This is a transcript of the talk given by Mr. Marshner at a Human Life International's National Sex Education Conference in St. Louis Missouri, October 21-23, 1994.

Mr. Marshner: I feel as though I am being knighted here, and these things are bestowed upon me. The title of this talk is "The Theology of Chastity." Now before I plunge into the subject matter of chastity, we'd better begin with the first word in the title because there are a great many pieces of nonsense these days circulating under the name "theology". It will help to begin if we refresh ourselves about what theology is and is not. What usually circulates today under the name "theology"... and often enough I am sorry to say with the adjective Christian, or with the adjective Catholic attached to it... is as a matter of fact a man-made religious interpretation... man-made religious interpretation and in that sense such a theology of chastity will be a man-made religious interpretation of sexual phenomena. One of the worst surprises of my brief career visiting a certain Ivy League campus was when I went into the Divinity School. I had a lecture of my own to give there in the evening, and during the day I was there a little bit early... and was taken around by the host organization and sat in on a class which was being taught by a woman on Christian sexual ethics. At that point in her course, when she was talking about this basic question of what sex is for, she told her hapless students at Yale Divinity School this statement of theology with finality ... she said: "Sex is for comfort". End of discussion. Have you considered the other views, ... I mean, procreation and so on...classical views? No. "Sex is for comfort" she said.

Now you see, you can't get that view out of the Bible. So, it's an odd view to be teaching at the Yale Divinity School which is supposed to be a denominationally Protestant institution; and, therefore specially devoted to the word of God as present in the Bible. But what's going on at Yale is no longer theology in any classical sense of the term, you see. If theology is a man-made religious interpretation, then as intellectual fashions, conceptions, cultures, notions change and evolve, theology must likewise change and evolve. What man makes in one culture as a religious interpretation of his life or this part of his life will be different from what man makes in another culture as an interpretation of this part of his life. The Catholic theology of chastity is not a man-made religious interpretation of sexual phenomena. It is rather a hearing of the word of God. That is what it is first-off; a hearing of the word of God. And then a faithful reasoning upon what we have heard. So, for a Catholic, there is no other possible way for us to begin tonight, but by hearing God. So let's do so. Let's begin hearing him in Matthew 5,27-28.

"Ye have heard it said that it was said by them of old time: `Thou shalt not commit adultery.'" This is Christ talking in the Sermon on the Mount. "But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. Here from the lips of God incarnate, we have the foundation of a new interpretation...no, a new revelation about sexual phenomena. And, that is that they are not primarily exterior phenomena. The sexual life of man both what is right about it, and what is wrong about it, begins interiorly. And that grasp which Jesus Christ proposes to take hold of mankind to raise up to a new way of living and being: that grasp requires us to deepen our understanding so that God grasps us first from within and turns us away from the lustful thought as it is dawning in the mind. It will not be enough for Jesus Christ that we should abstain from the exterior if we remain within as seething cauldrons of disordered desire.

This turn towards itself, about which our present Holy Father has also had much to say, is further explained by our Lord in Matthew 15, v.19-20. In this passage we understand the connection in the mind of God between interiorness and moral evaluation. He says, "For out of the heart, proceed evil plans: murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man." These were ritual illustrations that where part of Jewish ceremony: Jewish ritual observance. The issue is not whether such illustrations are wise, hygienic and so on. The issue is what is it that defiles a human being in the moral sense. And the answer is not eating this, not eating that, washing your hands, not washing your hands. The answer is what comes out of the heart.

Now we have all been subjected to a great deal of sentimental,...overly sentimental, theology about the heart. We have often been told that the heart is the seat of the affective life in man. Be careful of such talk; it is too narrow. It is true that the heart is the seat of affections; but it is also true that in biblical vocabulary the heart is the seat of plan-making. At heart is the biblical term for what Saint Thomas Aquinas will call practical reason. The heart is that dimension within us in which we make our plans. So it is out of the heart, out of the intentions of man that come the evil in our plans. Evils like (and He lists) adulteries, murders, fornications, thefts, lies, false witness, blasphemies. So, the key thing for moral evaluation is the interior side of human action which is intention. It is the action as it arises already out of choice. As we are determining ourselves by choice to be a doer of this, a doer of that, and thereby defining what sort of persons we are to be. It is there that evil first-off attaches. It is there that moral evaluation is to be sought. So, the interior life is crucial. Now against this background of our Lord's sayings, which I am sure you all know, the first evangelists of Christianity proclaimed the new mode of life, life in Christ Jesus, in a multi- cultural environment...if you will indulge me that currently fashionable term.

But the Mediterranean world in the first century of our era was a multi-cultural environment...people in the different cities, some Semitic cities, some Greek cities, some Roman cities, some cultural cities, some rough and tumble port cities like Corinth. People had very different views of what was right and wrong and so it was incumbent upon the first evangelizers of Christianity to give to these men and women a careful instruction, a full instruction. There's a special way in which San Paul does that. There are three places in the epistles of Saint Paul in which he gives lists of actions such that whoever does these things can not inherit the Kingdom of God; actions so evil, so intrinsically at variance, at odds, in repugnance with that which Christ means to make in us, that he who does these things cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. The first of these lists is in 1 Corinthians 6:9-20.

Let's read it. "Do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate (that means homosexuals), nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners shall inherit the Kingdom of God; and such were some of you. But ye are washed, ye are sanctified, ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God."

That wonderful change of life has mandated a turning away from this list of things towards a new mode of life, and notice the very first thing that was on the list. Be not deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor etc., etc., etc. Not for nothing was that the first item on the list and we shall return to that topic.

Let's look at Saint Paul's second passage, which is of the same kind. This time it's in the fifth chapter of Galatians verses 16-25: "Well if you bite and devour one another take heed that ye not be consumed by one another. This I say, then: walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh, for the flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh and these are contrary the one to the other so that you can not do the things that you would prefer. But if you be lead of the Spirit you're not under the law (he means the law which is at working our members). Now the works of the flesh are manifest and they are these: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulation, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envies, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like, of which I told you before as I have told you in time past that those that do such things shall not inherit the Kingdom of God. But, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, against that sort of thing there is no law."

Same sort of list, same sort of warning. He who does what is on this list cannot inherit the Kingdom of God, and notice something else that is parallel between this passage in Galatians and what we were reading a moment ago in 1 Corinthians. These things exclude a person from the Kingdom of God because they are incompatible with the Holy Spirit. They are opposite to that which the Holy Spirit brings into human existence.

Finally, let's look at Ephesians 5:3-8. "But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness let it not be once named among you as becomes the saints. Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, jesting, which are not suitable, but rather you should be giving thanks for this ye know that no whoremonger nor unclean person, nor covetous man who is an idolater hath any inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no man deceive you with vain words for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience. Be not, therefore, partakers with them for ye all were sometimes in darkness; but now are ye light in the Lord. Walk as children of light for the fruit of the Spirit is all goodness and righteousness and truth."

Same sort of list, same sort of contrast, between that which comes of the flesh and that which comes of the Holy Spirit. Now, did you catch a note of urgency here? "Be not deceived." We heard that the last time, and this time let no man deceive you, with vain words. Saint Paul is not delivering this message in an environment free of opposition. Isn't that clear?

There are people in these congregations in Ephesus, in Corinth, in Galatia who have another view of these moral matters. And if there is any doubt about that 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8 should remove it. Now 1 Thessalonians is a very interesting epistle for many historical reasons. It apparently is the very first of all the epistles that Saint Paul had occasion to write. And it's written to a church which he had to found in a rush. If we follow his chronology in the Book of Acts, it appears that Saint Paul had a grand total of about 15 days to spend on this first visit to Thessalonika. Then he had to rush on. Well, there was a problem. He had to get out of town; you know how it is in Saint Paul's career. He rushed on and went down to Corinth and got worried about the situation because he had only been there 2 weeks. He had only set up a nascent hierarchy. He had only been able to give a certain amount of elementary instruction. So he sent one of his helpers, Timothy, I believe, back to visit that congregation and see how they were getting along. And along with the messenger he writes this epistle.

Now here's chapter 4 verses 3-8. "This is the will of God, I mean your sanctification that you should abstain from fornication that every one of you should know how to possess his body in sanctification and honor not in the lust of concupiscence like the Gentiles who don't know God, that no man go beyond and defraud his brother in this matter. Because the Lord is the avenger of all such as we have also forewarned you and testified. For God has not called us unto uncleanness but unto holiness. Now, therefore, he that disagrees, is not disagreeing with man but with God who has made us partakers in the Holy Spirit."

Now look, it doesn't take very much imagination to reconstruct the background controversy into which Saint Paul is writing here. Saint Paul comes to Thessalonica announcing the Good News of Jesus Christ. You can enter the Kingdom of God and the spiritual treasury of the Old Covenant without the burdensome observations of Judaism. You do not have to become a Jew. The Kingdom of God, the ancient plantation of God in history is now open. This is the mystery hidden from the ages. But now it is revealed. The Gentiles are called to enter it and the entry demands faith and acceptance of Jesus Christ not the ceremonial observations of the Law. Everybody cheers! Wonderful news! This is very interesting, indeed.

In all of these towns, by the way, there was a considerable population of Gentiles who were sympathetic to Judaism. It had in the first century a certain very high cultural sheen to it. It was considered very much a thinking man's religion. So pagans who knew better than to believe in the mythologies of the temple cults and who were looking for a thinking man's God were often attracted to the God of the Old Testament. So there were plenty of Gentiles who would hear this message and say "This is very interesting indeed. We want in."

Now, along with this message of Christ Jesus there comes a certain amount of basic moral information such as we read from Matthew 5 and Matthew 15. There are evil things that come out of the heart of man and adulteries and fornications are among them. Well now. The hackles begin to go up. And somebody says "Look, Paul, we know that you mean well. But you, after all, are a Jew, as you admit; steeped in it; a Pharisee of the Pharisees; raised in the schools of Judaism; deeply situated in your culture. Now let me give you a little lesson in multi-cultural sensitivity, here. We Gentiles don't look on a little extra-marital fooling around that way. We have our own culture. It's a different culture. Tone this down a little bit, here. And I'm sure that when you get to know us better and we have a good friendly dialogue about this Gospel, this will all be worked out, O.K.?"

So Saint Paul has to intervene; and he has to say "Wait a minute. This is not my Jewish cultural baggage." Now, don't forget that this is an understanding that although it comes from God and from the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, nevertheless, in human intellectual terms, must have cost Saint Paul some reflection. Because, remember, in the first century A.D. when the message of Christianity is first being proclaimed, nobody has that neat, careful, Thomistic distinction between natural law and the revealed Law of the Old Testament that you have. The careful drawing of that distinction is an achievement of Christian theological reflection. Saint Paul doesn't have that distinction ready to hand. He knows that in bringing Christianity to the Gentiles he's crossing over the deepest cultural abyss that existed at that time in history. And he also knows that he is not bringing across that abyss the ceremonial law in which he himself was raised. Now go back into Leviticus, go back into Deuteronomy and you make the experiment of separating which ones are Levitical ritual demands that are not to be imposed on the Gentiles and which ones are moral law demands and demands of the Gospel. That takes thought, that takes work. Saint Paul has done his homework. Maybe that's one of the things he was thinking about during the 17 years he was in Arabia. But in any case, he has done his homework and now is able to speak not simply as a theologian, but as an apostle bringing the Word of God. Now he's had to tell these people: "Look, get this straight. God is willing your sanctification and that means that you abstain from fornication. And if you want to quarrel about this, you are not quarreling with man; you are quarreling with God who has given us His Holy Spirit."

There it is. Straightforward proclamation that the Christian sexual ethic as proclaimed by the Apostles, is not culturally conditioned. It is not limited by the weaknesses and frailties of humanity in the first century. It is a disclosure of the Divine Wisdom itself. And the ground of it is that all that leads to impurity is incompatible with the Holy Spirit. The reason for the sexual ethic of the New Testament is that certain sexual acts are repugnant to the Holy Spirit and therefore they are repugnant to our elevation to the resurrected life.

That's what the Holy Spirit is forming in us. That's what he's bringing about in us; an elevation of our nature into the Resurrected Life of Jesus; forming in us now already in this world a preparation for that life which will be ours hereafter in the Kingdom of Heaven where they neither marry nor give-in marriage. This is why you cannot have your treasures set on the pleasures of the flesh. They are passing away. There is being formed in you the new man. Behold if any man be in Christ Jesus, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away, all things are becoming new. We are being molded for the life of the Kingdom, and all that is incompatible with that life is incompatible with the Holy Spirit must be cast out, for in the Kingdom of the Resurrection, we shall be in radiant glory with the vision of God.

At this point, we have to understand that it will be impossible to teach to our children the theology of chastity unless we teach them our eschatological hope. Our hope to be with God in Heaven. I always thought until just a few months ago that Heaven is something that would happen to me in the end if I didn't screw up too badly. I would behave myself in various ways, take advantage of the sacraments and so on, and Heaven is just a place that I would end up, you might say. It never occurred to me that I should have it as an ambition as I had my job as an ambition, literary immortality as an ambition, a nice house as an ambition. I never had Heaven as an ambition until I set about translating the first article in the first question of the Summa Theologica of Saint Thomas, where he explains why above and beyond the natural sciences we need divine revelation. And the first reason he gives is because we have been called to a goal which is beyond our comprehension. He says a goal is something that people have to understand in advance if they are to bend their energies toward it. Doesn't that make sense? So God had to reveal it. Make your children ambitious for the Kingdom of God. Make them ambitious to see God. Explain to them what good that is. Explain to them what it would be like to have an eternal friend who cannot fail them; to have in their hands, the answer to all of the deepest questions of life so that they will never know uncertainty or intellectual hunger again. Explain to them what good it will be to be finally beyond any realm in which people can hurt you, people can destroy you, people can disappoint you; to be surrounded by the saints and enjoying the radiance of the presence of the deathless God. Make them ambitious for Heaven and they can begin to understand this Christian sexual ethic.

Now, if this were all there were in the New Testament, our theology of chastity would be open to a very embarrassing question, which is this: "So, you mean to say that, if it weren't for our supernatural vocation to Heaven, the Gentiles would be right? So the only reason these things are wrong is because they're incompatible with the Holy Spirit? Now I'm not saying that's not a good reason, because the Holy Spirit is a very great plus and it's wonderful to have been called to a supernatural destiny. Terrific. But if we hadn't been. If we were just made by God to enjoy the fruits of our nature, then this ethic wouldn't apply? Is that what you're saying?" No. That is not what we are saying and that brings me to a crucial other side of the doctrine in the New Testament; another side which is all too often missed by some contemporary Catholic theologians who want to make moral theology just a bit too Christocentric and a point that is also missed by some of our separated brethren who don't have a doctrine of natural law.

The other part of Biblical teaching comes from the same Saint Paul and we find it in Romans 1 beginning in verse 18. Saint Paul has just finished a very long salutation to the people of Rome, and how he prays for them, and how he's not one bit ashamed of the Gospel because it's the communication and the revelation of the righteousness of God which God is distributing all across the face of the Earth. Well now, he gets into his subject. "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold truth in unrighteousness. Because that which may be known of God is manifest to them for God hath shown it unto them". The invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen. They're understood by the things that have been made; namely His eternal power and divinity so that people are without excuse for not knowing this about God. Because that when they knew God they glorified Him not as God and were not thankful but rather became vain in their imaginations and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing themselves wise they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible men and birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things and so on. He's talking about the pagan idolatries of the time.

"Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts to dishonor their own bodies between themselves. Those who changed the truth of God into a lie, worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator, who's blessed forever. For this cause, God gave them up into vile affections; even their women to change the natural use into that which is against nature and likewise also the men; leaving the natural use of the woman they burned in their lust one toward another. Men with men, working what is unseemly and receiving in themselves the recompense of their error. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not seemly fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness: fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity, whisperers, back-biters, haters of God, despiteful, proud boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient of parents, without understanding, promise-breakers without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful, who knowing the judgement of God that they which commit such things are worthy of death still not only do the same but have pleasure in them that do them."

Well this is a grim portrait of the pagan world which Saint Paul is painting here. And notice, he attaches the cultural decline into moral blindness....he traces that from a theological decline. A failure to retain the knowledge of the spirituality, the greatness, the eternity, the divinity of God. And it's really quite interesting. If you look at somebody like Cicero, who is a Roman writer, you'll find in proportion as Cicero acquires or reacquires a thinking man's notion of God, Cicero also has some very wise things to say about morals. Those who practice idolatry and turn to the sort of vile cults of the flesh and of the earth, which are spreading again among us, those who turn to such things are also abandoned unto moral blindness.

Now, "therefore [beginning of chapter 2] thou art inexcusable, oh man, whosoever thou art that judges for wherein thou judges another thou condemnest thyself. Thou that judges doest the same things. For we are sure that the judgement of God is according to truth against them which commit such things. And God will render to every man according to his deeds. To them who are patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honor and immortality in eternal life. But God will give unto them that are contentious and do not obey the truth but obey unrighteousness, He will give indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that doeth evil, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile; but glory, honor and peace to every man who worketh good, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile. For there is no respect of persons with God. For as many as have sinned without the law shall also perish without the law, and as many as have sinned under the law shall be judged by the law, it's not the hearers of the law who are just before God but the doers, for when the Gentiles which have not the law do by nature things contained in the law, these having not the law are a law unto themselves."

There is the natural law. Which shows the work of the law written on their hearts, their conscience, also bearing witness and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing, or else excusing them; you see? What St. Paul is saying here, ... he's saying many things, but just to summarize the point in which I am particularly interested is this: All men are naturally in a position to know enough about God, and the conditions of human flourishing to know that these forms of uncleanness such as fornication and homosexuality and so on, are wrong. Everybody is naturally in a position to know this, and so who ever does these things is without excuse, without excuse before God.

I have known some very interesting even contemporary corroboration of something of what St. Paul is saying. Not so much about the natural theology part of it, but about the natural law part of it. I have heard from people who are counselors, and even from confessors, that we have teenagers, young people today who have never been told that there was anything wrong with self abuse. Never told a word about it, and yet they are not reconciled to it. This is where Planned Parenthood is wrong and here is their Achilles heel. There are no happy pagans. There are no happy pagans even those who have not been told by some religious instruction that certain things are base, that they're shameful, that they're wrong, that they're unclean. That this is something I shouldn't be doing. Even those who've never been told know it. Sometimes out of lust they harden their minds against what conscience wants to tell them, but they know it and whether they harden their minds or not there is no such thing as a happy pagan. The portrait in Romans 1 is everybody's portrait. Apart from the grace and salvation and change of heart and peace of mind that comes in Christ Jesus.

... From the hearing of the Word of God theology moves to faithful reasoning upon what we have heard. There are two great traditions in Church history, of how to reflect upon, organize, and arrange into a larger system the data given in these texts of the Scripture. One of those traditions is the exposition of the decalogue. We have many examples of that from the Fathers of the Church, both east and west, and in this tradition matters of sexual ethics will come up in connection with the (sixth) commandment, thou shalt not commit adultery. And then from another light in the later commandment, you shouldn't covet your neighbor's wife. But there is also another tradition, practiced among the Fathers of the Church, and it is the tradition which was preferred by the teacher who is called the common teacher, the common doctor of the Catholic Church, namely St. Thomas Aquinas. This other tradition is an exposition of the life of man according to the virtues. Now there is no opposition between these two approaches, it's just that you are doing one or you are doing the other. You will cover all the same bases, but in many respects St. Thomas's choice I think, was a wise one.

When you cover the moral life in terms of the virtues, you cover the moral life under terms that resonate with the strength of character that people want to have. And I think all of us would profit from examinations of conscience, which could be written from this point of view. I don't know about you, but I'm a little bit tired of the examinations of conscience that run you through the commandments. Did I practice any idolatry today? Did I kill anybody today? ... Then you see, you have to do a lot of thinking to keep taking those commandments in a more and more subtle sense. At least most of us do. I mean I don't on an average day murder anybody, but I can I think about who did I hate badly enough to do in, or something like that. But when you have an examination of conscience that's designed to run along the lines of the virtues, it's very interesting. Have I practiced temperance today? Did I do anything today that showed any fortitude? You see, that's a different kind of a question. And it not only challenges you to think about your actual wrongdoings, but challenges you to think about your omissions.

What are the areas of strength of character that I'm not thinking about growing in at all, they've just gone right over my head, and maybe I should be thinking about? Maybe I'm a little feckless. Maybe I need some temperance, maybe I need some fortitude. Maybe I need some justice. Maybe I'm not very fair, etc. When you expound the various strengths of character that are part and parcel of the Christian life from the point of view of the virtues that compose that life, you can proceed in two ways, there is a top-down way, which is favored by some contemporary moralists, and there is a bottom-up way which was favored by St. Thomas. If you approach the virtues of the Christian life in the top-down way, you will begin with the theological virtues, faith, hope and the love of God, which is what charity means; it doesn't mean soup kitchens. It means soup kitchens at best done for the love of God. Now, under them and as filling out those virtues are the multiple gifts of the Holy Spirit. So you will go down from the theological virtues through the gifts of the Holy Spirit and end up down at the usual catalog of the moral virtues like the strength of character to keep a fast, the strength of character to tell the truth when it hurts, and that sort of thing. St. Thomas pursues the bottom up approach. He lists, distinguishes, and catalogs the virtues as they are known by natural reason. Beginning from the ground up, then relating those virtues as they are knowable by natural reason to the theological virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. When we go about the thing St. Thomas's way, we get an insight for how the whole rationally self-controlled life of man can be elevated by the gifts of God to a mode of life higher than human. How the whole naturally rationally self controlled life of man can be elevated to a mode of life which is really natively divine, and only ours by grace.

Now then, following his bottom up approach where does St. Thomas begin? He begins with the fact that, as naturally knowable, the virtue of chastity is an area and application within the general virtue of temperance. So if you want to learn the thinking of St. Thomas, which is the Church's favorite theology of chastity, you should begin in the second part of the second part. ... Question 141 on temperance. And in the first article St. Thomas tells us that temperance is a naturally understandable trait of good character.

Well what is that trait? Temperance is making reason interpose between appetite and indulgence, between sensory attraction and satisfaction of that attraction. Now you can understand that no child is born with this virtue. It is the strength of character whereby you make reason interpose between impulse, appetite, and indulgence of the appetite. If we have that strength of character, we restrain those pursuits of pleasure which are against intelligence. We restrain those pursuits of pleasure which are against intelligence -- that includes sexual pleasures.

Notice two very interesting things about St. Thomas. He makes no bones about the fact that everyone has a natural desire for sexual pleasure. Absence of that he considers pathological. There is even a vice that's opposed to chastity by excess and it's called insensitivity. Somebody who is just a block of wood. St. Thomas regards that as pathological. It's natural to everyone to have sexual appetite.

But unlike the moderns, St. Thomas doesn't think that appetite is uncontrollable. This is what is peculiar about our moral life in America today, and moral discourse in America today. Everybody is willing to talk about the rights and wrongs of diets. Are you sinning? Is that ice cream cone OK? Is that kosher? These chocolates? Everybody's prepared to talk about the rights and wrongs which are involved in the control of the appetite for food, and drink; and, my goodness, poor hapless tobacco. What a crusade we've got against that. But you are rejected as some kind of crackpot if you suggest that the appetite for sexual pleasure can be controlled. Read out of the American conversation by the minions of Planned Parenthood. But for St. Thomas all of the appetites are controllable, subject to this interposition of reason between the desire and it's satisfaction.

Now, please note then that the virtue of temperance is to be distinguished from a physical or psychological condition which is just smallness of appetite. And the virtues of temperance are also to be distinguished from that semi-, hem-, dedi-virtue called continence, which is the condition you're in where reason is not interposing exactly, reason has done nothing to moderate desire, desire is just blazing away and lust is festering, but you don't act on it. Maybe you're too scared. That's continence. That's not as much as we should desire of ourselves even as rational beings according to St. Thomas.

Moving up from this kind of self control as we can naturally understand it to a theological level. Temperance is seen by St. Thomas as elevated into the theological virtue of hope. Hope -- why hope? And as connected with that gift of the Holy Spirit called the fear of the Lord. Why that one? Especially when there's another gift of the Holy Spirit called chastity. But temperance in general St. Thomas connects with the theological virtue of hope and with the gift of the Spirit called the fear of the Lord. His reasoning is this: You exercise the virtue of chastity when you make reason intervene. That means when you stop and think. This is what the sinner does not want to do. This is what all of us know we don't do when we commit sexual sins. The last thing when we are on our way to a sexual sin the last thing we want to do is think. Stopping to think is dangerous. If you stop and think you might not do it. So being chaste is a matter of stopping to think. Now why does anybody stop to think when they are in the grips of a strong desire? You tell me. Why does anybody stop to think? Because of hope for something supremely good that might be messed up by this, and because of fear. The fear of the Lord says the proverb, is the beginning of wisdom. It's certainly the beginning of practical wisdom in this whole area of rational self control. It is possible to raise children under a natural law regimen and to teach them a sound sexual ethic along natural law lines. I'm not saying it isn't possible, but you have a hard task on your hand. You have to explain in natural terms why a kid should stop and think before indulging a sexual pleasure. Why should I stop and think? Well, you might get in trouble. Well, you might get caught. Well this, well that. These are not very good reasons. They have some worldly prudence to them. They are not very good reasons. We Christians have much better reasons to give our children why they should stop and think, and St. Paul has already explained most of those reasons to us. In proportion as we hope for the kingdom of God, we must abstain from those things which prevent a human being from entering it. In proportion as we want to be made alive in Christ Jesus, we must abstain from those things which bring the death of the flesh. In proportion as we hope and long and dream of becoming incorruptible we must abstain from those things which are the sowing of corruption. And in so far as we hope to have the only all wise eternal being as our own friend and benefactor, we must fear to displease Him.

All right, now moving laterally, moving through the various applications of temperance. St. Thomas gave us a treatment first of all of the sense of honor that comes with rational self control. Fascinating that he should take up that topic first before getting to self control about food and self control about drink and sex and so on.

The first thing he discusses is that wonderful sense of honor. This is the real self esteem, that wonderful sense of honor that comes with rational self control. We've got a terrific campaign of propaganda about self esteem in our country today, and one of the things it forgets to tell people is that self esteem has to be earned. If you're my child, my love for you doesn't have to be earned, all right. But you have to earn your self esteem, and it cannot be gotten by little quickie psycho-babble preach ups. Self esteem is the hard won fruit of self control.

And when you have won it, then you react correctly to the visible gross indulgences of other people. When you see somebody pigging out, when you see somebody drunk, when you see somebody acting absurdly out of lust, you say to yourself, I wouldn't do that. That is beneath me. That is beneath contempt. That is that sound sense of honor that is the fruit of rational self control.

Now we move into the matter of food, and its opposite gluttony, then into the area of self control over drink and its opposite drunkenness. I'm glad they didn't have tobacco in those days. Then we go into chastity, and its opposite which is lust. The virtue of chastity, that's a familiar word, it comes straight over from the Latin "castitas". The opposite vice is called luxury, which comes over into English not as luxury, thanks be to God, but as lustfulness. That is the vice opposite to chastity.

And now once again let's make sure we understand the difference between sexual appetite and lustfulness. And let's be careful to teach this to our children. Just because you have a sexual appetite does not mean you are a lustful person. This is another lie of the enemy, a lie of Satan and a lie of Planned Parenthood. Sexual appetite is perfectly normal, perfectly healthy, and perfectly compatible with virtue. Sexual appetite is that which the virtue is going to control and bring under the discipline of reason, and which our hope for heaven is going to help us control not suppress, but control and render rational.

Lustfulness is the absence of that control, the absence of that disposition to stop and think. Lustfulness is not the having of a sexual desire, but the coddling of it. The cozying up to it. The invitation of it. The enjoyment of it, the delight of it, the wallowing in it. Lustfulness is the virtue opposed to chastity. It is a sin category.

St. Thomas goes through a long list of sins that are applications, kinds if you will, of lustfulness. And these applications are interesting. They are the things people will do out of lustfulness, because they are not exercising that rational self control. Of them fornication is the first. But then there is seduction, rape, incest; then there's unnatural vice; bestiality, and so on.

As we have seen in the history of our own contemporary culture, once the floodgates of lustfulness are allowed open, once it gets into the mind of the culture that the sex appetite cannot really be controlled and the floodgates to lustfulness are thrown open and that rational intervention taking the time to stop and think is dismissed as grouchiness; then there is no limit to what people will do to satisfy this desire. And of those things, fornication is only the first. Goodness, at the end of the 60's the free love generation -- it was all going to be sweet and nice. We were just going to have nice kids shacking up together. That wouldn't be too bad. You know, it's college time and experimental lifestyle, but then comes the whole agenda pouring out bit by bit until we have Dr. Ruth, and Act Up and the whole crew.

Chastity is not in the body, it resides in the soul and deals with the body. Once again, chastity is the disposition to interpose reason between sexual desire and sexual indulgence. It resides in the soul.

And so the virtue of chastity is a shade different from the gift of chastity. There is a gift of the Holy Spirit called chastity, and here's how St. Thomas explains the difference. Here's how he divides the two: the virtue of chastity is that reasonable disposition to interpose reason, to act according with reason as a matter of self respect. The gift of the Holy Spirit that goes by the same name is joy in that disposition. It is the enjoyment of the self control that comes in Christ Jesus. It is the enjoyment of that new ground of self affirmation and esteem that comes to us when we have allowed God to love us, and raise us up to a new order of life, honor, decency, and self control. It's one thing to see how reasonable that all is, it's something else to find the joy of it, to live in it with gladness. And this is the great thing about us Christians, upon our heads has been poured the oil of gladness.

Thank you very much.