So far we’ve laid down the foundations for the Christian understanding of the soul/mind/emotions, and we’ve defined chastity as a virtue. Now what exactly IS emotional chastity? Well, let’s start with what it’s not. That’s always the easiest approach to determine what something is, in my opinion.
A lot of people think that virtues are supposed to change your habits. Well, kind of. That would be ideal for bad habits. What about neutral habits that aren’t sinful? There is debate over whether habits are intrinsically part of who you are. Kind of a nurture vs. nature situation almost. There’s two viewpoints that people take on it. (I’ll keep this to a pretty small, unimportant example, because I want to point out the affect of virtue on our entire personhood, not just sin.) Viewpoint 1: I have a habit of saying “like,” like, way too much, like, it’s a problem. However, that is just a quirk of mine; it makes me unique from how other people act and talk, therefore, it is part of who I am. Viewpoint 2: I have, like, the same “like” problem. However, it is not part of who I am. All my annoying habits are just there...who I am is therefore constituted into non-habits alone. In a few ways, emotional chastity isn’t setting out necessarily to change how you are around others. Some will naturally be outgoing, some will be quiet. Some will be intimate, some will just want to have fun. Chastity, and every other virtue, is not meant to erase who you are. It is meant to build your character into the person you are becoming. With grace, we share in God’s life. He doesn’t out-compete our human characteristics…He wants them perfected! Therefore, to attain virtues such as purity, humility, obedience, even patriotism, which will perfect our thoughts, habits, and desires, we must go to the Sacraments where grace is distributed. This is why St. Philip Neri says that chastity is not possible without the Eucharist! These virtues will enhance your spiritual life, which will then reach into your human characteristics. Back to the “like” example. The grace that builds virtue will help me learn modesty in speech. I may still have the habit of saying “like”, but not in professional contexts. Quirks, though they may not be sins, are still not perfections and may need some purification, but still can be indelibly part of your character as a unique human being. Emotional chastity, therefore, is not to be a virtue to suppress your outgoing nature or to keep you from being intimate, but will instead enrich your relationships into Christ-centered friendships.
Ok, so emotional chastity probably won’t change your entire persona. What will it do then? Well, back to the definitions of chastity. My favorite definition from Webster is the simplicity in design or expression. Combine that with Jason Evert’s explanation that chastity is a virtue ordering sexual desires according to real love, and I think you probably have the perfect explanation. Emotional chastity is ordering all of our thoughts of sexuality…our own and others’…and being genuine in our expressions and thoughts of sexuality. Not getting ahead of yourself, to put it simply. I think that society today makes that entirely hard for us all. We’re having education of adult content in middle school…that NEVER happened decades ago. In a Christopher West video, he explained the key difference of Hugh Hefner and Pope John Paul II. They both discovered sexuality and its expression at a key time in the 20th century. While Hefner shoved it in our faces, though, in a non-discreet form, Pope John Paul II used it to unravel the beauty of the human person. Emotional chastity is all about respecting the beauty of the human person in our thoughts.
Okay, I believe that is enough of a foundation that I can build upon it from here at some later point. Thanks for sticking through this!
Dear readers: I know my logic here may be a bit hazy, so if you have anything to correct, to add, or to revise in my writings on habits and their part in our person-hood, please go for it!
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