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my business affairs and private transactions;
to be just.in my dealings with those who are subject to me and those to whom I am subject; to be
just in making restitution for all my injustices of the past. Let me not be mov­
ed by the example of the world, nor by the desire of riches and power, nor by the urgings of those
who take no thought of Thee and of Thy law. Let me be detached from all earthly possessions and not
envious of those who have great riches, in order that I may call Thee my only treasure. 0 Mary, my
Mother, obtain for me the grace to deal justly and fairly with all my neighbors.

And when the Son of Man shall come in His majesty, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on
the throne of His glory; and before Him will be gathered all the nations, and He will separate them
one from another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and He will set the sheep on
His right hand, but the goats on the left.
-Matthew 25:31-33


CHASTITY

The sixth commandment of the decalogue is called the difficult commandment; the virtue of
chastity is called the angelic virtue. Perhaps it is only right that the virtue that makes man most
like an angel should be the most difficult to practice perfectly; always the best things must be paid for at the
highest price.

But Christian men and women of today have not only their own unruly flesh and the suggestions of
the devil to conquer in attaining chastity; they must contend likewise with the concerted efforts
of the world around them to make chastity seem either impossible or not worth while.
Pseudo-intellectuals scoff at chastity, and if some of them could have
their way, concepts like immodesty, adultery,
lust, sensuality, etc., would be stricken from the minds of all mankind. Many who do not go so far
as to deny the virtue of chastity in theory, nevertheless live as if it were impossi­
ble of attainment, and frankly tell their friends and neighbors that it is impossible for them,
too. Worst of all, there are some Catholics (so called) who join hands with the pagan world in
discouraging the practice of chastity. Count among them those who both practice and preach
birth-prevention; those who philander while married themselves, or with others who are married;
those who take part in the dissemination of obscene and inflammatory incentives to lust. Chastity
becomes doubly difficult in the face of such influences to the contrary.

Chastity is defined as the virtue by which, with the help of God's grace attained by prayer and the
Sacraments, human beings are enabled to refrain from all misuse of their sex faculties. This
implies two things: 1) that they never directly desire or consent to sex­ pleasure outside the
sphere and contrary to the purposes for which sex-pleasure was intended. The proper sphere of sex
activity is the state of marriage, and there it is intended as a means of procreation and of the
expression of love between husband and wife. To directly desire and seek sex-pleasure in mar­
riage while excluding by interference the purpose of procreation, or to desire and indulge it in
any direct way outside of marriage, would always be a grave sin. 2) The definition of chastity also
implies that human beings must avoid those unnecessary actions that in­ directly but usually lead
to indulgence in sex­ pleasure, even though the latter be not in­ tended at the beginning. Thus to
read obscene books would be seriously inducive to consent in sex-pleasure. Sometimes, of course, an
unnecessary action is only slightly inducive to consent to sinful pleasure; in that case it
would constitute a venial sin.

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