These days, it is not hard to hear that some of the commandments are out of fashion and that the teachings of the church are antiquated. There is a general agreement about the validity of some of the commandments.     Some of our laws are inspired by the commandment “You shall not kill.” Then, “Honor your father and your mother” is still somewhat good and important; we acknowledge its relevance with celebrations such as Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.

    But when it comes to other commandments such as the sixth commandment, which refers to chastity and purity, that is, to the sexual dimension of the person, arguments against the current validity of the teachings of the church are multiplied and made popular. The arguments are quite varied. Sometimes it is said, for example, that the commandments are no longer valid, because they are part of the Old Testament, which legitimized practices that are rejected today, such as slavery. It is also said that sexuality is something “private” and the church should not “interfere” in people’s private lives.

    All these arguments have an answer. We should remember that the church maintains that the moral teachings of the Old Testament are still valid today, and that Jesus Christ said that he didn’t come to abolish the law but to bring it to fulfillment. His words are an affirmation that the New Testament is based upon the Old Testament, and thus, the Ten Commandments in their integrity, must be part of the life of every person who wishes to follow Christ.

    We should also explain that the church does not “impose” any doctrine that invades people’s privacy, but rather proposes her teachings on sexuality for the good of people and society. But in most cases, the resistance to accepting the church’s doctrine in this area does not have a theoretical, but a practical motivation.

    Many people would like the church’s teaching in the area of sexuality to be more lax and more than a few believe that the Catholic view of sexuality is too “repressive” or “negative.”

    In 1995, while presenting his encyclical Evangelium Vitae in Rome to a group of young people, Pope John Paul II summed up the true doctrine of the church on the transmission of life saying that “The doctrine of the church is a big ‘yes’ to life… but that yes requires some ‘no’s’ that demand a lot of courage.”

    In fact, the essence of the church’s doctrine on the Sixth Commandment: “You shall not commit adultery” lies in the truth about the dignity of every human being, including sexuality. As the Compendium of the Catechism explains simply, “God has created human beings as male and female, equal in personal dignity, and has called them to a vocation of love and of communion. Everyone should accept his or her identity as male or female, recognizing its importance for the whole of the person, its specificity and complementarity.” (Compendium 487)

    This implies that the church does not reject the importance of sexuality. On the contrary, she rescues it from those who trivialize it making sexual activity into something “recreational,” totally separate from human dignity.
In that sense, chastity, which the church proposes and defends as indispensable for respecting human dignity, is “the positive integration of sexuality within the person,” because “sexuality becomes truly human when it is integrated in a correct way into the relationship of one person to another.

    Chastity is a moral virtue, a gift of God, a grace, and a fruit of the Holy Spirit.” (Compendium 488) When the church promotes chastity, she knows that she is being “countercultural” in a world that has degraded sexuality to unimaginable levels. But the church is not involved in a popularity contest. Her mission is to proclaim human dignity, even if doing so, she becomes unpopular.

    The church’s call to live chastely, practicing abstinence outside marriage and with the proper use of sexuality, respecting the gift of life, within marriage, will continue to be the same. Why? Because the teachings on chastity and the rejection of all practices that threaten it are not a “repressive invention” of some priests or theologians. It is the doctrine inherited from Jesus Christ for the good of the human race. And it is sufficient to look at the devastating consequences of the so-called “sexual revolution” to see that the Catholic Church’s understanding of sexuality is the right one.

    During this time of Lent, let us ask the Lord, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, mother of fair love, to enable us to understand and love the precious gift of purity and chastity. Let us especially pray for our young people who are growing up in a society that looks down on the virtue of holy purity, so that they may live this gift as a blessing from God.