THEO III MORALITY SEXUALITY HANDOUT

HUMAN SEXUALITY
Definitions

Sexuality:
the dimension of personality that makes one male or female capable of affective bonds and procreative activity, as
well as intrinsically structured for an “other”, including affective, genital, feminine, masculine, heterosexual and
homosexual components, achieving its highest manifestation in interpersonal love.

Genital Sexuality:
The biological, physiological, physical, procreative dimension of sexuality, which includes the sexual quality of
arousal and achieves its highest expression in orgasm.

Affective Sexuality:
The affectionate, emotional, social, non-procreative dimension of sexuality, which includes the sexual qualities of
compassion, gentleness, sensitivity, tenderness, and warmth, achieving its highest expression in friendship.

Celibacy:
A positive choice of the single life for the sake of Christ in response to the call of God.

Virginity:
A physical and spiritual way of living in which a person who has not had genital sexual intercourse chooses to
integrate genital abstinence for life into his or her response to God.

Chastity:
The Christian virtue which integrates the totality of sexuality into our lives as Christian men and women, which
strives to unify the sexual and spiritual dimensions of a person whether single or married, which universalizes
affectivity in the direction of compassion and elevates genitality to a sign of God’s love for man by limiting it to a
faithful and permanent interpersonal commitment.

Some general observations that follow from these definitions:

1. Sex / sexuality: a means of expressing love, and the meaning of expression is dependent upon an
objective meaning of sexuality itself and on the subjective relationship in which it occurs
2. Male / female: a biological differentiation fixed early in life by both biological and psychological
determinants
3. Masculinity / femininity: roles based on cultural differentiation (note that these are present in each
person regardless of gender)
4. Characteristics of the sexual person: a person, affective, genital, feminine, masculine, male, female,
heterosexual, homosexual, attractive, relational

What is the nature of the human person especially as it relates to sexuality? (cf. The Nature and Meaning of
Chastity by William E. May)

The deepest need of man is to overcome one’s separateness and to achieve union, to transcend one’s own
individual life and find at-one-ment (cf. Eric Fromm)

Each of us is an individual, and as individuals we are cut off from others, isolated atoms of matter, as it were,
imprisoned within ourselves.

Individuality points to our limitedness, our finitude, our loneliness; were we simple individuals we would be
condemned to a life of terrible loneliness and unfulfilled hopes and possibilities.

To be a human being is to be not only an individual but a person, i.e., a social being. Some characteristics of
personhood include:
1. allows us to open ourselves up to others and share and communicate in life and in the goods that go to
make up a truly human life

1
 THEO III MORALITY SEXUALITY HANDOUT

2. we are persons because we are radically capable of performing acts of understanding and love
3. as intelligent entities we can both raise questions about the meaning of our experiences and reach an
understanding and a true understanding of those experiences
4. through our acts of understanding we expand our being and become, intentionally, one with the reality we
come to understand, living, in a very real sense, its life
5. we are the kind of beings who can live the life of others, who can be related to others not simply as objects
but as subjects who are able to inter into personal or inter-subjective relationships
6. as persons we can truly share and communicate our lives, our hopes, our loves

Our personhood is rooted in our being as intelligent and free entities, in a dimension of our existence that transcends
the limits of matter and surpasses the here and now. It is rooted in our being as spiritual entities, in the fact that we
are gifted with the immaterial powers of intellect and will, with the freedom to go beyond the determinisms of
matter and to shape our own lives and destinies by our personal acts of self-determination.

A human person is not a spirit but an animal – a bodied being of a special kind; in searching for my identity as a
human person and in reaching out to other persons in order to be understood and to understand, to be loved and to
love, I do so as an animal person who is sentient, feeling, passionate and emotional; because I am an animal, I am a
sexual being with an affective dimension to my existence.

What are the various meanings of love, the underlying unifying concept, and how do they relate to sexuality?
(cf. The Nature and Meaning of Chastity by William E. May)

There is a great need to relate human sexuality to love but a problem arises when one tries to define or describe the
meaning of love (note the multitude of meanings and uses of the word love in the English language alone).

Is there a unity in all of loves varied forms? If there is what is it?

In every conceivable case love signifies much the same thing as approval; love also basically means affirmation of
existence which needs continuation and perfection.

May isolates three types of love in general:

1. AGAPE: like all forms of love, agape is a love that affirms existence and wills the fullness of being for the
beloved. Agape is not only a response to a value or a good actually present, but it is a love that is creative
of goodness and value.
2. EROS: is the power which attracts us. The essence of Eros is that it draws us from ahead, whereas sex
pushes us from behind. Eros is the drive toward union with what we belong to – the union with our own
possibilities, union with significant other persons. Eros is the yearning in man which leads him to dedicate
himself to seeking the noble and good life.
3. FRIENDSHIP: here we accept the person for who they are and affirm them in their being and we are ready
to forgive their faults and shortcomings. But we are by no means accepting them AS they are. We will our
friend to be fully what they are meant to be; precisely because of our love and friendship for them we want
them to rid themselves of their failings, to discover their true needs and struggle for their attainment and we
are ready to help them in their struggle.

There are several types of friendship love: brotherly love, parental love, filial love, spousal, wedded or erotic love.
This last form of friendship love is intimately linked to our being as sexual, affectionate animal persons.

Spousal, wedded, erotic love aspires to a union which extends much farther than that of simple friendship, filial love
or parental love. It desires bodily union. In spousal love the body of the beloved assumes a unique charm as the
vessel of the person’s soul and also as embodying in a unique way the general charm and attraction which femininity
has for men or virility for women. Spousal love aspires to the bodily union as a specific fulfillment of the total union
as a unique, deep, mutual self-donation.

In erotic love there is an exclusiveness that is lacking in brotherly love and motherly love. Erotic love is exclusive,
but it loves in the other person all of mankind, all that is alive. It is exclusive only in the sense that I can fuse myself

2
 THEO III MORALITY SEXUALITY HANDOUT

fully and intensely with one person alone. Erotic love excludes the love for others only in the sense of erotic fusion,
full commitment in all aspects of life – but not in the sense of deep brotherly love.

It is love and love rooted in agape alone that ultimately enables us to be ourselves and to find at-one-ment. It is love
and love alone that makes us integrally human. Love then is ultimately what makes it possible for us to live humanly
as animal persons. To live as beings who are sexual, affectionate, in need of being touched by others and of reaching
out to touch them and their lives so that we can communicate and share the goods that together go to make up a truly
good human life, the kind of life that God wills us to live and the kind of life that is a participation in His own life of
loving grace. It is love, in other words, that makes virtue possible and that enables us to be chaste.

What is communication and how does it relate to sexuality? (cf. Sex and Communication by William E. May)

Perhaps the best way of looking at sex is to view it from the perspective of human communication. Men differ from
other animals in their ability to speak to one another, and to speak not only through words but through their gestures
(“body language”) and their deeds. In addition, human communication is not simply the transmittal of a message
(computers can do that and so can chimps) but is above all the transmittal of the messenger.

Human communication culminates in understanding and love; it reaches its peak in communion, in an “at-one-
ness” in which human beings share the same life.

Sexual behavior is one very important mode of human communication. It can mean many things and it can tell
us much about ourselves and our readiness to share life and love with other human beings. There is a great
difference in meaning between an act of rape, of sodomy, of fornication, of adultery, and of love between a husband
and wife. In the latter alone is there a full sharing of life and love, a full communion between human beings.

Frequently we are told that sexual intercourse is all right as long as nobody gets hurt. And that’s the rub! For human
beings, in addition to, or perhaps because of, being animals who can communicate so perfectly that they can
share one another’s life in a true communion, are terribly vulnerable beings; they can be hurt as can no other
animals.

And sexual activity is an area where they are extremely vulnerable, an area where they can be supremely tender
or utterly vicious, and, sad to say, quite vicious even when they do not realize it. It does not take too much
experience to learn this; look at literature, look at life, ask people who have been married for a long time.

Yes, sexual intercourse is a tremendously significant mode of human communication. That is why it has, and has
of its very being, what philosophers and others call a “unitive” dimension or aspect. It can bring people together
in a unity that is truly a communion, a giving and receiving of another human being and a sharing totally and
unconditionally in his life.

Sexual intercourse, moreover, is unique in that it is an activity that can communicate and share life with
another human generation. It is, in short, procreative. And there is a reason for this. The love that a man and a
woman have for one another, their willingness to share their lives and their hopes and their loves, is the only thing
that can provide the “root room” where a new life can begin and begin well. It can provide a home for new life that
may be forthcoming, a new life that will be wanted and received as a gift and as an incarnate expression of the love
communicated and received in the act of intercourse.

That new life, in addition, can enhance and strengthen the love that unites the man and woman who have brought it
forth. The procreative and unitive dimensions of sexual intercourse, in other words, go together like a horse
and carriage. They are meant for each other and give each other meaning and significance.

What all this means is that sexual intercourse is an activity that is intended for those who have given
themselves to one another and to a future human generation – for the married. It is the sign of an
unconditional gift, or a gift that has no strings attached to it, of a giving that is impossible without its free
acceptance.

3
 THEO III MORALITY SEXUALITY HANDOUT

And the gift that is given is not simply an act of intercourse – but a person, a messenger, a fellow human
being, who is weak and vulnerable yet ready to run the risk of hurt because he is confident that the one to whom he
gives himself will stick with him for better or worse until death do them part.

The sexual mores of the society in which we live differ quite markedly from the image given above. Yet the image
given above is, I believe, the Christian image. It is the image of men who are themselves the images of God, and
whose love for one another symbolizes and enfleshes the love of God who is faithful to his people.

MARRIAGE (CCC# 1601-1666)

St. Paul said: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church… This is a great mystery, and I mean in
reference to Christ and the Church” (Eph 5:25, 32)

The marriage covenant, by which a man and a woman form with each other an intimate communion of life and love,
has been founded and endowed with its own special laws by the Creator. By its very nature it is ordered to the good
of the couple, as well as to the generation and education of children. Christ the Lord raised marriage between the
baptized to the dignity of a sacrament.

The sacrament of Matrimony signifies the union of Christ and the Church. It gives spouses the grace to love each
other with the love with which Christ has loved the Church; the grace of the sacrament thus perfects the human love
of the spouses, strengthens their indissoluble unity, and sanctifies them on the way to eternal life.

Marriage is based on the consent of the contracting parties, that is, on their will to give themselves, each to the other,
mutually and definitively, in order to live a covenant of faithful and fruitful love.

Since marriage establishes the couple in a public state of life in the Church, it is fitting that its celebration be public,
in the framework of a liturgical celebration, before the priest (or a witness authorized by the Church), the witnesses,
and the assembly of the faithful.

Unity, indissolubility, and openness to fertility are essential to marriage. Polygamy is incompatible with the unity of
marriage; divorce separates what God has joined together; the refusal of fertility turns married life away from its
“supreme gift”, the child.

The remarriage of persons divorced from a living, lawful spouse contravenes the plan and law of God as taught by
Christ. They are not separated from the Church, but they cannot receive the Eucharistic communion. They will lead
Christian lives especially by educating their children in the faith.

The Christian home is the place where children receive the first proclamation of the faith. For this reason the family
home is rightly called “the domestic Church”, a community of grace and prayer, a school of human virtues and of
Christian charity.

Some Theological Implications of Marriage

The creation accounts indicate that marriage is from the hand of God who made the human race male and female in
order that through the mutual cooperation of the sexes the work begun by the Creator might continue (procreators,
co-creators, stewards)… The basis of the sacredness of all marriage is the part it plays in the unfolding of the
redemption of the world. The revelation of Genesis insists that marriage is a good and holy creation of God.

Marriage is the total giving of oneself to another, this characteristic is seen in terms of a twofold faith – faith in God
to whom we are responding in our daily lives and faith in the other person to whom we open up a give of ourselves.
Marriage and Eucharist are works of love within the Church. All the sacraments are celebrations of the mystery of
Christ’s giving of himself for others, sacramentally present for the building up of the Church. Next to the Eucharist
itself, no sacrament symbolizes this so clearly as matrimony which, for the Christian, is a life-long giving up of self
to others for the building up of the Church and the service of the world. The sacramentality of marriage is life-long;
it remains a sign of self-surrender to the rest of mankind, ever proclaiming man’s capacity, with grace, to be the man
and woman for others.

4
 THEO III MORALITY SEXUALITY HANDOUT

Through the surrender of one’s individual isolated single existence with its potential for self satisfaction, the partners
find a new life together in Christ. Through the pledging of themselves to each other, man and woman enter that
Christian way for which God’s graceful presence will be available to enlighten and strengthen them in their living
for others, for each other, their children, and through faithfulness to this pledge, for the Church and mankind.

One of the qualities of Christian marriage is its permanency and stability. It thus bears witness to the permanent
union of Christ and his Church. The foundation of this permanency is the sacrament of baptism.

“By their very nature, the institution of matrimony itself and conjugal love are ordained for the procreation and
education of children, and find in them their ultimate fulfillment – crown” (Constitution on the Church in the
Modern World). The Catholic teaching 1) stresses the holiness of the state, meaning of conjugal love, responsible
parenthood, 2) its thrust is on the positive nature of marriage as a common life between Christians, a vocation
responding to God’s word which is a means of sanctification for the partners and their children, a participation in the
witness of the Church and an essential factor in the salvation of mankind.

Summary of the Doctrine on Marriage

1. Marriage is willed by God
2. It has been raised by Christ to the dignity of a sacrament
3. Marriage is good but it may not be considered superior to the state of virginity
4. Christian marriage is sharing in the mystery of Christ and the Church
5. The essential rite of the sacrament is the mutual consent of the spouses
6. Contract and sacrament are inseparable
7. Marriage comes under the legal competence of the Church
8. The Church can establish impediments
9. Vasectomy does not invalidate marriage
10. The Church may determine the rite to be observed
11. Matrimonial cases are in the competence of ecclesiastical courts
12. The essential laws of marriage are not subject to human will
13. The marital bond is exclusive
14. It is indissoluble
15. It cannot be dissolved because of adultery
16. Its indissolubility is perfected by the sacrament
17. Marriage which has not been consummated can be dissolved in certain circumstances
18. Marriage is a partnership of love in fidelity
19. This partnership is uniquely expressed through the conjugal act
20. The conjugal act is by its nature ordained to procreation resulting in the increase of the People of God
21. Union between the spouses is intimately linked with the end of procreation
22. The sacrament sanctifies the spouses and gives them graces necessary for their state
23. Christian marriage is a way to perfection
24. The Christian family is the primary cell of the Church

The moral aspects of Sexuality and Marriage (see also the section from Marriage the Rock… by May below)
Right ordering of sexuality
1. A right order in the use of sex is needed
2. Premarital intercourse is never justified
3. In marriage, the enjoyment of sexual pleasure is legitimate but just moderation is needed
4. Sexual intimacy plays an important role in fostering marital love
5. Masturbation is forbidden by the law of nature
6. Homosexual acts are always illicit
7. Need for sexual education

Responsibility in procreation
1. Parenthood must be responsible and generous
2. The decision regarding the number of children belongs to the spouses

5
 THEO III MORALITY SEXUALITY HANDOUT

3. Conjugal love and respect for life must be harmonized

4. The divine plan for the transmission of human life must be observed
5. The morality of birth control methods is determined by objective criteria
6. The use of infertile periods is licit
7. Positive interference with the procreative effect is an intrinsic disorder
8. Direct sterilization is unlawful but indirect sterilization is permitted
9. Artificial insemination does not fully accord with the personal nature of human procreation
10. The State plays a role in population control provided personal rights are respected, it has no right to impose
sterilization or a eugenic program
11. Demographic education and birth control information are needed

Elements of a Marriage Bond:

1. A baptized man and woman
2. The freedom to enter marriage: not being under constraint and not being impeded by any natural or Church
law
3. Public ratification (expression of consent). The presiding priest or deacon in the name of the Church
receives the consent and gives the blessing. The Church requires that the faithful marry according to the
ecclesiastical form because the ecclesial dimension of marriage is visibly expressed by the presence of the
Church’s minister (and the witness). The consent includes these essential intentions: 1) unity (the intention
of an exclusive love); 2) indissolubility (the intention of permanent love); and 3) openness to fertility (the
intention of a love open to children).
4. Sexual consummation

The Second Vatican Council placed special emphasis on the term “covenant” to describe the unbreakable union of
husband and wife. Even on the level of its natural institution, the indissolubility of marriage images the absolutely
faithful character of God’s love for humankind, a love that was to find special expression in the covenant that,
through Abraham and Moses, he made with his chosen people.
When Jesus raised marriage to the level of a sacrament, indissolubility took on a new significance, becoming a sign
of love – faithful to death – of Christ for his Church. Indissolubility in Christian marriage is said to acquire “a
special firmness by reason of the sacrament” (Canon1056).

The use of the term “covenant” has not delegitimized reference to marriage as a contract. Both terms are applicable,
as appears from Canon 1056, which speaks of the “matrimonial covenant” in paragraph 1 and of the “matrimonial
contract” in paragraph 2.

To speak of covenant draws attention to the sacred character of marriage. It evokes the special fidelity that should
characterize conjugal love. The use of the term “contract” stresses that marriage involves the mutual interchange of
rights and duties, binding in justice. It is because of these rights/obligations have a juridic nature that fundamental
questions related to marriage (validity of consent, separation, custody of the children, etc.) can and should be dealt
with before the appropriate ecclesiastical courts.

Marriage is unique as a contract, because its nature (including its indissolubility) is determined by God. Spouses can
freely choose to marry; but having married, they are bound to respect the sacred nature God has given to this
singular contract-covenant.

The Grace of Marriage:

1. Perfects the spouses love for one another
2. Strengthens the spouses unbreakable unity
3. Sanctifies the spouses on their way to eternal life

Conjugal and family self-giving are a way of achieving union with God. In loving each other and their children,
married people learn to love God. So the Catechism says: “Charity upholds and purifies our human ability to love,
and raises it to the supernatural perfection of divine love”. (1827)

6
 THEO III MORALITY SEXUALITY HANDOUT

Like all sacraments, Matrimony offers distinctive graces, which correspond to the particular aspirations, challenges,
duties, and difficulties of married life. These graces certainly include the following.

First of all, there is the grace that reinforces the couple’s love so that it does not give way under the difficulties of a
lifelong commitment, but is strengthened and grows. “This grace proper to the sacrament of Matrimony is intended
to perfect the couple’s love and to strengthen the indissoluble unity. By this grace they help one another to attain
holiness in their married life….” (CCC#1641; cf.1661)

Love means loving the other as he or she is, that is, as a real person with defects. The hardest tests of married life
come when romance wanes and couples begin to discover the extent of each other’s defects. The sacrament must
offer special and particularly strong graces for living through such moments, learning to forgive, to ask for
forgiveness, to develop the aptitude for dwelling on one’s partner’s positive characteristics and not becoming
obsessed with those that appear negative: in a word, to keep loving one another in a truly self-sacrificial, Christ-like
way.

Matrimonial grace is no doubt further specified in the way that it strengthens each spouse in sexual identity and
donation: helping the man develop his distinctive spousal self-gift in a masculine mode and dedication, and the
woman in a feminine mode and dedication. The unity of marriage is not just indissoluble, nor simply interpersonal;
it is intersexual. It calls for a growth in sexual identity, so threatened today by the tendency to belittle God’s gift of
sexual differences, character, and function.

A particular task of married love – for which the sacrament provides grace – is to purify the sexual relationship
between husband and wife of the elements of selfishness and exploitation that, in the present state of human nature,
can affect it. One effect of original sin is to make man and woman become too immediately absorbed with the
physical aspects and sense attraction of sex, preventing them from reaching, “seeing”, and understanding the inner
meaning and real substance and value of sexual differences and complementarity, and especially from sharing in the
full meaning of conjugal-sexual self-giving. The sacrament of Matrimony therefore provides special graces for
living conjugal chastity.

This chastity calls for a certain strength and restraint between husband and wife, and makes them vigilant toward the
tendency not to honor the mystery of their reciprocal sexuality or not to act according to the laws their mind
discovers in it: a tendency that is a temptation to use, and not to respect, the other. Little is said today of conjugal
chastity, yet its absence leads to the undermining of the mutual regard that should characterize the love of the
spouses, as well as of the true freedom with which their reciprocal spousal donation should be made. Marital
chastity is an essential safeguard for the strength, tenderness, and permanence of conjugal love. It is not likely to be
attained without the help of special graces (cf. CCC#1608)

The married couple usually and naturally becomes a family, for spousal love is normally meant to develop into
parental love. Matrimony undoubtedly offers particular sacramental graces for the unfolding of personalities,
redirection of affections, and acquisition of new abilities involved in this gradual and vital process, so powerfully
geared to the maturing of persons.

It is a particular mission of parents to mediate God’s paternal and maternal love. The sacrament of Matrimony
should therefore grant spouses special graces to grow in parental identity and love so that each learns to be a true
father or mother. A sanctified marriage means a marriage where the partners have learned to be holy spouses and
holy parents.

From the purely natural viewpoint, the family, with its unique functions of humanizing and socializing, is rightly
called the first vital cell of society. From the Christian point of view, married couples, along with their children, are
called to be a Gospel leaven in the world. The sacramental graces peculiar to the married state must be designed to
give powerful apostolic stimulus and strength. If a couple are not aware of these graces – if they are not often
reminded of them, in pre- and post marriage preaching and catechesis – they may fail to activate them or rely on
them, and so miss a large part of that Christian evangelizing mission so peculiar to theirs. Nothing can so contribute
to bringing the world to God as the example of married couples living their conjugal and family life in active
reliance on these graces.

7
 THEO III MORALITY SEXUALITY HANDOUT

Regarding this apostolic dimension, the Catechism places Matrimony together with Holy Orders, saying these two
sacraments “are directed towards the salvation of others; if they contribute as well to personal salvation, it is through
service to others that they do so” (1534). In loving each other and their children, spouses offer a witness to
generosity and faithfulness that can draw those around them powerfully to God. The Catechism relates conjugal
fidelity to “the fidelity of God to his covenant … [and] of Christ to his Church. Through the sacrament of
Matrimony the spouses are enabled to represent this fidelity and witness to it” (1647).

Like all other graces of the Christian life, the graces specific to the sacrament of Matrimony must be relied on; they
must be sought and prayed for. If a married couple lives unaware of them, without invoking them constantly, it is
unlikely that their married life can be happy or even survive. Couples who rely on these graces – and constantly
invoke them – will have God’s special help to achieve union and happiness and eternal life.

Recognizing an Unsacramental Marriage:

Death ends a sacramental marriage. Divorce ends a marriage legally or civilly. The following are three ways the
Church recognizes that a marriage is unsacramental:
1. By dissolution ( a privilege of the faith)
 Pauline (unbaptized parties; see 1Cor 7:12-16)
 Petrine (“privilege of the faith” of the one baptized party)
2. By declaration of nullity (annulment), a process of the Church
 Lack of freedom
 Intention against permanence or fidelity or children
 Inadequate mental competence
3. By decree (a declaration of a lack of form)
 A civil marriage of a Catholic without dispensation
 A non-Catholic wedding of a Catholic without dispensation

Marriage the Rock upon which the Family is built: (Cf. Marriage the Rock on which the Family is Built by
William May)
Marriage is a person-affirming, love-enabling, life-giving and sanctifying reality. Some basic moral criteria for the
family follow from this:
1. The family must be rooted in the marriage of one man and one woman
2. Children, who are persons equal in dignity to their mothers and fathers, are to be begotten in the loving
embrace of husband and wife, and not through acts of fornication and adultery, nor are they to be “made” in
the laboratory and treated as products inferior to their producers.
3. Husbands and wives must give to each other the gift of conjugal love and deepen it throughout their lives.
4. Spouses ought not, either in anticipation of their marital union, while engaging in it, or during the
development of its natural consequences, propose, either as end or means, to impede procreation.
5. It is always gravely wrong freely to choose to abort unborn babies.
6. Husbands and wives must learn to foster conjugal love by respecting the wife’s fertility and by abstaining
from the marital act when there is good reason to do so.
7. The Christian family must carry out its mission as the domestic Church and participate in Christ’s
redemptive work.
8. Parents have the duty, and the right, to educate their own children.
9. Church and State must both honor the primary right of parents as educators of their children and cooperate
with them in this educative task.
10. The family must serve society by works of social service, in particular, by hospitality to others.
11. Society and the State must serve the family: they must make it possible for it to obtain the helps of which it
has need and recognize the rights of the family in a formal way.
12. Families must defend their rights and duties.
13. Society must respect the contribution made by mothers who choose to remain at home and care for their
children and secure its just compensation.
14. Society must support the sanctity of the marriage bond if men are to be fathers to their children.

Summary of offenses against marriage:

8
 THEO III MORALITY SEXUALITY HANDOUT

 Adultery
 Divorce
 Polygamy
 Incest
 Free unions
 Trial marriages

Summary of offenses against the sixth and ninth commandments:

 Masturbation
 Fornication
 Pornography
 Prostitution
 Rape*
 Homosexual activity**

*GUIDELINES FOR PREVENTING DATE RAPE

1. Avoid blind dates. Preferably date a friend. Always begin dating in groups. Rapists want isolation.
2. Plan beforehand the specifics of your date. And know and communicate your standards of behavior ahead
of time. Never cross the line. Never allow anyone to touch you where you do not want to be touched.
3. Stay out of each others homes if no one else is there. Avoid any isolated places.
4. Dress modestly and avoid sexually suggestive movies and conversation.
5. Don’t drink or use drugs. Don’t ever drink a beverage that has even the most remote possibility of being
“spiked” with a knock-out drug. It is fashionable today for some guys to drug their dates and then force
themselves on them sexually.
6. Avoid parking in make-out locales. These sometimes even attract a criminal element.
7. Say “no” strongly and firmly. If a date persists, ask to be taken home. If he refuses, leave him and call
someone to come get you.
8. Recognize dialogue that can lead to forced sex. For example:
 You’d do it if you loved me
 Everyone’s doing it
 Who are you saving it for
 Etc.

**HOMOSEXUAL ACTIVITY VS. ORIENTATION

Homosexual activity is a serious violation of God’s intent for male-female bonding in a relationship open to life and
love. No one chooses to have a homosexual orientation; therefore, someone is not a sinner for having such an
orientation. It is sinful to display prejudice toward homosexual persons.

The virtue of chastity enables us to control our sexual desires and use them appropriately according to our situation
in life. Abstinence is the positive choice not to engage in sexual intercourse outside of marriage. The virtues of
purity and modesty help us combat carnal concupiscence. Purity of heart helps us look at things from God’s point
of view and control lust, that is, the disordered craving for sexual pleasure sought for itself. The virtue of modesty
protects the intimate center of the person. It refuses to unveil what common decency requires to remain hidden.

Helps to strengthen the virtue of chastity:

 Avoiding temptations that might lead us to misuse our sexuality, e.g. pornography
 Knowing ourselves well enough to know what might lead us to lose self-control in the area of sexuality
 Practicing works of self-denial to strengthen our wills
 Practicing the moral virtues, especially acts of charity for others
 Striving to live all of God’s commandments
 Praying daily for God’s graces
 Receiving the sacraments of reconciliation and the Eucharist frequently

9
THEO III MORALITY SEXUALITY HANDOUT

10