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I Try Not to Look

HOW TO REMAIN CHASTE

By James McCoy

Boy meets girl. Boy loves girl. Girl loves boy. Boy and girl go to Mass together. Boy and girl pray together. Boy and girl do everything together. Boy and girl sin seriously together.

"I see that happen all the time," said Norbertine priest Father Michael Pera. "Sexual sins are the easiest sins for good people to commit. That's why chastity is so important." Chastity, says the Catechism of the Catholic Church, is "a school of the gift of the person."

Father Pera, who serves at St. Peter and Paul Parish in Wilmington, doesn't doubt their love. But unless the couple has chastity, it's "a dangerous love." On the other hand, "the more chaste a person is, the more capable they are of loving the person in a sexually charged situation."

What is chastity? "The use of one's sexuality according to right reason in one's state of life," Father Pera said. The catechism says that chastity isn't just for priests and religious: "Married people are called to live conjugal chastity." Single people "should reserve for marriage the expressions of affection that belong to married love."

Father James Babcock is pastor of the Holy Cross Melkite-Greek Catholic Church in Fullerton. "The Church teaches that (sex) is something that is wonderful and beautiful," he said, "but that must be reserved within the bounds of marriage ... Young people who are contemplating marriage must be thoroughly convinced that marriage is a vocation, not a vacation." The catechism has hard words: "chastity includes an apprenticeship in self-mastery ... The alternative is clear: either man governs his passions and finds peace, or he lets himself be dominated by them and becomes unhappy."

Yet the self mastery of chastity, said Father James Garceau of the Canons Regular of the Immaculate Conception, is "under siege terribly." Its practice in ordinary daily life will require some "heroism," he said. "We're in a country that's so anti-life that maybe we do have to be countercultural. But I don't think we should be afraid, either."

"I think we have to grow up," Father Babcock agreed, "and we have to accept the situation as we find it." While sexual temptations are perhaps more prevalent and intense than in the past, they are not essentially different in nature. "When St. Paul went to Corinth," Father Babcock said, "he found the same temptations as here in Los Angeles." So the age-old Christian remedies should still hold. What are they? And is anyone incurable? "Well," Father Babcock said, "besides myself ...

All three priests spoke of their personal -- and lifelong -- struggles for chastity in a culture where sexual temptations are broadcast on TV, writ large in billboards and fleshed out in fashions. And for chastity, Father Garceau said, "The guardian virtue is modesty. Modesty starts with clothing, and it goes to action and speech." Modesty, says the catechism, "encourages patience and moderation in loving relationships ... It inspires one's choice of clothing. It keeps silence or reserve where there is evident risk of unhealthy curiosity ... There is a modesty of the feelings," the catechism goes on, "as well as of the body. It protests, for example, against the voyeuristic explorations of the human body in certain advertisements... Modesty inspires a way of life which makes it possible to resist the allurements of fashion and the pressures of prevailing ideologies."

"One thing I sometimes do," said Father Pera, who is currently serving at St. Peter and Paul in Wilmington, "when I'm driving down the street and I see a billboard of some girl who's inappropriately dressed, I try not to look... It's not a sin to see women when you go out; it's a sin to fix your gaze." He refrains from looking "not in a neurotic sense," rather as "a visual fasting." "That girl is probably somebody's sister," Father Pera tries to think; she's certainly "somebody's somebody." And he says a brief prayer. Father Pera said that at first he had consciously to perform these steps; now they all take place "in a flash."

Father Pera also said he sometimes assigns the penance: "the next ten times you're tempted to look at a woman who is immodestly dressed, don't look."

While men can be tempted by the way women dress, "women are tempted to dress immodestly," Father Pera said. "A woman has to resist the temptation to present herself in a sexually teasing way." When it comes to fashions, "there's almost a 'rule' that women have to show something. Even good Catholic girls who don't want to dress immodestly will sometimes do so because of the social pressures," he said. Girl friends' opinions and women's magazines are the predominant pressures on women in this respect, Father Pera said. "The magazines will often praise someone for dressing daringly." Girls will admit to him privately that it takes a lot more daring to wear a dress that goes below the knees than to follow the fashion. "And a lot of girls simply don't have that nerve," Father Pera said.

Every year he tells his confirmands class that they must come to class modestly dressed, and "when they hear 'modestly' they think dowdy," Father Pera laughed. The next class, they show up in blue jeans, lumberjack shirts, combat boots.

Before his assignment to St. Francis of Assisi Church in Los Angeles, Father Garceau spent many years in "Confession ministry" at Our Lady Chapel in downtown Los Angeles. "Really, I think it's very important for people to stay away from television and movies which compromise our morals," he said. "Even among some of the best Catholic young people I know, they get sucked in by cable and it's just destructive of their chastity."

As for himself, Father Garceau is so selective he refuses on principle to go to any R-rated movie. "Years ago I went to an R-rated movie with a priest friend," he said, "and that was my first and last."

People who want a terrific body will go on a strict diet and get plenty of exercise, and they'll do it day-in and day-out for years, for flesh soon goes to flab. Chastity requires that kind of effort. "Whoever wants to remain faithful to his baptismal promises," says the catechism, "and resist temptations will want to adopt the means for doing so ... Self-mastery is a long and exacting work. One can never consider it acquired once and for all."

If you consult Father Garceau for advice, he will put you on a strict regime of: daily examination of conscience, monthly Confession, frequent Holy Communion, praying the Rosary ("it's very powerful"), and a simple, balanced diet (literally).

"When I have a person who has a difficulty with a sexual sin," Father Garceau explained, "I'll tell them, on the human level, be careful about eating too heavy, especially at night." Also, be careful about drinking alcohol. "That's important," he said. And also, "No pornography."

Father Garceau himself prays, every day, "O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to you, especially those who entrust their chastity to you." Father Babcock recommends the Jesus prayer -- "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner."

"Temptations come into our hearts when we are vulnerable," he said. "And if we fill our hearts with Our Lord's name and invite him to come in then there's no room for the temptation left."

Father Babcock said that "the grace received through the mystery (sacrament) of Confession strengthens you and encourages you to abandon the sin. God loves the repentant sinner. I lived through the '60s, I was a teenager at the time. I found it to be very confusing. The most important thing I learned as a Catholic is that if you fall you have to repent and try again.

"I think that many people struggle," Father Babcock said. "And that's what God expects of us. God does not ask us to become instantly divine.... That's why God gives us a lifetime." That's why chastity "presupposes renewed effort at all stages of life," the catechism says. "Chastity has laws of growth which progress through stages marked by imperfection and too often by sin."

But chastity is not just about "no." "I think we can be natural and we can be spontaneous and fun-loving," Father Garceau said, "without being immodest in our speech and action. Doesn't it really come down to having respect for oneself and respect for the other person?"

But what about all the sexual fun you might be missing out on? "What fun?" Father Pera replied. "What fun? One thing you find out as a priest is, appearances are often deceiving."

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