True love waits

                                      
Question

A priest told my fiancé that it is okay for my fiancé and me to touch intimately before we are married so long as we don't engage in intercourse. I'm a little uneasy about this interpretation of chastity. Is he correct?

Answer

No. Jesus stated in Matthew 5:28 that a person can commit sins of sexual impurity even in his thoughts: "But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." The same is true of fornication (premarital sex).
Looking at a woman (or man) to whom you are not married and indulging in lustful thoughts counts as committing fornication in your heart. If indulging yourself in mental lust for a man to whom you are not married counts as fornication, how much more so will intimate touching in which you partially act out the sexual desire you have for another?

Though some priests may not like to say so, fornication is a grave (mortal) sin. Paul says, "Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity, licentiousness . . . and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God" (Gal 5:19-21). This is a severe teaching. It is one many unmarried people find hard to accept, but it is the clear teaching of Scripture, and we must hold to it.

Sometimes people rationalize extramarital sexual practices on the grounds that by committing a lesser sin one may avoid a greater one, such as fornication. There are two problems with this. First, as the Holy Father made clear in his encyclical Veritatis Splendor, one may never do something intrinsically wrong in order to avoid a problem. We cannot do evil that good may come of it.
Second, this strategy simply doesn’t work. If you find it difficult to restrain yourself sexually, following this priest’s advice will not make it easier to control yourself—quite the opposite.
By the way, you might want to ask this priest yourself and not rely on your fiancé to interpret the priest’s remarks.


Question

I was told by a priest that sexual intercourse between unmarried persons is acceptable so long as it reflects a relationship of love. Lots of people seem to believe this, but is it true?

Answer

The only "relationship of love" that makes sexual intercourse acceptable is a marital one. The priest who told you otherwise wasn’t presenting Catholic teaching on the subject, but his own (erroneous) opinion.
In its Declaration on Certain Problems of Sexual Ethics, the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith reaffirmed traditional Catholic teaching on the subject of sexual relations outside marriage:
Nowadays many claim the right to sexual intercourse before marriage, at least for those who have a firm intention of marrying and whose love for one another, already conjugal as it were, is deemed to demand this as its natural outcome . . . This opinion is contrary to Christian teaching, which asserts that sexual intercourse may take place only within marriage. (7)




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.





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. (From the Catechism)