Let's All Be Chaste Lovers
by Anna Carter
Recently I was gifted a relic of St. Cecilia. I had seen the reproduction of Stefano Maderno’s iconic statue in the catacombs of Rome and knew she was a patron saint of musicians. Once I dressed as her for a Catholic Halloween party in a basilica basement—complete with red paint on my neck—because (1) a toga costume is simple, (2) it seemed the just the right amount of macabre and “All Hallows [Saints] Eve.” Beyond being a virgin martyr who perhaps liked to sing, I didn't know much about her.
St. Cecilia, it turns out, was born to a wealthy Roman family. She converted to Christianity at a young age, and in time vowed her virginity to God. Her parents arranged a marriage to a pagan man, Valerian, who was swayed by his young bride’s faith. He converted to Christianity and made his own pledge of virginity. The two would become leaders in the Christian Church in Rome and, eventually, martyrs. When St. Thérèse of Lisieux visited St. Cecelia’s tomb as a young girl, she was moved as if visiting a friend. And, it turns out, St. Cecelia wasn’t known as an excellent soprano or a savant on the harp. No, St. Thérèse observes that this patronage is “in remembrance of the virginal song of praise she sang to her Divine Spouse hidden in her heart of hearts” (original French here, translation by Bishop Erik Varden—you’ll be seeing a fair amount of him in this blog).
I find her story even more fascinating now, because it tangles up my Catholic preconceived notions of vocation, chastity, and sexuality.
The Sex Talk
Many devout Catholics would agree that the United States (and beyond) is experiencing a cultural crisis of sexuality. One could argue that it boils down to the ancient philosophy of Epicurus. If you’ve heard the word “epicurean” as a synonym for sensuality or hedonism, you know what I’m getting at. The philosophy, in part, elevates the pursuit of pleasure and seeks to minimize pain. When this becomes the lone guiding star of sexual ethics, within the shaky guardrails of consent, all manner of applications of sexual desire get celebrated.
As it happens, Divine Providence seems to be pushing back. There’s been a lion’s effort to bring a rich theology of chastity and marriage to the average Catholic in the pews. Pages and pages of online search data would list courses, retreats, revamped textbooks for students, gobs of social media content, etc. This renaissance is largely influenced by a landmark work of St. John Paul II: Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body. This catechesis emphasizes things like:
The essentiality of the body: It matters! Overall great news for humans, because we live in material creation and are not pure spirit. No offense, angels.
The body’s spousal meaning: In the beginning, God made the body two ways—man and woman—and wanted those two ways to come together to reveal His own life-giving love via new human persons coming into existence.
How all this effects the way we live in our sexed bodies: Built into men and women is the capacity to both unify and reproduce…and—if the teenage “chastity” talks I attended were any indication—the hormones to make all of that seem like loads of fun.
Despite my mild sass, I find this is a beautiful teaching, and I’ve got loads of books on my shelf expounding on these topics. But. I wonder if the sexual act as such is the beginning and end of chastity’s story. Wildly, perhaps to some, I submit that it is not.
Ok But Really, Hang On…Maybe the Vocation Talk
Chastity is about sexuality, of course. That’s how it's defined in the Catechism: “chastity means the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being” (CCC 2357). Elsewhere the Church confirms: “Everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity” (CCC 2333). When the broader culture says “sexual identity,” it typically means the trajectory of sexual desire—homosexual, heterosexual, etc. When the Church says “sexual identity,” she means male or female as such. “Sexuality” doesn’t just mean sexual desire either, though that’s included. “Sexuality affects all aspects of the human person in the unity of his body and soul. It especially concerns affectivity [i.e. affections, emotions, passions], the capacity to love and to procreate, and in a more general way the aptitude for forming bonds of communion with others” (CCC 2332).
Chastity is a unique virtue, in that it takes different forms, in practice, depending on our state of life. The Church makes this distinction clear in multiple places. “All Christ’s faithful are called to lead a chaste life in keeping with their particular states of life” (CCC 2348, plus 2349, 2394…the Church really likes that phrase). So what does that mean?
Practically speaking, all of us are called to steward our individual lives, including our bodies and their sexed dimension. The Church talks about two tracks for the spousal dimension of the person. Many people will live this in a uniquely conjugal way (read: sex) in a Christian marriage. The other option is the renunciation of conjugal relations. This can take a lot of forms— diocesan priesthood, religious life (which could also include male priesthood), consecrated virginity, canonical hermits (what a phrase!), consecration or vows within institutes, and personal, private vows. Wow! So many options!
As you might imagine, there are also a lot of umbrella words for these states of life theologically. Here are a few:
Virginity: This is applicable in some sense regardless of a person’s sexual history and assumes a single-hearted disposition for God; Fr. Thomas Dubay spends his first paragraph And You Are Christ’s: The Charism of Virginity and the Celibate Life clarifying this.
Continence: This is understood to be a choice not to have sex; “abstinence” is used more commonly in Protestant spaces
Celibacy: This gets tricky, because canon law describes it as “a special gift from God” in relation to priests. Moderns of all religious stripes use it the same way as continence or abstinence—more rooted in decision than a concept of spiritual charism. Even St. John Paul II stays mostly away from this term as a general category in Theology of the Body, preferring “Continence for the Sake of the Kingdom.”
There’s also the reality that some people won’t do any of the more institutionalized commitments, but will spend their lives—as a dear friend of mine put it—“rocking their baptism.” This is coming more to attention in modern times, with such Catholic witnesses Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati, Bl. Carlo Acutis, Ven. Matt Talbot, Ven. Madeleine Delbrel, and others like Flannery O’Connor or Caryll Houselander.
So we’ve got continent chastity and conjugal chastity. These states of life need each other.
Recently I was speaking with a dear friend of mine. She’s married with two kids. When she describes her experience of discerning marriage, she’s very keen to note that it included renunciation. Something in her heart needed to be grieved. Why? How? Part of her longed for a contemplative life, for time set aside for God in prayer at levels and durations that just aren’t possible with toddlers tearing the house apart. All the same, she’s a witness to the fruitfulness of man and woman in the beginning, a microcosm of Trinity and Church. We see this in the Eden Invitation community too, as our members span all vocations–marriages and families, lay singles, even priesthood and religious life.
The virginal heart reminds the world that, in the end, "God will be all in all” (1 Corinthians 5:28), but both the continent state in life and the conjugally chaste have earth-shattering eschatological significance. Each stands as a sentinel of eternal truth to the other, messy though the daily application may be.
But here’s the funny thing.
For those of us who enter into Christian marriage, chastity changes in kind only slightly, if you measure it against the sheer number of people you encounter in your life. Only one relationship transforms from continent chastity to conjugal chastity– 99.9% of your relationships will remain firmly categorized as continent chastity, the sense you lived with 100% of people before you got married. In other words, you’re chaste with everybody.
A Way of Seeing
St. John Paul II in his Theology of the Body emphasized that the way we live and love one another has far-reaching consequences:
In the mystery of creation, man and woman were in a particular way ‘given’ to one another by the Creator, not only in the dimension of the first human pair and of that first communion of persons, but in the whole perspective of the existence of the human race and of the human family. (TOB 1.18.4)
That’s because we bring ourselves and our way of seeing wherever we go. In the early pages of Love and Responsibility, St. John Paul II makes a distinction between “love” and “use.” Use is “to employ some object of action as a means to an end.” A more insidious form of this use happens when the “end” is pleasure, which need not necessarily be sensual. When these build up in our behaviors over time, now we have a habit of utilitarianism, which “puts the emphasis on the usefulness of any and every human activity. The useful is what gives pleasure and excludes its opposite” (c.f. Love & Responsibility, p. 25-39). The loving person, the chaste person, is someone who lives differently from all that. It’s someone who sees differently.
I’d like to give you an example. I’ve never met anyone with an eye for the suffering and for the servant quite like my mother. My mom is the sort of person who will call someone by their name, even if she has to squint at their name tag. My mom is the sort of person who, when she visits a nursing home, gives a shoulder massage to the lonely woman she just met and wasn’t even there to see in the first place. My mom is the sort of person who will—after repeat visits to a local cafe—end up going out to coffee with the woman who cleans up the coffee mugs. That is a true story! I offer these anecdotes not as prescriptive marching orders, but as a little icon.
This is an incredibly important and often missed point. Chastity is about living and loving well in my body, in all the glory and potentiality of its maleness or femaleness. In practicing the virtue of chastity—the Church does say it is an apprenticeship, after all (CCC 2339)—we are developing habits wherein our desires towards others are ruled by right reason. This poignantly includes sexual desire, but that’s not just about physiological arousal or emotional pining. St. John Paul II points out in the Theology of the Body:
The human body, oriented from within by the ‘sincere gift’ of the person, reveals not only its masculinity or femininity on the physical level, but reveals also such a value and such a beauty that it goes beyond the simply physical level of ‘sexuality.’ […] What corresponds to this meaning, on the other hand, is power and deep availability for the ‘affirmation’ of the person. (1.15.4)
This shows up across all of our relationships.
If you’re a parent, you live and love well in your body with your children. In his reflection on the life of St. Joseph, Pope Francis connects “chastity” specifically to Joseph’s fatherhood, emphasis added:
Being a father entails introducing children to life and reality. Not holding them back, being over protective or possessive, but rather making them capable of deciding for themselves, enjoying freedom and exploring new possibilities. Perhaps for this reason, Joseph is traditionally called a ‘most chaste’ father. That title is not simply a sign of affection, but the summation of an attitude that is the opposite of possessiveness. Chastity is freedom from possessiveness in every sphere of one’s life. Only when love is chaste, is it truly love.
In Chastity: Reconciliation of the Senses, Bishop Varden puts it thus:
In love, we find ourselves by giving ourselves. The living water gushing up within us is made to be outpoured, not to be dammed up. For most, marriage is the school in which these lessons are learned. For some, they are acquired in consecrated solitude. For all, friendship is proof that nourishing intimacy can well be found in celibate relationships. (Chastity, p. 111)
So you live chastity with your friends! “The virtue of chastity blossoms in friendship,” the Catechism tells us in CCC 2346-47. “Whether it develops between persons of the same or opposite sex, friendship represents a great good for all. It leads to spiritual communion.” You live chastity with strangers! Do you meet the eyes of the person ringing up your groceries? Chastity is in the checkout line. “Chastity leads him who practices it to become a witness to his neighbor of God’s fidelity and kindness.”
Every Christian is called to chastity with every person. So let’s all be chaste lovers!
Chastity in My Life
When I was a teenager, I volunteered once a week at the Little Sisters of the Poor, serving dinner to the residents. There was one elderly priest who often needed help getting down to dinner and back up to his room—someone needed to take his wheelchair. Many days, I offered to do that. I enjoyed talking with him, even though, with his health, he didn’t have a lot to say. But he always squeezed my hand, and we had ready smiles for each other. I was leaving for college in the fall, and one evening was eventually my last. I dropped the old priest off in his room, then bent down to kiss his bare head. That was chaste love.
In January of 2020, my best friend and I visited the Texas-Mexico border to volunteer with religious sisters and Catholic Charities. One day, I was working in the clothing room, where fresh outfits were distributed to the migrants seeking asylum. A woman came up to me and—with gestures and my rusty high school-level Spanish—I was able to see what she needed. She’d come over the border wearing skinny-legged jeans. Now she had on a chunky ankle bracelet, and she couldn’t take off her pants. The leg of the jeans wouldn’t fit around it. So I went to find her some scissors, so she could have the dignity of bathing her body and wearing clean clothes. That was chaste love.
I have nephews. One is my godson. When he was a very little baby, and my sister got the toddler son up and fed breakfast, I’d find the chair that caught the sunrise. I’d sit with the baby in my right arm, and my breviary in my left. That was chaste love.
I attended a number of funerals last year. One in particular was for a young member of Eden Invitation, who’d died due to sudden complications of a preexisting condition. When the packed funeral concluded, everyone began processing out of the church. I noticed immediately that his body was still right before the sanctuary. We had several full rows of Eden Invitation members—about thirty people. Without conversation or question, all thirty of us stayed put. We remained with his body in the empty church until he was finally taken away. That was chaste love.
When my father signed the cross on my forehead when he tucked me into bed as a kid, that’s chaste love. When I read Genesis 2 at the wedding of two Eden Invitation members (a man and woman who met in a small group), that’s chaste love. When I chose not to entertain romantic thoughts about a woman I found attractive, that’s chaste love. When I chose to see even myself with reverence and honor…when I reverence any body-soul union in front of me…when you reverence any body-soul union in front of you…that’s chaste love.
A Lengthy Afterward for an Elephant in the Room
(Hi, elephant! You can sit with us)
As someone who experiences same-sex desires, and who presides over an organization serving people with all manner of LGBTQ+ experiences, I’d be remiss not to address something. There is the strange circumstance of the unexpectedly single person. This isn’t unique to Catholic spaces—an entire internet subculture exists around “incels” (“involuntary celibates”). I’ve seen similar resentment creep into our own religious spaces, even apart from LGBTQ+ experiences.
The idea of someone feeling “stuck” in their options, with perhaps no faithful choice but continence, is not unique to our era. Pope Pius XII gave an address to Italian women in 1945, in the wake of so many soldiers dead in World War II. He acknowledges the hard realities of circumstance, alongside the possibility of God’s invitation. Here’s the clip:
When one thinks upon the maidens and the women who voluntarily renounce marriage in order to consecrate themselves to a higher life of contemplation, of sacrifice, and of charity, a luminous word comes immediately to the lips: vocation!... This vocation, this call of love, makes itself felt in very diverse manners... But also the young Christian woman, remaining unmarried in spite of herself, who nevertheless trusts in the providence of the heavenly Father, recognizes in the vicissitudes of life the voice of the Master: “Magister adest et vocat te” (John 11:28); It is the master, and he is calling you! She responds, she renounces the beloved dream of her adolescence and her youth: to have a faithful companion in life, to form a family! And in the impossibility of marriage she recognizes her vocation; then, with a broken but submissive heart, she also gives her whole self to more noble and diverse good. (Pope Pius XII, Address to Italian Women, October 21, 1945)
Examples in our modern era abound. Perhaps a divorced person in a canonically valid marriage unable to obtain an annulment. Perhaps a widow, young or old, who senses no stirring to remarry. Perhaps someone who walks away from being chronically online via dating apps or is exhausted by “spouse hunting” being a part-time job, and finds themselves alone at 55. Perhaps someone who, in an attempt to transition and mitigate dysphoria, has undergone irreversible surgeries on their reproductive organs. Perhaps someone experiencing “exclusive or predominant sexual attraction towards persons for the same sex” who finds that, even as life and growth in virtue occur, they can relate quite well to St. Paul’s persistent thorn in the side (CCC 2357, c.f. 2 Corinthians 12). Not all of these situations are the same, but they all spark just a little differently if we’ve considered “continence for the sake of the Kingdom” only as the province of the heavens parting and a dove descending from on high.
Could we perhaps make room for the voice of the Lord through the winding whispers of circumstance? In reflecting on his time in the Russian gulag—yeah, yeah, sorry to be so dire—Fr. Walter Ciszek reflects:
A spirituality based on complete trust in God […] must always be centered precisely and primarily on God’s will as revealed and manifested in the people, places, and things he sets before us. […] We are not saved by doing our own will, but the will of the Father; we do that not by interpreting it or reducing it to mean what we would like it to mean, but by accepting it in its fullness, as made manifest to us by the situations and circumstances and persons His providence sends us in daily life. […] Can there be anything more consoling than to look at a burden, or a humiliation, not just as it is in itself but as the will of God entrusted to you in that moment? (He Leadeth Me, p. 160, 174-75, 1995 Igantius edition)
If you’ll permit just one more quote from the inestimable Bishop Varden, he writes regarding ancient monastic life:
These days we would posit a vocation requiring discernment; indeed, a mystique of discernment has emerged, as if being in discernment were a vocation in its own right. We largely look in vain for such a question in early Christian literature. The Desert Fathers tend to be matter-of-fact, practical, even pragmatic in their life choice. They rarely invoke Damascus Road epiphanies. What they do speak of is a rational decision to follow Christ without compromise. (Chastity, p. 133)
What does all of this have in common? Here we see a bold-faced look at the raw material of one’s life and a turn towards the chasm of the Living God. “Let my life be mystery, if You will it,” comes the response of the virginal heart. “And let me be love, all the same.” Surely such a surrender is a “virginal song of praise [sung to] her Divine Spouse hidden in her heart of hearts.”
Inspiration that got this blog out:
My girls Caryll Houselander and Ven. Madeleine Delbrêl, whose quotes didn't make the cut; Ralph Vaughn Williams’ “The Lark Ascending” on repeat an embarrassing amount of times; oh-so-many many voice memos with Rachael; the view from the third-floor window of snow gently falling and my dog chasing squirrels beneath the maple tree
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