Today  is the feast day of St. Maria Goretti, who died in 1902 and was once greatly revered for upholding the virtue of chastity. It is something we don’t hear about too often nowadays, so

just a few words……… maybe to start a conversation………

Youcat is a book that seeks to put terms in ways that young people may understand.

It defines chastity as ‘the virtue by which a person who is capable of passion deliberately and resolutely reserves his/her erotic desires for love and resists the temptation to find lewd images in the media or to use others as a means of achieving his/her own satisfaction’. (404)

The person is chaste who has consciously accepted his/her sexuality and integrated it well into his/her personality.

Someone lives chastely when he/she is free to be loving and is not the slave to his/her drives and emotions. (405)

Every Christian should be loving and chaste, whether he/she is young or old, lives alone or is

married. (406)