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2006 ARCHIVE
December
Big Words, Cybergeeks, and Singlehood
November
St. Joseph, Unofficial Patron of the Dream Date
Part 2 of 2 parts
October
St. Joseph, Unofficial Patron of the Dream Date
Part 1 of 2 parts
September
Semper Fi, "Always Faithful" - Mary, the Marines, and Dating - Part 2 of 2 parts
August
Semper Fi, "Always Faithful" - Mary, the Marines, and Dating - Part 1 of 2 parts
July
What Is The Church's Moral Teaching on Chastity?
(Excerpted from Chapter III. A Major Challenge: A Chaste, Christian Courtship)
(Part 3)
June
Love and Affection
(Excerpted from Chapter IV, "Understanding Love")
(Part 2)
May
Excerpted from Christian Courtship in
An Oversexed World.
(Part 1)
April
Confessions of an Undercover Virgin
March
Renewing Singles Ministry
February
Body Language: Commentary on the Intersection of Faith, Sex & Culture
January
SINGLES MINISTRY IS VOCATION FORMATION
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| JULY 2006: |
This is Part Three of a three part series. Enjoy!
What Is The Church's Moral Teaching on Chastity?
(Excerpted from Chapter III. A Major Challenge: A Chaste, Christian Courtship) |
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 Perhaps the greatest challenge facing Christians today is trying to live a chaste, Christian courtship. There are other challenges, which we'll discuss a bit later, but this is a big one today, and so we'll look at it first.
What does Jesus Christ expect of us in courtship in the twenty-first century? The most evident norms are found in Sacred Scripture. The more sophisticated norms require reasoning and the guidance of the Church.
Scripture
First the Scriptural teaching. Did Jesus say anything about pre-marital sex? He did!:
...it is from within, from men's hearts, that evil intentions emerge: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, malice, deceit, indecency, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within and make a man unclean.[8]
Now admittedly, fornication is not a word most of us use every day. It's definition is voluntary sexual intercourse between an unmarried person and another unmarried person of the opposite sex. In other words, pre-marital sex. So, it's pretty clear Jesus was not in favor of pre-marital sex.
In fact, neither was St. Paul:
Do you not know that the unjust will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor boy prostitutes nor sodomites nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God.[9]
Fornication then, will keep you out of the kingdom. No small potatoes. The word fornication appears three times in the Old Testament, 14 times in the New. In every case it is proclaimed immoral. Nowhere is it called, as our contemporary world would have it, a virtue, or a way of life. And, fornication is clearly the matter of mortal sin. Exclusion from the Kingdom (Gal 5:19-21 & 1 Cor 6:9 above) is not the penalty for venial sin.
This is not to say that everyone who has fornicated is lost. The Lord forgives those who repent of this sin and reform. This is clear from the way he treated the woman caught in adultery-certainly a worse sin than fornication-in John 8:3 11, and the way he treated Mary Magdalene, a reformed prostitute. Nonetheless, anyone who loves the Lord, and seeks his/her own good, will make every attempt to avoid such sins, and all sins.
Sexual sins are not ordinarily the worst of serious sins, but they are the most popular. Best to avoid all sin but better to commit the sin of sexual immorality out of weakness than to commit the sin of unbelief, i.e., denying the teaching of Scripture that fornication is a sin. In other words, those who rationalize their fornication and pretend to be good Christians are far worse than those who embrace the truth, but fail to live it at times. Since the Scriptures are so clear on this, as is the Church, invincible, or blameless, ignorance on this issue is almost impossible.
The Church
The Church confirms the teaching of Sacred Scripture: "The use of the sexual function has its true meaning and moral rightness only in true marriage."[10] And, it confirms the seriousness of sexual sins: "The moral order of sexuality involves such high values of human life that every direct violation of this order is objectively serious."[11] Thus all sexual activity outside of true marriage, including pre-marital sex, adultery, masturbation,[12] and homosexual acts,[13] is seriously sinful.
Why is sex outside of marriage wrong? Briefly-and we'll cover this in greater detail later- it's immoral because 1) sex is a symbol of committed marital love and 2) sex may produce children who should be conceived and raised in the stable love community of marriage.
Foreplay?
Okay, so premarital sex is wrong. What about other things? What about foreplay? Are these things sinful? Yes, any directly intended sexual arousal outside marriage is wrong. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote:
...since fornication is a mortal sin, and much more so the other kinds of lust, it follows that in such like sins not only consent to the act but also consent to the pleasure is a mortal sin. Consequently when... kisses and caresses are done for this delight, it follows that they are mortal sins... Therefore in so far as they are lustful, they are mortal sins.[14]
Thomas defines lust as "seeking sexual pleasure not in accord with right reason."[15] Lust, of course, would include intending or imagining sexual sins, as Jesus pointed out in Mt.5:28: "...I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart."
Thus, passionate kissing, feeling the "erogenous zones," or any other act which by nature or intent stimulates the desire for sex or causes sexual arousal would be categorized as sexual activity. Such an act is ordinarily done to provide a certain incomplete pleasure, a pleasure which can be completed only by sexual intercourse or orgasm. As St. Thomas said, all of these things are seriously sinful.
But, why is sexual arousal wrong outside of marriage? Because sexual arousal is for the purpose of preparing for sexual intercourse. It is unreasonable to prepare for sexual intercourse if you are not planning to have sexual intercourse. Sin is in its essence, acting contrary to right reason, the reason of God. When a couple get themselves all worked up sexually, and then either with a will of steel, back off, or worse, come to a climax with some sort genital activity (either intercourse or oral-genital contact, or whatever), they trivialize sex, they are using it for play.
The world seems to want to trivialize sex, and with it the love it symbolizes. The Church wants to uphold the sacredness of sex, of love, and the dignity of human persons.
How Far?
So how far does a true Christian go on a date? The principle, simply put, is: sharing affection is generally fine and good-even desirable, but acts which by their nature or intent cause sexual arousal in either person are immoral.
Some have argued that the question of how far you may go on a date is not a good one. They say that asking that is like asking how close you may come to the edge of a cliff without falling off. Not so. Drawing near to the edge of a cliff has no intrinsic value. Sharing affection on a date does. This is a healthy thing, one which helps bonding. As such, it should be pursued reasonably.
Pope John Paul II, in his pre-papal, and widely-acclaimed Love and Responsibility, notes that affection (or in his words, "tenderness") is an important factor in love, but that "there can be no genuine tenderness without a perfected habit of continence," or self-control, "which has its origin in a will always ready to show loving kindness, and so overcome the temptation merely to enjoy..."[16] In other words, there is a line between the good and noble exchange of affection and the seeking of sexual pleasure. To stay on the moral side of that line requires self-control.
Pornography?
The immorality of using pornography should be a no-brainer for a Catholic, but today you can't make any assumptions. You have to spell everything out. So, what about pornography? Is viewing it for recreation seriously sinful? In a word, yes, because it corrupts the mind. The Catholic Catechism teaches,
Pornography consists in removing real or simulated sexual acts from the intimacy of the partners, in order to display them deliberately to third parties. It offends against chastity because it perverts the conjugal act, the intimate giving of spouses to each other. 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. It immerses all who are involved in the illusion of a fantasy world. It is a grave offense.[17]
It's not just the occasion of sin, which it is also, but it is a serious sin in itself because it degrades sex and all involved.
Practical Application
So what does this mean in actual practice? First, since men usually become aroused more quickly than women, the woman must be concerned about how he is reacting, not just how she herself is reacting. If the man becomes less gentle and more urgent in his embrace or kisses or touches, it's quite certain that he has gone beyond the threshold of affection. This is the time for either or both to pull back, while saying something complimentary. Why the compliment? To deflect the sin without destroying the mood. He (or she) could say something like, "You're very precious to me," or "You're the greatest."
A classic question along this line among singles is that of "French" or tongue kissing: Is it immoral? Briefly, yes, virtually always, since it's hard to imagine a normal single male who would not be sent half-way to the moon with a good French kiss. Some women have told me they can do this without getting aroused, and I believe them. Not men. Since I presume a woman would do this with a man, she is partly responsible for his arousal.
One eighth-grader told me "Father, I can French kiss without getting aroused." I answered, "I think you must be doing it wrong." It might be possible for a single male to de-sensitize himself by constant practice, but the de-sensitizing process itself would be harmful to his soul, and perhaps to his social life as well.
What if someone gets aroused by affection alone? It would seem that by the principle of double effect, a certain amount of this is okay. The key is not to will the arousal directly in itself. However, any long-term sharing of affection with this effect should be avoided, since the longer the arousal continues, the more likely it is that the will is going to embrace it.
Recreational Kissing?
There is another point here that often gets overlooked: when a man and woman sit on the couch and kiss - just affectionately - for half an hour, even aside from the temptation to fall into sin there is a problem. The whole purpose of courtship is to get to know the other person, to see if you should get married. Kissing for a long period of time is not going to help with that process. It's usually done because it's enjoyable, not for interpersonal discovery. So even if there were no arousal in long-term kissing (which itself might be a medical phenomenon), it's counter-productive for true courtship. It becomes recreational kissing after just a few minutes. Its emphasis is more on self-seeking than self-giving, and negative results are likely. This would not be a sexual sin if there were no arousal intended, but a sin against prudence.
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I know, I know, all of this is a very tall order for the twenty-first century,[18] but not nearly as tall an order as the gospel, of which this is an essential part.
To see a leaflet on chastity by this author, and how to live it, click here. www.cfalive.org/ReadChastity.htm
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