Today’s one of those “I can’t believe I get paid to do this,” days, as in I have the best. job. ever! So while the reporters who surround me chase news and news of thefts and crashes crackle through the police scanner speaker between my desk and my editor’s, I get to read about chastity, love and marriage. Like I said, best job ever. Rather than alarm my colleagues by throwing my fist in the air in a fit of joy, I thought I’d share some fabulous quotes with you. Enjoy!
On sex:
“What can ‘union’ mean when the partners make no commitment to one another, each exhibiting a lack of trust in the other, in him/herself, or in the future?”
On chastity:
“Chastity includes an apprenticeship in self-mastery which is a training in human freedom. The alternative is clear: either [humans govern their] passions and find peace, or [they let themselves] be dominated by them …”
On engaged couples (although parts are applicable to those who are still dating/discerning):
“They should see in this time of testing a discovery of mutual respect, an apprenticeship in fidelity, and the hope of receiving one another from God. They should reserve for marriage the expressions of affection that belong to married love. They will help each other grow in chastity.”
And on marriage:
“It can seem difficult, even impossible, to bind oneself for life to another human being. This makes it all the more important to proclaim the Good News that God loves us with a definitive and irrevocable love, that married couples share in this love, that it supports and sustains them, and that by their own faithfulness they can be witnesses to God’s faithful love.”
and
“After the fall, marriage helps to overcome self-absorption, egoism, pursuit of one’s own pleasure, and to open oneself to the other, to mutual aid and to self-giving.”
and
“It is by following Christ, renouncing themselves, and taking up their crosses that spouses will be able to ‘receive’ the original meaning of marriage and live it with the help of Christ.”
Source: The Catechism of the Catholic Church.