Call it Virtue. Call it Chastity. Call it Continence.
Whatever you want to call it, our society loves to tell us that it can’t be lived, is weird to try, and an attraction to it probably means that you’re all neurotic and hung-up, provincial and you know, like, so lame.
In an era where city governments are celebrating the creation of iphone apps that can take you to your leader nearest free condom (because when sex is just a bodily function, free condoms are the answer to many questions) and one night stands and “hook-ups” have been rendered as ordinary as a belly-scratch, we are told that nobody (outside of some Southern and Mid-Western tent-revivalists) actually takes virtue seriously, anymore!
Except that people still do. Even some (gasp!) grown-up, well-educated, urban-dwelling, culturally-aware sophisticates manage to seriously contemplate continence and attempt the discipline of self-control and self-denial. They submit to the staggering idea that such a discipline can be a noble thing, and that some things are worth living context, and delay.
One such fellow is Patheos’ own Tim Muldoon, a Catholic theologian, writer and spiritual director who often writes about the theology of desire (in the main and the abstract). At The Holy Desire he writes with great candor about this issue of continence and “red hot Catholic love” here and here, and he touches on the wisdom of Natural Family Planning, as well:
Natural family planning was wonderful because it allowed us to talk about sex and then enjoy it. It allowed us to name our desires and then discern which of them were healthiest for our married life, and which were perhaps more rooted in unhealthy attitudes or (for lack of a better term) external turn-ons. It allowed us to know each other without needing any sort of technology. It kept our focus on a deep yet still distant desire, for children. We later learned that NFP also enabled us to almost immediately diagnose infertility. And much later we have come to understand that the periodic abstinence required by NFP was excellent practice for the child-raising years, during which time periodic abstinence becomes rather a necessity, due to small children running into our bedroom to sleep.
We read quite a lot in mass media about Catholics rejecting church teachings on chastity and on artificial contraception, and rather less on Catholics who embrace the teachings with open minds, and find them to be life-enhancing, rather than restricting. I think it’s very cool to read an erudite professor sing the praises of discipline over immediate gratification.
Also very cool, Tony Rossi’s article about an engaged couple speaking freely about their own commitment to virtuous courtship:
As their relationship now proceeds toward the sacrament of marriage, God and their Catholic faith remain the glue that hold Abby and Simon together. She said, “Separate, we are two complete individuals. Together with God and by His grace, we are one complete unit. He is our glue, our bond, our wingman. Especially in moments when we fall and sin, God is there with us and He gives us the grace to encourage the other to go to Confession, to attend Mass, to pray more, and to read Scripture together. God gives us the grace to lead each other to heaven.”
These folks are taking an anything-but-casual approach to love, or to life, or to sex within their love and their lives. Doesn’t it seem more refreshing, and more worth reading-about, and perhaps worth living, than the thoughtless and easy lowering of every sexual urge and thought to our lowest common denominators?
I call it refreshing, anyway. And challenging, inspiring, and courageous witness.
Ma’am, you bring to mind C.S. Lewis’ observations, which I do not recall verbatim or in detail, of what happened when he finally got his friend Charles Williams a chance to lecture at Oxford, and he spoke on chastity (by way of analyzing Milton’s poetry). His sense was that the students — and mind you, this would have been circa 1942 — were stunned to find themselves fascinated and moved by a topic they had never heard considered before, and even intrigued by it as an adventure and a challenge worth the candle. Williams winsomely presented chastity as something other than mere denial, and found an audience.
You’re spot on with regards to chastity not being impossible.
I remember being in sex ed, and being utterly puzzled by the ethos there when it came to contraception. It was along the lines of “You are GOING to have sex. It is INEVITABLE. This is something that you WILL use.”
I’ve never understood the claim that teenagers will inevitably have sex, and can’t/won’t control themselves. It wasn’t the case amongst my not particularly religious peer group and yes, it made people wonder if they were normal to want to wait at least a few more years.
If the rationale behind teaching about contraception is that it’s going to be useful for the future (as a Protestant, I don’t agree with Rome’s position, but I can respect it and believe that this sort of education should be left to families), then make the case.
But if you’re going to claim that you can’t expect teenagers to control themselves because they’re just wired that way, that they *will* have sex and you’re just trying to prevent the most negative consequences, then you’re on shakier ground, because it’s simply not true. At least explain why people who allegedly can’t be expected to control themselves until later should be given that kind of freedom.
My point is that it seems to be another aspect of lower expectations for the young. I’ve lost count of the people saying something along the lines of “I’d love it if teens were abstinent, but it’s not gonna happen”. How do you know?
It also seems to be a means of undermining familial authority. In a just world, parents would teach their kids their values, whatever they were. In the current model, it’s just a bunch of people trying to impose their values on everything else.
(Whoa, this turned into a rant fairly quickly.)
Of course it isn’t impossible, merely exceptional and unlikely. Young people who are chaste are the exception, Bristol Palin is the norm.
That Catholics with strong faith can do this has never been in question. Hence the monastic life. For the faith includes faith in the Sacrament of Marriage. But those whose faith is weak revert to the norm. Even when they wear a clerical collar, as we have seen.
Among those Christians who do not accept the dogma of Sacrament of Marriage, there is really very little that I can see in the way of coherent argument about why sex is a sin outside of marriage and not inside of it.
I don’t know exactly what the “lowest common denominators” of sex might be, other than satyricosis, nymphomania, and pimping. But even the overwhelming majority of the sexually active, in or out of marriage, clearly do not reach them.
It is this majority which has changed mores in this country from what they were in my youth, not the satyrs, nymphomanics, and pimps.
Mom Nature has loaded the dice in the other direction and the horror of the virtuous toward the sexually active, seems [less strong faith] to be merely a matter of taste.
In case you are wondering, I personally have been celibate for 15 years, because I have more important things to do.