489. What is involved in the virtue of chastity?
(Comp 489) The virtue of chastity involves an apprenticeship in self-mastery as an
expression of human freedom directed towards self-giving. An integral and
continuing formation, which is brought about in stages, is necessary to achieve
this goal.
“In brief”
(CCC 2341) The virtue of chastity comes under the cardinal
virtue of temperance, which seeks to
permeate the passions and appetites of the senses with reason.
To deepen and
explain
(CCC 2339) Chastity includes an apprenticeship in self-mastery which is a training in human
freedom. The alternative is clear: either man governs his passions and finds
peace, or he lets himself be dominated by them and becomes unhappy (Cf. Sir
1:22). "Man's dignity therefore requires him to act out of conscious and
free choice, as moved and drawn in a personal way from within, and not by blind
impulses in himself or by mere external constraint. Man gains such dignity
when, ridding himself of all slavery to the passions, he presses forward to his
goal by freely choosing what is good and, by his diligence and skill,
effectively secures for himself the means suited to this end" (GS
17).
Reflection
(CCC 2340) Whoever wants to remain faithful to his baptismal
promises and resist temptations will want to adopt the means for doing so: self-knowledge, practice of an ascesis adapted
to the situations that confront him, obedience to God's commandments, exercise
of the moral virtues, and fidelity to prayer. "Indeed it is through
chastity that we are gathered together and led back to the unity from which we
were fragmented into multiplicity" (St. Augustine, Conf. 10, 29, 40: PL 32, 796).
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