In the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, many Catholics, especially young priests and seminarians, were imbued with the so-called “spirit of Vatican II” – a spirit that hoped to carry reforms and improvements of the Church well beyond the reforms and improvements actually designated by the Council.

I remember a young priest telling us from the pulpit one Sunday that the Church, despite having been in existence for more than 1,900 years, had never really understood the meaning of Catholicism until the arrival of Vatican II.

Now, this was a good priest, and he still is a good priest (even though he is now a rather old man), and he has been of considerable benefit to me personally. I think very highly of him.  All the same, I have never heard a sermon more foolish than the one in which he told us that Vatican II first revealed the meaning of Catholicism – and I assure you, I have heard hundreds, if not thousands, of foolish sermons.

If he was correct, among those who failed to understand Catholicism were the Fathers of the Church, the Doctors of the Church, and a few hundred popes, not to mention the Apostles themselves.

Among the things that earlier Catholics had failed to understand (according to the typical spirit-of-Vatican-II Catholic) was that the virtue of chastity, though a fine thing, was not nearly as fine a thing as we used to think it was.  Prior to the Council, we thought that chastity was a virtue of supreme importance, possibly on par with the virtue of charity itself.  But under the new dispensation, now we post-Vatican II Catholics know better.  We see that chastity is a minor virtue in comparison to love of neighbor.  And minor too in comparison with charity’s sister virtue, justice, especially social justice.

It’s good (according to such progressive Catholics) for Catholics, perhaps even others, to shun bedroom partners who are not their spouses. But it is better – far better – to remember poor people and racial minorities, not to mention other minorities, including those sexual minorities, especially homosexuals. There are traces of that attitude in the Declaration “Infinite Dignity,” just issued earlier this week by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith

Where (according to post-Conciliar wisdom) did this undue emphasis on chastity come from?  Not from Jesus certainly, who spoke frequently of love of neighbor, but only rarely of chastity.  And on the most memorable occasion when He did speak of unchastity, He refused to join the puritans of his day in punishing a woman caught in adultery.

And when He spoke directly to her, he reprimanded Her, but only mildly.   If He was that temperate in responding to adultery, imagine how mild His attitude must have been toward the lesser sin of fornication.  As for homosexuality, well, He never addressed that issue at all.

Why then have we erroneously imagined that unchastity is a deadly serious sin?  The spirit-of-Vatican-II folks had an explanation.  American Catholicism has been unduly influenced by Irish Catholicism, which was perversely shaped by the heresy of Jansenism.

Jansenism was the prevailing theology at the French and Belgian seminaries attended by would-be priests from Ireland, who, for 200 years prior to 1795 (the year of the founding of Maynooth Seminary), could not study for the priesthood at home because their Anglo-Protestant oppressors would not allow a Catholic seminary in Ireland.

And who were the Jansenists?  They were in effect Catholic Calvinists.  Which is to say, they were Puritans.  Catholic Ireland was a Puritan nation (something like early Massachusetts), and in the 19^th and 20^th centuries Irish priests, in this reading of history, inflicted their Puritanism on American Catholics.

But thanks to the “spirit of Vatican II” discovery that chastity is not a truly great virtue, Catholic seminaries of the 1970s and 1980s produced many soft-on-chastity priests, and more than a few turned out to be homosexual, and more than a few turned out to be molesters of teenage boys.  Making a bad situation worse, some homosexual or homo-sympathizing priests rose to be bishops and averted their eyes from the great homo-priest scandal.

But why did early Christians, for instance, those of Egypt, Syria, and Greece, even though they were not taught by Irish priests, believe that chastity was a virtue of tremendous importance?  Because of factors like the following:

• Christianity derived from Judaism, which placed a great stress on chastity – even though ancient Jews, except for the Essenes, did not go so far as to recommend celibacy, as Christians often did.
• Gentile converts to Christianity were drawn to the Christian ideal of chastity, at least in part because of their negative reaction to the sexual laxity that prevailed in much of the Roman Empire.
• Jesus never married, and we can feel sure that He, being a good Jew, not to mention His divinity, never had a sexual relationship.
• The very high rank given to Mary the mother of Jesus by the New Testament and by early Christianity generally – Mary who conceived of Jesus while a virgin.
• She was a lifelong virgin. (This is not mentioned in the New Testament but was widely believed to be the case by early Christians.)
• Jesus taught that those in Heaven do not marry. It seems to follow from this that the most Heaven-like life on Earth would be one of celibate chastity.
• Jesus taught that some people, though not all, are called to a life of celibate chastity, “eunuchs for the sake of Heaven.”
• Jesus condemned not just unchaste actions but unchaste desires as well, for they amount to adultery in the heart.

In sum, the early Church regarded chastity as a tremendous virtue.  And so, modern Catholics who view chastity as a great virtue are not bowing to the malign influence of Irish Jansenism.  They are bowing to the divine influence of primitive Christianity.  Which is to say, they are bowing to the influence of Jesus and Mary and the Apostles.