Virtue - 2

 I blogged recently about thrift, hard work and honesty – very important virtues, the ones which contribute most to wealth creation. If you care about poor people, you should care about wealth creation; just as, if you care about sick people, you should care about promoting healthy behaviour. Sanitation has contributed more to health than antibiotics, than transplants.

The most unpopular virtue is Chastity. It is not the virtue upon which the Church places the most importance; they are Faith, Hope and Charity. But, sex being the powerful urge it is, we dislike Chastity more than any other; and the enemies of the Church are frank about it.

The Church teaches that all sex outside monogamous marriage is sinful. In today’s society there are many opportunities for sex outside marriage. We are to eschew all these opportunities, whether heterosexual or homosexual. That makes the Church just mean.

BUT

I have come to believe that Chastity is like Thrift. Thrift is a virtue. Yes, but who is the primary beneficiary? – the thrifty one. The chaste one benefits from Chastity before anyone else. I speak from bitter experience; and it’s easy, I know, for me to speak. One of the few benefits of being in my seventh decade is the decline in the urgency of the sexual instinct. Just as an ex-addict rejoices in having broken the shackles of addiction while regretting the wasted years, so the erstwhile libertine regrets his self-indulgence. I know what unchastity has cost me. Mea culpa.