a homosexual orientation deserve the same respect and fair treatment as everyone else. They should not be targets of unjust discrimination and certainly not targets of violence. Called to live chaste, holy lives, they should receive the support of the Christian community in their efforts to practice chastity. The organization, Courage, offers important ministry to aid those seeking to live chaste lives.

Education in chastity

Many persons and groups have roles in educating children and young people in chastity. The need for such education is greater than ever today because of the miseducation in unchastity that American children and young people receive from other sources.

Parents should teach their children from an early age that chastity is to be prized and cherished and that unchaste behavior is sinful. Parents must of course be models of chaste behavior themselves. They can help their children develop self-mastery by cautioning them against unchaste thoughts and immodest behavior, and warning them against–when they are young, denying them access to–movies, TV shows, Internet sites, and other sources of lewdness and pornography.

Parents should chaperone children’s parties and social activities and supervise dating. (Pre-pubescent and pubescent children shouldn’t date at all.) Catholic parents must see that their children learn and practice the faith. In the present unhealthy cultural environment, faith and virtuous behavior can’t be taken for granted or left to chance.

Parishes and Catholic schools and religious education programs are obliged to support and reinforce the teaching of conscientious parents. Bearing in mind that they are role models as well as information sources, religion teachers and catechists–indeed, all teachers, administrators, coaches, librarians, and other staff–should know and observe the teaching of the Church. Every class, subject, and activity, from science and literature to athletics and the school play, is a potential setting for communicating sound principles.

Like responsible parents, teachers face a daunting task today, given the fact that children are bombarded with incitements to be unchaste and may have hardly heard the word chastity, much less learned what it means and been helped to live it out. Among other things, teachers need to encourage their pupils to attend weekly Sunday Mass and receive the sacraments of penance and the Eucharist regularly.

Parish priests should speak the truth about human sexuality and sexual sin. Homilies, the sacrament of Penance, and sacramental preparation, especially before marriage, are important occasions for doing this. Pastoral sensitivity is always in order, but silence is not.

Careful instruction in Natural Family Planning should be part of marriage-preparation programs. NFP should never be presented as merely a subject for discussion that listeners are free to ignore. Where our own knowledge may be behind the times, we bishops and priests need to update ourselves on Natural Family Planning, Pope John Paul II’s theology of the body, and other developments.

Bishop Joseph F. Martino heads the Diocese of Scranton, Pennsylvania.

This pastoral letter was released on December 8, 2004: the 150th anniversary of the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception; it is reprinted here with permission.