1 • Chastity, virginity: cognitive biases
If I say “chastity” or “virginity,” people immediately think of sex.
Or rather, the lack of sex.
Most people take these two words to mean the following:
- Chastity = not screwing.
- Virginity = never having screwed anyone in your life.
In reality, “chastity” doesn’t mean “not screwing.”
For the same reason that “loving a woman” doesn’t mean “screwing her.”
2 • “Love” vs. “possessiveness”
Last year, I talked about love.
Without launching into that whole spiel again, here’s one of the things I said:
Often, when people say, “I love YOU,” what they actually mean is, “You make ME feel good.”
In books, comics, movies, and TV shows (I’m thinking of my favorites too: Scrubs, Friends…), whenever love comes up, the spotlight is always on:
- butterflies in your stomach;
- the “tingles“;
- the “unbearable lightness of being“;
In short: love is always described in terms of the things that give ME pleasure, make ME feel good, and stir up emotions/sensations/excitement in ME…
I’m not demonizing any of this (in fact, the Church itself says that emotions/passions/feelings are perfectly legitimate!), but there’s a risk.
What risk?
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944), the famous author of The Little Prince, describes it perfectly:
Do not confuse love with the madness of possession, which causes the cruelest suffering.
For, contrary to what is commonly believed, love does not cause suffering: what causes suffering is the instinct of ownership, which is the opposite of love. And so I can recognize those who truly love by the fact that they cannot be harmed.
[…]
Of course, when I was young, I too paced up and down my terrace over some runaway slave girl in whom I saw my cure; I would have raised whole armies to win her back, and to possess her I would have laid whole provinces at her feet.
But God is my witness that I have never confused the meaning of things, and that I have never called this hunt for prey “love” (even when it put my life on the line).
(ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY, The Wisdom of the Sands (Citadelle), 1948)
The Lithuanian playwright Oscar Vadislas de Lubicz Milosz (1877-1939) also has the young Girolama Carillo say something similar in one of his plays:
I never put flowers in my hair (my hair is pretty enough as it is, thank God!).
Flowers are beautiful living beings, and we must let them live and breathe the air of the sun and the moon.
I never pick flowers.
It is perfectly possible to love in this world without giving in to the urge to kill one’s dear love, or to imprison it under glass, or, as is done with birds, in a cage where water no longer tastes like water and summer seeds no longer taste like seeds.
(OSCAR MILOSZ, Miguel Mañara, with commentary by Franco Nembrini, Centocanti, Bergamo 2014, p. 47)
In short: the opposite of “love” isn’t “hate,” it’s “possession.”
3 • What does it mean for a person to be “not chaste”?
When we think of an “unchaste” guy, we picture a Tinder “Gold” user.
When we think of an “unchaste” girl, we picture someone who’s “easy.”
When we think of an “unchaste” priest, we picture someone secretly watching porn…
Yeah, okay.
Of course, the behaviors I just described are not chaste.
But these are nothing more than symptoms (that is, outward “signs”)…
…whereas a lack of chastity is an attitude that lurks much deeper down (and doesn’t necessarily show itself in such blatant ways).
So, what is chastity?
I couldn’t explain it better than Pope Francis did, so I’ll just quote him:
Chastity is freedom from possessiveness in EVERY sphere of one’s life. Only when love is chaste, is it truly love.
A possessive love ultimately becomes dangerous: it imprisons, constricts and makes for misery.
God himself loved humanity with a chaste love; he left us free even to go astray and set ourselves against him.
The logic of love is always the logic of freedom, and Joseph knew how to love with extraordinary freedom.
He never made himself the centre of things.
He did not think of himself, but focused instead on the lives of Mary and Jesus.
(POPE FRANCIS, apostolic letter Patris Corde, no. 7)
Let’s look at a few practical examples.
If you’re possessive with your friends, you’re not chaste.
If you “stake a claim” on the time your boyfriend should be spending with you, you’re not chaste.
If you “demand” that your girlfriend live up to your expectations, you’re not chaste.
If, when you talk to a friend, you always tell her what she wants to hear, never contradict her, and manipulate her because you’re afraid of ending up alone, you’re not chaste.
If you stay in relationships (with friends, your girlfriend, or whoever-the-heck-else) only as long as there’s something in it for you, you’re not chaste.
If you’re a priest and you confuse spiritual direction with “feeling free to impose choices on a young man that he doesn’t feel are his own, because you think you know better than he does what’s good for him,” you’re not chaste (and that’s a far worse lack of chastity than a Pornhub addiction).
If you think you’ve got God in your back pocket, you’re not chaste.
…
If you cling to things, people, relationships, reality… because you’re afraid of losing them, I’m sorry, but you’re not chaste.
4 • “Virginity” isn’t (so much) a physical condition but an existential one
What I said about chastity goes for virginity too.
In Scripture, virginity is not an ethical category but rather an existential one […].
(FABIO ROSINI, San Giuseppe – Accogliere, custodire e nutrire, San Paolo, Cinisello Balsamo (MI) 2021, p. 147)
What does it mean to say that virginity “is an existential category“?
Being a virgin doesn’t mean (first and foremost) having an intact hymen.
Not being a virgin doesn’t mean (first and foremost) having a broken hymen.
What do I mean?
I mean that physical virginity isn’t “the goal” to pursue.
It isn’t “the achievement” to unlock on Steam.
It isn’t “the target” to chase (often masochistically, and at the risk of giving yourself a hernia).
Rather, physical virginity is (or at least should be) a sign of a “virginal mentality.”
In other words, a sign of a free way of relating to others.
Generously.
Not “predatory.”
Without “expecting anything in return.”
And this mentality isn’t just for priests and nuns (or others who live a celibate life), but for EVERYONE:
In every area of life, we desperately need virginal fathers—like God the Father—people who don’t take possession of others but know how to nurture their beauty, people who can hand on life without claiming ownership of it, who keep their grubby paws off the delicate souls of the young, and yet give away everything they have to give and to teach; and who, even before that, prepare themselves to have something to offer.
Figures who correct with love and wisdom, encouraging, affirming, never belittling.
Someone who has found the balance between two pathological extremes: smothering people, or keeping so much distance as to become irrelevant.
Instead, you have to know how to stay one step back while remaining at their side: present, reliable, available.
(FABIO ROSINI, San Giuseppe – Accogliere, custodire e nutrire, San Paolo, Cinisello Balsamo (MI) 2021, p. 18)
5 • What does the Catholic Church say about “chastity” and “virginity”?
In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we find these terrifying lines:
All the baptized are called to chastity.
The Christian has “put on Christ,” the model for all chastity.
All Christ’s faithful are called to lead a chaste life in keeping with their particular states of life.
(Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2348)
What does it mean that EVERYONE is called to chastity?
Ambrose of Milan (339/340? – 397), bishop and Christian theologian, wrote:
There are three forms of the virtue of chastity: the first is that of spouses, the second that of widows, and the third that of virgins.
(AMBROSE OF MILAN, De viduis 23: Sancti Ambrosii Episcopi Mediolanensis opera, v. 141 (Milano-Roma 1989) p. 266 (PL 16, 241-242).)
So…
- one way to live chastity is celibacy (as priests, nuns, and consecrated people do);
- another is for those who have lost a spouse (as sad as this case is, Ambrose includes it on the list);
…but in what sense are married couples called to chastity?
Franco Nembrini, an Italian teacher and educator (born in 1955), explains it well:
What does it mean […] to live marriage chastely?
Certainly not, as some might mistakenly think, living marriage by giving up sex; but living the relationship with the other, with the other’s soul and body, with the infinite respect owed to them, because they are a gift from God.
With respect and gratitude, with passion and discretion; grateful to God for the pleasure He chose to inscribe in our flesh, and careful not to reduce the other to an object.
(FRANCO NEMBRINI, from his commentary on Dante Alighieri’s Purgatorio, Canto XXV, Mondadori, Milan 2020, p. 568)
Conclusion
To sum up:
Chastity, before being a condition of the body, is a disposition of the soul that knows how to look upon the other as a precious gift, as an infinite good, to be affirmed for its own sake and not reduced to one’s own measure, to the satisfaction of one’s own pleasure.
(FRANCO NEMBRINI, from his commentary on Dante Alighieri’s Purgatorio, Canto XXV, Mondadori, Milan 2020, p. 568)
And let’s not forget that in the Christian life, the rule is never either/or, but both/and:
In Christianity, there is no consecration, no virginity, no renunciation of physical procreation that is not for the sake of a mysterious fruitfulness; and there is no biological fertility that is not meant to be lived within a purity of relationships, a virginity.
(FRANCO NEMBRINI, from his commentary on Dante Alighieri’s Purgatorio, Canto XXVIII, Mondadori, Milan 2020, p. 632)
salt
(Winter 2021–2022)
Sources/insights
- FABIO ROSINI, San Giuseppe : accogliere, custodire e nutrire, San Paolo, Cinisello Balsamo (MI) 2021
- PAPA FRANCESCO, Patris corde (lettera apostolica su San Giuseppe)
- LUIGI MARIA EPICOCO, Sale non miele. Per una fede che brucia, San Paolo, Cinisello Balsamo (MI) 2017
- JASON E CRYSTALINA EVERT, Aspettare si può : purezza e sessualità alla prova del mondo di oggi, Fede & Cultura, Verona 2023
- JO CROISSANT, Il mistero della donna, Berica, Arzignano (VI) 2018
- OSCAR V. MILOSZ, Miguel Mañara, commentato da FRANCO NEMBRINI, Centocanti, Bergamo 2014
- DANTE ALIGHIERI, Purgatorio (commentato da Franco Nembrini, illustrato da Gabriele dell'Otto), Mondadori, Milano 2018
