CHASTITY. The virtue that moderates the desire for sexual pleasure according
to the principles of faith and right reason. In married people, chastity moderates
the desire in conformity with their state of life; in unmarried people who wish
to marry, the desire is moderated by abstention until (or unless) they get married;
in those who resolve not to marry, the desire is sacrificed entirely.
Chastity and purity, modesty and decency are comparable in that they have the
basic meaning of freedom from whatever is lewd or salacious. Yet they also differ.
Chastity implies an opposition to the immoral in the sense of lustful or licentious.
It suggests refraining from all acts or thoughts that are not in accordance
with the Church's teaching about the use of one's reproductive powers. It particularly
stresses restraint and an avoidance of anything that might defile or make unclean
the soul because the body has not been controlled in the exercise of its most
imperious passion. (Etym. Latin castus, morally pure, unstained.)
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