On this day, January 22, the tragic anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision to legalize the Abortion Holocaust, ponder this: what would the world be like if everyone practiced the forgotten virtue of chastity? Tampa Bay Times journalist Arleen Spenceley presents readers with a new perspective on chastity, love, and relationships in Chastity Is for Lovers: Single, Happy and (Still) a Virgin.
Spenceley uses her creativity and storytelling abilities that both married and single people will enjoy. She begins her book with a testimony about writing an essay for the Tampa Bay Times explaining why she was chaste and a virgin at age 26. She then discussed readers’ responses, which were both good and bad. However, she said, “All of them were bound to each other … by a common tie: the desire to understand, experience, and exemplify authentic love.”
Throughout her book, Spenceley describes what it means to be chaste and why it is so important, especially in the current culture. She uses examples from her life and the lives of others, keeping the reader interested by applying a storytelling format. She also quotes credible sources, including the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Pope Saint John Paul II, Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, and chastity speaker Crystalina Evert.
Spenceley covers a variety of topics for men and women, single or married. She discusses dating, authentic love, contraception, natural family planning, virtuous friendship, self-control, vocational discernment, and purity, to name a few. She explains the difference between “being in love” and “loving,” and emphasizes that chastity is not the same as abstinence. “Chastity never ends. Abstinence does. Chastity infuses sex with love and love with sacrifice. Abstinence doesn’t. Chastity never trivializes sex, and it refuses to use or objectify people,” Spenceley explains. “Chastity looks like the person who treats a significant other first as a brother or sister in Christ.”
Spenceley concludes her book with an important analysis of true love before and within marriage: “When I say I am ‘saving sex,’ I mean I’m redeeming it. By God’s grace, I have chosen to resist the damaging cultural trends that trivialize the purpose of human sexuality.”
She then goes on to say that those who choose chastity are “redeeming sex" by "treating it like it’s sacred,” which is exactly what the Church teaches. It encourages holiness in every state in life. As Spenceley says in the title, chastity really is for lovers.
[This article was written by Jacqueline Burkepile from Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas. It was originally published in the National Catholic Register on 29 August 2015.]
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