Chapters 8 to 9 - Christ’s Teachings and Today’s Christianity

- 63 - 8. 15 Chastity as Celibacy Another of the ideals of perfection according to the views of the Catholic Church is that of absolute chastity in the form of celibacy. Absolute chastity is something that everyone should and can observe, but it has nothing to do with celibacy, for there is nothing unchaste in matrimony. Married people can be perfectly chaste, and the unmarried ones quite the opposite, even if they are priests or members of a religious order. • True chastity consists in exercising moderation in matters pertaining to the natural laws of sex life. Just as moderation in eating and drinking does not lie in the forcible suppression of hunger and thirst, but in refraining from consuming food and drink to excess, so also in the case of sex life. • The sex drive has been implanted in all created beings by the Creator, as one of Nature’s laws, and since whatever He has created is good, it should not be forcibly suppressed by man, but should be used within the limits set by God. The law of procreation applies to all human beings! And founding a family is an order of God’s that no one may avoid without punishment. Procreation on earth is the way by which the fallen spirits must progress through Nature’s stages in order that they may reach perfection. • God in His wisdom ordained that those of the fallen spirits that have progressed to a given terrestrial stage help their brothers and sisters, by way of procreation, to rise from the lower to the higher stages of nature. If human brothers and sisters fall into the same pit, the first one to succeed in climbing out of it will lend the others a hand, so that they too may escape. That is a duty brothers and sisters owe one another. It is from this viewpoint of God’s wisdom and mercy that you should consider the law of sex life. God has made the sex drive as strong as it is because procreation is a part of His Plan of Salvation and so that His creatures may find it less easy to shirk their duty of collaborating with Him in carrying out that plan. “It is therefore clear that this is a duty from which a person can be absolved only by the weightiest of reasons. • Hence, the vow of celibacy is a grave offense against the will of God.. Neither Catholic priests nor the members of monastic orders have adequate grounds in the eyes of God for remaining unmarried. I know that celibacy has been justified on the basis of the seventh chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians, in which Paul gives several reasons why it is better to remain unmarried. He advises marriage only for those for whom celibacy has perils. This view of the Apostle’s was false!

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