[Question]{.underline}: How can a married person practice chastity?
[Answer]{.underline}: Chastity is a moral virtue, related to the virtue of temperance, by which a person moderates his desire for the pleasures of the flesh according to right reason. It is on account of the wound of concupiscence, which he inherits with original sin, that every man must struggle against the disordered desire for sensual pleasure, and that he must have a corresponding virtue to succeed in that battle.
Clearly, however, there is a difference between married persons and single persons and those who are widowed. Single persons have no right to any pleasures of the flesh, whether they come from actions, desires, thoughts, or imaginations. They must consequently practice perfect chastity that forbids any such pleasure. Married persons, however, are permitted the pleasures of the flesh associated with the marriage act, nor is it in any way a sin for them to enjoy these pleasures in the accomplishment of this meritworthy act, performed for the primary and/or secondary ends of marriage (i.e., children, or mutual comfort and support). However, this does not at all mean that they are allowed to indulge in any pleasures of the flesh at any time, either alone or with one another. In fact, it is a grave sin for them to voluntarily give themselves complete pleasure outside of the marriage act, and a venial sin to seek the marriage act purely for pleasure, without at least the implicit intention of a primary or second end of marriage. Sins against purity of married persons are sins against the virtue of conjugal chastity, inasmuch as there is a disordered seeking of pleasures of the flesh.
Conjugal and perfect chastity are consequently the same virtue, simply practiced differently according to the difference of state. Hence the expression “chastity according to one’s state” that includes both cases.
The importance of conjugal chastity in the long-term success of any marriage cannot be underestimated. If pleasure is sought after, and disordered pleasure is experienced, selfishness and egocentricity will corrupt and destroy the marriage, which is not founded upon true love. If, to the contrary, control is always exercised, and the marriage relationship is sought for the good of one’s spouse, rather than for one’s selfish pleasure, then it will be laid on a solid foundation.
Pope Pius XI speaks of conjugal chastity as being in fact a necessary consequence of the blessing of fidelity to one another that comes from the sacrament of matrimony: “That familiar intercourse between the spouses themselves, if the blessing of conjugal faith is to shine with becoming splendor, must be distinguished by chastity so that husband and wife bear themselves in all things with the law of God and of nature… This conjugal faith, however, which is most aptly called by St. Augustine the ‘faith of chastity,’ blooms more freely, more beautifully, and more nobly when it is rooted in that more excellent soil, the love of husband and wife which pervades all the duties of married life… For matrimonial faith demands that husband and wife be joined in an especially holy and pure love, not as adulterers love each other, but as Christ loved the Church” (On Christian Marriage, Dec. 31, 1930).
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.