Chastity is sexual behavior of a man or woman that is acceptable to the moral standards and guidelines of their

culture, civilization or religion. In the Western world, the term has become closely associated (and is often used
interchangeably) with sexual abstinence, especially before marriage.
Chastity is sexual purity. Those who are chaste are morally clean in their thoughts, words, and actions. Chastity
means not having any sexual relations before marriage. It also means complete fidelity to husband or wife during
marriage.
The words "chaste" and "chastity" stem from the Latin adjective castus meaning "pure". The words entered the
English language around the middle of the 13th century; at that time they meant slightly different things. "Chaste"
meant "virtuous or pure from unlawful sexual intercourse" (referring to extramarital sex), while "chastity" meant
"virginity". It was not until the late 16th century that the two words came to have the same basic meaning as a
related adjective and noun.
In many Christian traditions, chastity is synonymous with sexual purity. Chastity means not having any sexual
relations before marriage. It also means fidelity to husband or wife during marriage. In Catholic morality, chastity is
placed opposite the deadly sin of lust, and is classified as one of seven virtues. The moderation of sexual desires is
required to be virtuous. Reason, will and desire can harmoniously work together to do what is good.
In marriage, the spouses commit to a lifelong relationship which excludes sexual intimacy with other persons.
Within marriage, various Abrahamic religions consider several practices to be considered unchaste, such as sexual
intimacy during or shortly after menstruation or childbirth. After marriage, a third form of chastity, often called
"vidual chastity", is expected of a woman while she is in mourning for her late husband. For example, Jeremy
Taylor defined 5 rules in Holy Living (1650), including abstaining from marrying "so long as she is with child by her
former husband" and "within the year of mourning".
The particular ethical system may not prescribe each of these. For example, Roman Catholics view sex within
marriage as chaste, but prohibit the use of artificial contraception as an offense against chastity, seeing
contraception as unnatural, contrary to God's will and design of human sexuality. Many Anglican communities
allow for artificial contraception, seeing the restriction of family size as possibly not contrary to God's will. A
stricter view is held by the Shakers, who prohibit marriage (and sexual intercourse under any circumstances) as a
violation of chastity. The Catholic Church has set up various rules regarding clerical celibacy, while most Protestant
communities allow clergy to marry.
Celibacy is required of monasticsmonks, nuns and friarseven in a rare system of double cloisters, in which
husbands could enter the (men's) monastery while their wives entered a (women's) sister monastery. Required
celibacy among the clergy is a relatively recent practice: it became Church policy at the Second Lateran Council in
1139. It was not uniformly enforced among the clergy until 200 years later. Certain Latin-Rite Catholic priests may
receive a dispensation to be married before ordination, and Eastern Catholic priests in many countries are also
permitted to be married, provided they are so before ordination.
Vows of chastity can also be taken by laypersons, either as part of an organised religious life (such as Roman
Catholic Beguines and Beghards in the past) or on an individual basis: as a voluntary act of devotion, or as part of
an ascetic lifestyle (often devoted to contemplation), or both.
The voluntary aspect has led it to being included among the main counsels of perfection.
Chastity is a central and pivotal concept in Roman Catholic praxis. Chastity's importance in traditional Roman
Catholic teaching stems from the fact that it is regarded as essential in maintaining and cultivating the unity of
body with spirit and thus the integrity of the human being.[8] It is also regarded as fundamental to the practise of
the Catholic life because it involves an apprenticeship in self-mastery.By attaining mastery over one's passions,
reason, will and desire can harmoniously work together to do what is good.

As a virtue
Chastity is the virtue which excludes or moderates the indulgence of the sexual appetite. It is a form of
the virtue of temperance, which controls according to right reason the desire for and use of those things which
afford the greatest sensual pleasures. The sources of such delectation are food and drink, by means of which
the life of the individual is conserved, and the union of the sexes, by means of which the permanence of
the species is secured. Chastity, therefore, is allied to abstinence and sobriety; for, as by these latter the pleasures
of the nutritive functions are rightly regulated, so by chastity the procreativeappetite is duly restricted.
Understood as interdicting all carnal pleasures, chastity is taken generally to be the same as continency, though
between these two, Aristotle, as pointed out in the article on CONTINENCY, drew a marked distinction.
With chastity is often confounded modesty, though this latter is properly but a special circumstance of chastity or
rather, we might say, its complement. For modesty is the quality of delicate reserve and constraint with reference
to all acts that give rise to shame, and is therefore the outpost and safeguard of chastity. It is hardly necessary to
observe that the virtue under discussion may be a purely natural one. As such, its motive would be
the natural decency seen in the control of the sexualappetite, according to the norm of reason. Such a motive
springs from the dignity of human nature, which, without this rational sway, is degraded to brutish levels. But it is
more particularly as asupernatural virtue that we would consider chastity. Viewed thus, its motives are discovered
in the light offaith. These are particularly the words and example of Jesus Christ and the reverence that is owing to
thehuman body as the temple of the Holy Ghost, as incorporated into that mystic body of which Christ is the head,
as the recipient of the Blessed Eucharist, and finally, as destined to share hereafter with the soul a life
of eternal glory. According as chastity would exclude all voluntary Carnal pleasures, or allow this gratification only
within prescribed limits, it is known as absolute or relative. The former is enjoined upon the unmarried, the latter
is incumbent upon those within the marriage state. The indulgence of the sexualappetite being prohibited to all
outside of legitimate wedlock, the wilful impulse to it in the unmarried, like the wilful impulse to anything
unlawful, is forbidden. Moreover, such is the intensity of the sexual passionthat this impulse is perilously apt to
bear away the will before it. Hence, when wilful, it is a grave offenceof its very nature. It must be observed too,
that this impulse is constituted, not merely by an effective desire, but by every voluntary impure thought. Besides
the classification already given, there is another, according to which chastity is distinguished as perfect, or
imperfect. The first-mentioned is the virtue of those who, in order to devote themselves more unreservedly
to God and their spiritual interests, resolve to refrain perpetually from even the licit pleasures of the marital state.
When this resolution is made by one who has never known the gratification allowed in marriage, perfect chastity
becomes virginity. Because of these two elements the high purpose and the absolute inexperience just
referred to,virginal chastity takes on the character of a special virtue distinct from that which
connotes abstinencemerely from illicit carnal pleasure. Nor is it necessary that the resolution implied in virginity be
fortified by a vow, though as practised ordinarily and in the most perfect manner, virginal chastity, as St. Thomas,
following St. Augustine, would imply, supposes a vow. (Summa Theologi II-II.152.3 ad 4) The specialvirtue we are
here considering involves a physical integrity. Yet while the Church demands this integrity in those who would
wear the veil of consecrated virgins, it is but an accidental quality and may be lost without detriment to that
higher spiritual integrity in which formally the virtue of virginity resides. The latter integrity is necessary and is
alone sufficient to win the aureole said to await virgins as a specialheavenly reward (St. Thomas, Suppl., Q. xcvi, a.
5). Imperfect chastity is that which is proper to the state of those who have not as yet entered wedlock without
however having renounced the intention of doing so, of those also who are joined by the bonds
of legitimate marriage, and finally of those who have outlived their marital partners. However in the case of those
last mentioned the resolution may be taken which obviously would make the chastity practised that which we
have defined as the perfect kind.