Chastity and Marital Fidelity
Chastity integrates sexuality within the person and orders it toward faithful, fruitful love — both within marriage and in every state of life.
CCC 2331–2400
Key Points
The central teachings from this section of the Catechism.
"God is love and in himself he lives a mystery of personal loving communion. Creating the human race in his own image, God inscribed in the humanity of man and woman the vocation, and thus the capacity and responsibility, of love and communion."
Chastity means the successful integration of sexuality within the person. It includes an apprenticeship in self-mastery — a long and exacting work that one can never consider acquired once and for all. The effort required can be more intense in certain periods, such as when one's personality is being formed.
All the baptized are called to chastity. Christians have "put on Christ," the model for all chastity. Chastity takes different forms depending on one's state in life: some profess virginity or consecrated celibacy; married people practice conjugal chastity; the unmarried practice continence.
Sexuality is ordered to the conjugal love of man and woman. In marriage, the physical intimacy of the spouses becomes a sign and pledge of spiritual communion. The marriage bond is a covenant that by its very nature is ordered to the good of the spouses and to the procreation and education of offspring.
From 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 2337
"Self-mastery is a long and exacting work. One can never consider it acquired once and for all. It presupposes renewed effort at all stages of life."
— CCC 2342
"The acts in marriage by which the intimate and chaste union of the spouses takes place are noble and honorable; the truly human performance of these acts fosters the self-giving they signify and enriches the spouses in joy and gratitude."
— CCC 2362, quoting Gaudium et Spes 49 §2
Scripture
"For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like heathen who do not know God."
"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law."
"Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong as death. . . . Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it."
Common Questions
No. Chastity is a positive virtue — the integration of sexuality within the whole person. For married couples, chastity means the faithful, self-giving expression of conjugal love. For the unmarried, it means living sexuality with integrity according to one's state in life. Everyone is called to chastity in a form appropriate to their vocation.
The Church teaches that conjugal intimacy is "noble and honorable." It is a true language of the body that expresses the total self-gift of the spouses. Far from dismissing sexuality, the Catechism affirms that married love "fosters the self-giving they signify and enriches the spouses in joy and gratitude."
Because genuine love requires freedom, and freedom requires self-mastery. The Catechism teaches that we must choose to direct our passions rather than being driven by them. This is not repression but the interior ordering that allows us to love another person as a person — not as an object of desire.
Chastity is not a restriction but a freedom — the interior ordering that allows us to love others as persons rather than objects. Understanding this virtue transforms how we see marriage, singleness, and the gift of sexuality itself.