Chastity

It seems to me that the Church is suffering from a crisis of chastity.

It is not just the sins, crimes, and stupidity of the ordained (though I do not want to minimize anything about these grotesque evils); the Church is also suffering from:

• priests and religious behaving unchastely;
• priests and religious abandoning the vowed life;
• the unchaste behavior of the unmarried;
• the conception and murder of unwanted children;
• the willingness to commit adultery with and without benefit of divorce;
• the use of artificial methods of contraception in marriage;
• adoption and promotion of the gay and lesbian agenda;
• indulgence in pornography and solitary sexual sins.

Although I think the call for a new Inquisition or the restoration of witch hunts is wrong-headed, those who condemn the sins of the ordained are at the very least upholding the principle of chastity: we can and should restrain our sexual impulses for the love of God, for the love of our neighbors, and for love of ourselves. It does not matter how strong the temptations were or how intense the urges were that the priests felt to abuse their victims; disordered desires can never justify sin. It is also laudable to see our critics' zeal to see justice done. Our culture could use a little more shame about our shameful behavior.

No one is going to get away with these crimes. God is a just judge!

The innocent will be rewarded and the guilty made to pay in full.

Lust weakens the nation and the Church

Lust is not a small sin.

It corrupts us from the inside out.

The family is the building block of society; lust dissolves the family ties on which our culture depends.

We need God's help

Prurience is make-believe chastity. We indulge in lust under cover of condemning it.

We need to be won to a vision of God's beauty. This is not will-power Christianity, though it does require our cooperation with grace.

The nature of love

A real "love life" is:

• chaste
• committed
• Christ-centered

All others are counterfeits or otherwise stunted versions of real love.