Chastity

Chastity is a virtue that all Catholics are called to cultivate in their particular state in life. With the understanding that human sexuality is good, chastity helps both married and single Catholics love well.

More than simply abstaining from sexual activity, chastity is motivated by love. Chastity encourages Catholics to treat other people with dignity and respect, instead of using people as an objects for their own sexual gratification.

The Church considers sexual intimacy as a good thing when it takes place in marriage. Created by God, sex is designed for man and woman to love as He loves, and for the for the generation of children.

Derived from the Latin word for “purity”, chastity requires self-control and discipline, but growing in chastity results in true freedom by redirecting sexual desire toward its true purpose.

Without chastity, sexual desire is either repressed or left unrestrained which leads to immature and harmful expressions of sexuality, and sex that that is used for selfish motives.

Single people should avoid all sexual activity and inappropriate situations, focusing on the emotional aspects of relationships instead of the physical.

By saving sexual intimacy for marriage, chastity helps moderate the control of sexual pleasure by integrating it into a healthy, committed, and life-giving framework.

Chastity in marriage allows husbands and wives to use sexual activity to foster a loving and faithful union. Sexual activity with anyone else is prohibited.

Unchastity in marriage includes viewing pornography or fantasizing about anyone other than a spouse.

Chastity is different than celibacy. Chastity is saving the gift of sexual intimacy for the appropriate time, while celibacy is the temporary or ongoing state where a person willingly and completely refrains from all sexual intercourse.

Avoid immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the immoral person sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been purchased at a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body.
1 Corinthians 6: 18-20

Chastity is so much more than abstinence:

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More than the world has to offer:

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Chastity means the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being. Sexuality, in which man’s belonging to the bodily and biological world is expressed, becomes personal and truly human when it is integrated into the relationship of one person to another, in the complete and lifelong mutual gift of a man and a woman.
The virtue of chastity therefore involves the integrity of the person and the integrality of the gift.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2337

All Catholics are called to chastity:

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Using sexuality according to a person’s state in life:

The Tangent on Veritas Catholic Network

Let us not forget that Christ is certainly the first and highest example for every chaste life. However Mary is a special model of chastity lived for love of the Lord Jesus. She encourages all Christians to live chastity with particular commitment according to their own state, and to entrust themselves to the Lord in the different circumstances of life. She who is the sanctuary of the Holy Spirit par excellence helps believers rediscover their own body as the temple of God and to respect its nobility and holiness. Young people seeking genuine love look to the Blessed Virgin and invoke her motherly help to persevere in purity. Mary reminds married couples of the fundamental values of marriage by helping them overcome the temptation to discouragement and to subdue the passions that try to sway their hearts. Her total dedication to God is a strong encouragement to them to live in mutual fidelity, so that they will never give in to the difficulties that beset conjugal communion.
Pope John Paul II, General Audience, 20 August 1997