The other effect has to do with the virtue of justice. Because pregnancy is viewed as a problem rather than as a gift, there is widespread acceptance of the need to get rid of unwanted pregnancies. The culture of convenience then transforms into a culture of death, where abortifacients are taken with the same ease as contraceptives. Accepting the contraceptive mentality leads to the widespread acceptance of abortion as a basic human right (EV 13).
In short, John Paul shows that violating the virtue of chastity tends to promote injustice. If we want justice, we should practice the virtue of chastity.
It’s More than "Just Say No"
However, understanding the depth of this insight is made difficulty
by the world’s distorted understanding of chastity. Popular culture
typically identifies chastity as a negation: Chastity means "just say
no" to sex. For example, a cover story in Newsweek several
years ago reported that, according to the Centers for Disease Control,
"chastity" is on the rise, with teen pregnancies down and U.S. teen
sexual activity having reached record lows (Lorraine Ali and Julie
Scelfo, "Choosing Virginity," December 9, 2002).To the world, chastity means "abstaining from sexual activity." This reduces the virtue of chastity to just another technique for efficiently avoiding sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy, or unwanted emotional entanglements. Or chastity might be promoted as a method for increasing pleasure later in life. Either way, chastity is then reduced to abstinence and taken to be a technique for efficiently satisfying given desires. "Chastity" as technique then crowds out authentic virtue.
John Paul challenges the world’s understanding of chastity in his Theology of the Body. He insisted that chastity is not a technique; it is a virtue (124:4). In other words, chastity is a personal excellence, a stable trait, a habit of character that disposes one to have the right kind of sexual urges. As a virtue, chastity makes a person good by shaping desires, affections, moral vision and relationships in light of the truth. Noting that his theology of the body is an education of the body, John Paul writes, "the goal of the pedagogy of the body lies in ensuring that ‘affective manifestations’—above all those that ‘belong specifically to conjugal life’—conform to the moral order" (59:7).
We Can Educate Our Desires
Part of the reason that it is difficult for us to think about
chastity as a virtue arises from a confusion about desire. Amidst the
contemporary world’s focus on efficiency, people tend to take their
desires for granted; rather than submitting their desires to moral
judgment, people tend to accept their given desires and then seek
efficient means to get what they want. Consequently, the contemporary
world fosters a concern with techniques, methods that efficiently bring about certain outcomes, rather than with virtues and vices,
qualities of character that make us good or bad by shaping our desires,
affections, moral vision, and relationships in ways that reflect the
truth about our destiny and the world in which we pursue it.A desire is not, as the contemporary world suggests, simply a brute urge. Rather, desires are always for something, something the person thinks of as good in one way or another. For example, someone may desire sexual activity for pleasure, as a demonstration of dominance, as a requirement for an exchange of some kind, or for another apparent good. Because desire is always for something that appears to be good, we question whether the apparent good that is desired is actually good.
Is it good to desire sexual activity merely for pleasure or to demonstrate dominance? As persons endowed with reason and self-determination, we are capable of answering these questions. Further, we can learn to shape our desires to reflect the truth about sexual activity. As John Paul shows in the Theology of the Body, sexual activity is good for a husband and wife because it realizes, in the procreative order to which it belongs, their God-given destiny to find themselves through a sincere self-gift (cf. Gaudium et Spes 24).
Because desire is always for something as a good of some kind, we can be educated in our desires. Chastity shapes one’s desires so that they embody "the full truth of the sexual act" (EV 13), directing them to sexual activity as a sign of the mutual and complete self-donation of persons. Conversely, the virtue of chastity guards one against every desire for any kind of act incompatible with such self-giving.
As John Paul shows us, when chastity is understood authentically as a virtue, it is an excellence, a "saying yes" to those desires, feelings, and thoughts that allow one to see human bodies as personally significant. He points out that one cannot acquire the virtue of chastity without also developing a "reverence for the work of God" in the human person and, especially, the human body (Theology of the Body 131-132).
Bodies Are Personally Significant
Each person’s body is an embodiment of meaning. The human body is
both the sign and the reality of the human being as created in God’s
likeness. The ability to see human bodies as personally significant
prepares one not just for chastity but also for justice. Justice as a
virtue disposes its possessor to render to each person what’s due.
Because the body is the sign of the person, the debt of respect owed to
persons is also owed to their bodies. Consequently, acts that
intentionally violate the bodily integrity of human persons are unjust. But this identification of unjust acts will be difficult or impossible for someone who fails to see the personal significance of human bodies. So developing the virtue of chastity is a preparation for justice. Furthermore, to deny the personal significance of the body for chastity will make the acquisition of justice a precarious exercise. Chastity and justice both rely on and reinforce one’s perception of the personal significance of the human body; consequently, the distortion of one makes the distortion of the other more likely and psychologically tenable. These features of chastity and justice explain Evangelium Vitae’s association of contraception and abortion as "fruits of the same tree."
In the final chapter of Evangelium Vitae, John Paul returns twice more to a discussion of chastity. In both instances, he proposes chastity as a path that will lead us away from the culture of death. To counter the culture of death, the pope points to the importance of living the gospel of life in our everyday activities. He expresses himself in poetic terms, urging us to transform our lives into "a genuine and responsible acceptance of the gift of life and a heartfelt song of praise and gratitude to God who has given us this gift" (EV 86).
As examples of those who carry out this task, the pope points to mothers who, despite the influence of the media and the many cultural models that discourage motherhood, nonetheless affirm in their lives the importance of "fidelity, chastity, and sacrifice" (EV 86).
Emphasize Being over Having
In calling for a cultural transformation, from a culture of
death toward a culture of life, John Paul states that the first and
fundamental step consists in the formation of conscience, especially
with regard to the inviolable worth of every human life. Next, he points
to the work of education, and especially to education in sexuality and
training in chastity "as a virtue which fosters personal maturity and
makes one capable of respecting the spousal meaning of the body" (EV
97). After emphasizing the importance of forming adolescents and young people in an authentic education regarding sexuality and love as self-giving as well as training married couples in responsible procreation, including learning to read the signs of fertility, John Paul points out that this kind of cultural change will involve adopting new lifestyles that emphasize "being" over "having."
This movement from an emphasis on chastity to a critique of consumerism follows an implicit logic. Once we distinguish an authentic virtue of chastity from mere technique, we can see that the recognition of the personal significance of human bodies makes one more attentive to various.aspects of the virtue of justice. The exercise of chastity as a virtue opens families to the gift of children. With larger families, there is a greater emphasis on communal life and a corresponding subordination of the pursuit and accumulation of material goods. So chastity also fosters the growth of families opposed to an unjust, materialistic ordering of things and persons.
Even the secular media has begun to recognize that stable families (which come about when the virtue of chastity is practiced) have a more positive impact on the environment than divorced households. A recent ABCNews headline proclaimed, "Want to Go Green? Stay Married." The report was about a study from Michigan State University recently published by the National Academy of Sciences. According to the report, divorced households in the United States spent "46 percent more per capita on electricity and 56 percent more on water than married households did." The lead researcher concludes that stable marriages are good for the environment!
In several ways, the virtue of chastity promotes justice, especially when chastity is authentically understood as a habit of excellence that forms sexual desires in a manner that orients them toward mutual and complete self-donation in light of the personal significance of the body. First, the practice of chastity reduces the temptation to destroy vulnerable human life. Second, the practice of chastity promotes habits that undermine the culture of consumerism and its tendency toward an unjust, materialist ordering of things and persons.
Pope Paul was right: If you want peace, work for justice. But how shall we work for justice? Inspired by Evangelium Vitae, we propose a new maxim: If you want justice, work for chastity.
By: Gregory R. Beabout