Article III. The Neo-pagan Estimation of Chastity

99. We do not speak here of those who, content to exercise lust, attempt to render their depraved morals honorable by no appearance and rush into every kind of baseness - for such persons, since they abstain from professing principles, can be assigned to no school - but of those who, since they think the Christian age is tending toward its end, so that they believe the Catholic faith no less than any other Christian profession to be affected by a mortal sickness, fashion themselves apostles and assistants of a new age.

Now these men can be gathered into two classes. Some, under the name of naturalism, think to restore a system of a certain graceful lust, while others wish to protect uprightness of morals in practice.

100. - On naturalism. The followers of naturalism, not only denying but ridiculing the dogma of original sin, contend that human nature is so good that they proclaim living in conformity with nature to be the sum of wisdom and the summit of morality.

But to live in conformity with nature is not, for them, to subordinate other things to rational life and to tame the lower appetites by reason, but to procure its satisfaction for every natural inclination. As they think, no act of the sexual appetite ought to inflict shame upon anyone, since this appetite is no less honorable than any appetite for food or any other natural propensity. Since it exists with varying vehemence in different persons, only this must be guarded against, that we not increase it artificially. But one who follows his natural appetite is no more to be reproved than one who satisfies hunger by eating, provided that he does not seek baser modes through deliberate lasciviousness. Intercourse between an unmarried woman and an unmarried man can be more honorable than intercourse between spouses if it should be performed with more sincere love. Nevertheless, offspring is to be avoided unless those having intercourse wish to nourish it. Wherefore, every asceticism sought from a higher rationale than health and nature must also be sharply condemned. For one is not to be sorrowful here on earth, but is to pluck the joys of the present life. "This is not the gospel of the flesh, in the lowest acceptation of the term; it is the cult of the joy of living, of health and of beauty, which gives satisfaction to man's aesthetic need" ¹.

¹ Nyström, La vie sexuelle et ses lois, p. 84.

In this matter, several are held by a formal desire for paganism. Thus Théophile Gautier, in the work Mademoiselle de Maupin, and Pierre Louÿs, in the preface to the work Aphrodite ².

² It is superfluous to warn that these works of fiction must be placed among wicked works.

Nevertheless, they commend some attempt at moderating the appetite itself (how consistently?) from a human motive, so that satisfaction may be deferred until a more mature age, unless, however, the excessive force of the appetite stands in the way. But they frequently deny that continence can be preserved by very many ³; and, abusing the history of monks, they contend that their austerities and endeavors against love were useless.

³ Under the name of Abbé Dolonne, the treacherous work Le clergé contemporain et le célibat, Paris, Michaud, undated, was written; it contends the same thing.

Among the followers of "naturalism," notable are the authors of amatory fictions and several unbelieving physicians ⁴; nor, in this madness of depravity, do the northern regions yield to the warmer ones. But in boldness women surpass men, even unmarried women, so that the non-Catholic physician and professor Seved Ribbing indignantly notes the matter thus: "The women who now write rejoice brightly in this, that they strip the garments from themselves and their sisters in the sight of all, and crudely point a finger at the most intimate sexual matters" ⁵.

⁴ For example, Forel in Switzerland and Nyström in Sweden.

⁵ In Moll, Handbuch, etc., p. 950. The German words read: "And especially the female writers now take their bright delight in tearing the clothes from themselves and their sisters before all the world, and in brutally pointing fingers at the most intimate processes of the genitals."

With men of this kind, little is to be said concerning original sin, because it cannot be demonstrated by natural reason. But they must be convinced that they sin very greatly against the human nature whose devotees they profess themselves to be. And in actual fact: a) They pass over our composite nature: this shows a necessary struggle for restraining concupiscences, which indeed are not evil but blind, and therefore must be led by other eyes, that is, by superior reason. Conscience itself, by the satisfaction which we experience therefrom, spontaneously testifies to the fittingness of this warfare. b) Forgetful of our social nature, they do not observe that some natural appetites are immediately given for the good of individuals, but others for the good of the human race, so that one who sets an action contrary to this end offends and violates nature. c) Heedless of progressive nature, they do not observe that there is in man a certain appetite for an "ideal" life, as it is called, that is, for such a life in which the nobler faculties almost suppress the others, and men themselves, having been made superior to themselves, compensate by their examples for the excessive abasement of others and preserve the whole human race from excessive corruption. Conversely, by the simultaneous satisfaction of the various powers which they preach, the detractors of continence permit nothing beyond mediocrity to be hoped for, and offer nothing by which the ignoble pursuits of many may be redeemed. d) Despising the dignity of the human mind, they consult only the flesh, and not the soul, concerning sexual union. e) Not considering human psychology, they neglect the power which imagination and suggestions possess for arousing and sharpening the sexual appetite. Therefore, while they declare continence impossible, they render it actually impossible for many; while they say that natural hunger must be satiated, they excite an artificial hunger in such a manner that in many it must arrive at satyriasis.

101. But what of the reasons by which they attempt to overthrow the Catholic views?

1. They calumniate asceticism as though it were founded upon sadness. For the true law and pursuit of asceticism aim at this, that a greater and fuller good of man be substituted in place of a lesser and narrower, or more partial, good. And this also accords with human nature, that from reasonable immolation and self-denial man should draw the beginning of greater happiness, not only in the future life, but even now in the present.

2. Fasts and other penances, they continue, could free monks neither from temptations nor from great corruption of morals: they themselves are witnesses to how fruitlessly man struggles against love.

Reply. A certain distinction is needed here. As regards temptations, although moderate penances are usually of no slight assistance in overcoming and preventing them, nevertheless a method by which one's strength is too greatly weakened is not so happy that it does not sometimes produce nervous diseases and thereby introduce troublesome difficulties.

But were the sins themselves connected with true austerity of life? We very much doubt it. The sins seem rather to be referred to discipline relaxed in many monasteries.

But why is it pleasing to turn minds toward past vices rather than toward present virtue? Is it not evident today that there are very many religious and priests who, by the example of a life at once unblemished and happy, refute these false assertions of the reformers?

3. But was not the Church herself compelled to relax her severity so that she permitted concubinage, at least to the unmarried? And they cite canon 17 of the First Council of Toledo (400), by which communion is denied indeed to those who, besides a wife, had a concubine, but not to those who were content with one concubine.

Reply. This canon is open to various interpretations. There are those who think that by the name of concubine a true wife is designated there, one married less solemnly because of her inferior civil status. But even if, as we think more probable, it concerns a stable but nevertheless not firm union with one woman ⁶, this canon of a Council of 19 bishops proves only these two things: a) that not all moral dogmas were immediately understood everywhere, and that the human race had to be liberated gradually from immense moral errors; b) that Roman institutions were corrected by the Christian religion not without difficulty, and therefore not without glory ⁷. Namely, in Roman law, besides lawful nuptials with dowry tablets, concubinage was admitted, distinct indeed from promiscuous intercourse, but its union rested "upon the mere intention of the mind" ⁸, without a bond of law.

⁶ Compare Freisen, Geschichte des canonischen Eherechts, 1888, pp. 64-65.

⁷ Compare Leo XIII, encyclical Arcanum.

⁸ Law 4, Digest, 25, 7.

Moreover, Constantine had already decreed: "Let license be granted to no one, while a marriage subsists, to have a concubine with him" ⁹. Taking this up, the said Spanish Council did not reprove concubinage with one woman in an unmarried man.

⁹ Sole law, Code, 5, 26.

Certainly St. Augustine ¹⁰, and afterwards Spain also, reproved these things better. But this already shows that, in the case objected, the matter concerns not a relaxation of stricter discipline, but the later introduction, into a distant region, of Catholic discipline. It would indeed be sad if morals were so depraved by modern impiety that, in order to avoid greater evils, the civil institutions of the pagans had to be restored.

¹⁰ Sermon 392 (Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. 39, col. 1710).

102. - On non-Catholics who defend uprightness of morals. Impelled by the very corruption of morals, other men estranged from our faith approve by their own authority the precepts and counsels of the Catholic religion and sometimes defend them vigorously. Some of them think they do not need the aid of religion, so that they hope morals can be amended by natural reason. Yet rarely are there found those who agree with us so fully that they profess the absolute necessity of purity. Wherefore, on account of the manifest utility or, as it were, necessity of the physical order, most will permit or even counsel both onanistic copulations and abortions. But thus they themselves tacitly destroy the inviolate sanctity of morals and decline toward the utilitarianism which others abuse so greatly.

Nevertheless, it is lawful for us to employ this cooperation of unbelieving and lay science, so that with a more upright spirit, fuller sincerity, and firmer hope, we may propose moral truths as they are and proclaim that they must be observed.