CHASTITY BEFORE MARRIAGE

Young couples must sincerely believe in the

Church’s teachings forbidding very intimate
affairs before marriage.

Fornication is intrinsically wrong.

■ Young people may find themselves in
situations of grave temptations.
■ Some yield to temptation, sometimes with
pregnancy as result.
■ You cannot have a healthy marriage without
chastity. The virtue by which we are in control of
our sexual appetite rather than it being in control of
us.
■ Chastity is a tough virtue to develop.
■ If it is not in full development before marriage, it is
going to be very hard to develop after marriage.
■ Chastity is the “apprenticeship in fidelity”.
■ Consider some concrete steps to follow:
■ Avoid the near occasions of sin. When spending
time together, do not spend it on your own. Be
together in public like parks, malls and other
social settings. In this way, you can avoid some
terrible accusations.
■ The next step is an addendum to #1: Given there are some
occasions when you are invariably alone together, be very sure
they do not occur while using alcohol.
■ St. Thomas said: Through excessive use of alcohol, people
willingly and knowingly deprive themselves of the use of
reason which enables them to act virtuously and avoid sin
■ ( S. T., II-II, 150, 2).
■ Do not develop an inappropriate emotional
dependency on each other. Love quickly
degenerates into a sentimental attachment that
prevents you from getting to know each other.
■ Focus on making contribution together to the
world. Some married couples who succeed in
developing this attitude do not even want to take
a honeymoon. They want to get on right away
with their contribution to the community.
■ Avoiding a sentimental emotional dependency also
helps you to see each other with some clarity, both in
terms of strengths and weaknesses. You can discern
whether you think you could live with the other’s
weaknesses, and simultaneously work on your own
faults.
■ Alongside the virtue of chastity you can develop
that virtue so closely allied to it is the virtue of
purity, by which the mind and heart are made
clean of lust.
■ Turn away from one’s own passion of physical contact.
In black and white: keep your clothes on, your feet on
the floor, and no French kissing. Avoid anything that
arouses you.
■ If sexual passion can be mastered now, then that
passion is at a certain height and it can be mastered for
a lifetime.
■ John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor notes
that…we have to remember the motto, “I’d rather die
than violate a moral norm”. This is a good
apprenticeship to fidelity.