Chastity in marriage

EVERYTIME I give a talk on this topic, I can't help but get amused by the look of disbelief I see on the faces of many people.

It is as if I'm talking about a very strange, arcane thing, a doctrine from the moon perhaps. I could almost hear their derisive reaction: "Hello, good morning, are you still on earth? Are you an alien?"

This simply confirms my suspicion. There's a lot of ignorance and confusion surrounding this basic aspect of married life. We can presume that from there, a lot of irregular and highly immoral marital acts must be taking place around us!

In the first place, there's that terribly mistaken notion that chastity is just a matter of not doing this and not doing that. It is a killer of freedom, a spoiler of spontaneity. It's even accused of being anti-human.

Many others now believe that chastity, if ever it has some use, is just for the young or the very old, the single if not the abnormal. They claim it has no place in a normally constructed person. And definitely no place in married life.

As if marriage bestows on a person the license to act as brutes, to follow simply the impulses of one's hormones and instincts. It is as if marriage means one can forget his conscience, his spiritual life, his supernatural destination.

Terribly lost in the minds of many is the beautiful truth that chastity is a virtue that perfects man, that makes him more human, that makes him have better human dominion over his animal urges.

Hardly appreciated is the fundamental truth that chastity is an affirmation of love, a defense of the true meaning and nature of human sexuality and marriage, removing them from the clutches of some blind forces.

If ever it involves sacrifices and self-denial, it is simply because as men and women we are free to choose to be either an animal or a person, a merely biological organism or a child of God. And in that choice, some struggle is unavoidable.

Making things worse are the shameless campaigns promoting population control, family planning, reproductive health, sex education, safe sex, etc., that twist, distort and disfigure the reality of human sexuality, chastity and marriage.

We have to remind everyone that chastity is indispensable in marriage because we continue to be human persons and children of God when we marry. We have to respect the nature of human sexuality.

The Catholic Church has always proclaimed the goodness and lawfulness of the acts in marriage by which the intimate and chaste union of the spouses takes place.

But she teaches that these actions should be effectively guided by objective criteria drawn from the nature of the human person and human action. We just cannot be governed by the laws of practicality and pleasure-seeking.

Chastity in marriage follows these criteria that respect the total self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love. It includes as an essential element that of openness to life in the acts proper to marriage.

Thus, chastity in marriage necessarily excludes the intrinsically immoral act of contraception, defined as "any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation, whether as an end or as a means."

Contraception usurps God's power of giving life. It makes man, not God, the ultimate source of human life. It makes man, not God, exercise the power to dictate the coming into existence of a human person.

Besides, contraception breaks the naturally insperable connection between the unitive and procreative properties of the marriage act. It gets hooked with the unitive aspect with all its pleasure-giving component, and rejects the responsibility associated with its procreative aspect.

Actually, no matter how one sweetens or rationalizes it, contraception is a degradation of married love and a corruption of the couple concerned. It makes the marital act not an act of love, but rather an act of selfisness.

We need to make a strong and clear reminder of this fundamental requirement of married life, and to promote chastity in marriage everywhere.