Society Needs to Recover Link Between Courage and Chastity, Scholar Tells Harvard Law School

By Geraldine Hawkins
- May 29, 2003

We live in a society that is increasingly decadent largely because our churches have lost sight of the relationship between chastity and courage, Fr. Paul McNellis, Jesuit priest and Boston College philosophy professor told students at Harvard Law School. He spoke before at a gathering of the Harvard Law School Society for Law, Life, and Religion earlier this month.

"Traditionally, chastity is related to self-control and temperance. It says, 'Slow down.' Courage is seen as overcoming fear in pursuit of a good. It says, 'Go ahead,'" McNellis told the students.

"A young woman said to me, 'I'm going to wait, even though everyone around me thinks I'm crazy.' That is not a healthy culture."

"In pre-Christian societies, there was an interest in promoting chastity and courage," McNellis said.

"The word chastity seems quaint today. Even Christian preachers shy away from it.

"It is not uncommon for Christians to dismiss the teaching, 'Wait until you're married.' I have lost track of the number of women who've said: 'I thought this one would marry me.'"

Redefining Chastity

McNellis said that many modern Christians "have redefined chastity in such a way that the teaching embraces their practices. They convince themselves that the Church's teaching is no longer necessary.

"Our society mirrors society at the end of the Roman empire.

"There is in our time a kind of Christian courage that consists [of] enduring sarcasm. To be dismissed with sarcasm is harder than to be openly opposed."

Fr. McNellis maintains that men have a huge role to play in the struggle to regain a favorable view of chastity in our society. "Every man wants to protect his family. We need to say to men, 'Protect the woman you love from wrong.' Think of the kind of marriage that could grow out of a chaste courtship."

Fr. McNellis said that today many couples are hampered by "relationship psychobabble," and that the situation has not been helped by "poorly educated and cowardly priests."

He said that in a healthy culture, a woman needs to say, "I'm worth waiting for," and a man needs to answer, "Yes, you are - and I'll prove it to you."

Fr. McNellis said that a person's actions and attitudes have a deep influence on those in whom they come in contact. He recommended the film Metropolitan (1990), directed by Whit Stillman, about "a good woman who causes a man to turn his life around because he admires the way she thinks."

"Those who are committed to certain virtues ought to become more vocal about it," he told the students.

Fr. McNellis said he has found that in his classroom, women who dress modestly are more self-confident. "This 'raging hormones' way of dressing is based on a profound insecurity," he said.

"Kids have drop-out '60s parents. They have their innocence stripped away at a very young age. But we have to show students the truth of Socrates' words, 'The unexamined life is not worth living.'

This Culture of Death

"The Culture of Death didn't begin in 1973. It is the outgrowth of a failure of love represented by a lack of chastity.

"Yes, oppose abortion - but the change won't occur until men have become more manly. They must embrace love in a chaste way," McNellis said.

"The non-chaste have wounded, scattered personalities. Those who are trying to be chaste -- and it is a struggle -- are happier and more focused."

Fr. McNellis recommended the book Fatherless America, by David Blankenhorn.

"In some societies, 70 to 80% of children don't know who their fathers are. This has never happened before," he said.

Fr. McNellis said that according to Catholic teaching, Christians have three choices: Virginity before marriage, fidelity within marriage, and consecrated life.

"The Pill killed dating and courtship. It is temporary chemical sterilization that renders intercourse indifferent.

"Who has really benefited from abortion on demand? Irresponsible men!"

"If a man says to a woman, 'I'll love you until I change my mind or until I get my degree,' a woman runs."

"MTV is really pernicious in that it's a mind game. It says that the mark of sophistication is that nothing can cause you to blush or feel embarrassed.

Hope for the Future

"Thinking well is a Christian activity," Fr. McNellis asserted. He said that if one teacher gets a student to think differently than the way in which the culture has conditioned him to think, then that teacher may have a profound influence on society.

"It helps to live in a healthy community. That's largely been taken away from us," Fr. McNellis said.

"The crisis in the priesthood began with a prior crisis in families. Where do priests and seminarians come from?"

Fr. McNellis told the students that he has a great deal of hope that society will gradually turn around. He cited a New York Times article headlined, "Mother Pro-Choice, Daughter Pro-Life."

"Of course, the Times's angle was, 'How could things have gone so terribly wrong?' I would never give an interview to the [Boston] Globe or the [Boston] Herald, because they just never get it right.

"I'm extremely hopeful about this generation," Fr. McNellis said. "It's a great time to be a teacher."

Adj. Asst. Prof. Paul McNellis, SJ teaches Perspectives on Western Culture at Boston College. He is a scholar of social ethics and political philosophy. Before he was ordained a priest, his experience included stints with Catholic Relief Services, as a war correspondent for the Associated Press, and as an infantry officer in the U.S. Army. "As a sophomore at the University of Minnesota I was reading about Vietnam and receiving letters from friends who were already there," says Fr. McNellis. "Today people merely smile at you indulgently when you say it, but I actually believed what President Kennedy said about why we were there, and I felt I had a duty to go. I believe the American commitment to South Vietnam was a just one, though I have serious criticisms of how it was carried out. But the most serious mistake of all was the way we got out. It was the betrayal of an ally."

The Society for Law, Life and Religion is a non-sectarian organization comprised primarily of students at Harvard Law School as well as other graduate students at Harvard. The Society is "dedicated to defending religious values and the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death," according to their mission statement. "We promote pro-life and religious values in the Harvard community as well as society at large. We support the enrichment of public policy according to faith-based moral convictions and defend religion's place in the public square."