Temperance first of all concerns the basic requirements for biological life, to which human beings find themselves specially and, at times, exceptionally attracted. While the virtues attached to cardinal fortitude remain distinct from those of temperance, the inclinations of the irascible or contending appetites - always and necessarily suppose the movements of the concupiscible appetites the simple and direct inclination or tendencies toward goodness and away from evil. In other words, the irascible appetites (hope and despair, fear and courage, and anger) come into play only when a set of circumstances makes the good to be achieved or evil to be avoided especially difficult or complex. However, the fundamental, ordinary response of the human emotions in front of a good or evil object always involves the dynamism of the concupiscible appetites.

As I have said, the concupiscible appetites include three pairs of passiones animae, namely, the emotions of love and hatred, desire and aversion, pleasure and sadness.For a fuller treatment of the passions in Aquinas’s doctrine, see Summa theologiae Ia-IIae q. 23, a. 4. The virtues of temperance include a number of good habitus or qualities of character that enable the human person to restrain or moderate the movements of the concupiscible appetites. As elementary human capacities, the emotions of the concupiscible appetites principally secure goods indispensable for human flourishing. So, for example, the Church teaches that “the conjugal communion sinks its roots in the natural complementarity that exists between man and woman and is nurtured through the personal willingness of the spouses to share their entire life project, what they have and what they are. For this reason such communion is the fruit and the sign of a profoundly human need.”Familiaris consortio, 3, no. 19. Furthermore, as the concupiscible appetites embody the human capacity to reach out toward good sensible objects such as food, drink, and sexual pleasure, these passions of the soul are also known as the impulse emotions.Those who prefer a more literal translation of Aristotle’s Greek speak about the affective orexis for the concupiscible or impulse appetites and the spirited orexis for the irascible or contentious. These impulse emotions concern goods that fall under two main headings: the good of nutrition, essential for the preservation of the individual, and the good of reproduction, essential for the preservation of the human species. Understanding the importance of virtuous temperance for sound moral theology requires a correct view of the place that biological needs have in a general description of human well-being.

Because these needs are rooted in human biology, the satisfaction of the basic human needs remains indispensable for human life. While biological needs figure importantly in virtuous prudence, at the same time, not every thirst, hunger, or sexual urge arises from and therefore represents true need.Psychologists usually distinguish general biological needs from instincts. Instincts ensure that the necessary actions for a body’s well-being, such as the coupling of male and female and the nursing of young offspring, transpire in the proper way, even without the benefit of previous learned experience. Instinctual behavior represents a kind of innate savior-faire, that is, the ability to operate according to a particular pattern that benefits the organism. Because instinctual behavior usually remains ordered to only one realization, and therefore does not form a suitable action for habitus formation, the moral theologian remains especially interested with instincts and needs. Consider the example of a fine dinner. Of course, the need for food is one thing; lust for the pleasure of the palate is another. As a subjective part of the virtue of temperance, the virtue of abstinence concerns the lust for pleasure with comestibles, and through the right regulation of such desire properly fulfills the biological requirements of healthy nutrition. At the same time, true abstinence shuns the defect of boorishness, or the complete inability to appreciate the pleasures of the table, especially the refined ones.

In order to discuss the virtues that moderate the sense impulses of human nature, the moral theologian must consider the relationship between biological need and inclination or tendency. What is a tendency or inclination? In its most primitive form, tendency designates what the scholastics call appetite (appetitus), viz, the simple inclination or movement found in any living subject toward a convenient object. When used to describe what satisfies an appetite, the term “convenient (conveniens) object” implies that a specific reality is able to perfect a given subject endowed with appetite. For example, only potable liquids serve as fitting objects for the human tendency to thirst. Aquinas expresses this anthropological axiom as follows:

By its nature each thing is bent on what fits it. And so human beings naturally crave an enjoyment that matches them. As such they are intelligent beings; consequently the pleasures they are equal to correspond to intelligence. On these temperance puts no restraint, though it does on those that are against intelligence. Clearly this is to agree and not to clash with the burden of human nature. Which is not to deny that temperance is against the grain for merely animal nature uncomplying with reason.Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 141, a. 1, ad 1.

This text explains that in order for appetite to operate properly in the human person, there must exist the potential for conformity between the human person and the good that satisfies his or her yearning. In the example of thirsting, for instance, saltwater never satisfies the human appetite for liquid intake.

In human conduct, ends are said to draw. By definition, then, the objects of human appetite exercise a specific kind of causal influence on the human person. If the object embodies some good that, when embraced in reasonable measure, perfects human nature, then the drawing attraction of such a good serves to promote the overall well-being of the human person. In other words, human drives serve, and in themselves do not threaten, the good of the human person. When, however, the sense appetites settle on objects the embrace of which causes harm to the person, then no virtuous measure can be determined for any inclination toward such objects. The unsuitable object of desire alone constitutes a moral disorder, as happens in those who fancy sexual activity with a person of the same sex. There are two ways, then, that the sense appetites can lead a person to act against the reasonable order of virtue: first by wanting more or less of a good thing than what right reason dictates serves the person’s good, and second by wanting something that frustrates the Creator’s design for human well-being.See Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons” (Vatican City, 1986), no. 7.

The scholastics further distinguish between natural appetites and elicited appetites. Natural appetite represents a particular organism’s bent toward any good that authentically perfects its being. We see, for example, the sunflower’s turning to the sun, the deer’s panting after running streams, or the human person’s seeking intelligent explanations for the physical world. In the case of natural appetites, the cause of the body’s movement toward an object lies in the actual nature (forma) of what moves. Because the human person enjoys vegetative, sensitive, and intellectual powers, each one of these “forms” spawns its own kind of natural appetites; however, the one substantial form that constitutes the human soul ensures the unity of the human person in acting.

Elicited appetite exists only in those beings that are capable of sense knowledge or that possess some form of voluntariness that develops from cognition. For example, when most children learn to savor spinach and relish artichokes or when any student masters a particularly difficult academic discipline, they are said to have developed an elicited appetite for these things. Accordingly, elicited appetites appear as expressions of either sensuous appetition, which spring from sense knowledge, or rational appetition or willing, which arise from a person’s understanding or comprehension of what the desired object means in terms of human fulfillment. Since the human person is a knowing subject capable of development through learning, many elicited appetites, then, actually exemplify learned patterns of behavior. The human person learns - through instruction and experience - the pleasurableness, usefulness, and goodness of many things.

Today, the moral issues that arise in connection with the concupiscible appetites are often articulated and evaluated according to criteria established by the life sciences. Because the sense appetites lie so deeply embedded in the biological structures of the human person, the life sciences can provide useful data that aids our comprehension of the virtues of temperance. Still, the Christian believer recognizes that the gospel imparts a wisdom about human life that surpasses what scientific research, however technologically advanced it may be, can achieve. Gaudium et spes explicitly affirms the importance of evangelical truth when it comes to making final determinations about what best serves both human progress and dignity.

As sharers in the light of the divine mind, human beings are correct in judging that by their intellect they are superior to the totality of things… The intellectual nature of the human person reaches its final perfection, and needs to do so, through the wisdom that gently draws the human mind to seek and love what is true and good, and which leads it through visible realities to those which are invisible.Gaudium et spes, no. 15.

On this account, it is entirely wrongheaded for the Christian believer to agree to a radical separation between the spiritual and psychological orders, a separation that would render the gospel irrelevant to human psychological well-being. It is true that some Christian authors in spiritual theology write as if the natural and life sciences can provide the only real truths about human nature and psychology, whereas religious instruction and moral truth pertain to a realm of “spirituality” that never really touches the concrete life of the person. This approach can lead to a kind of dualism in the human soul, dividing it into a transcendental “spirit” that adheres to God mysteriously, and a more mundane psychological dynamism that can be completely explained by human science. But to divide the intellectual nature of the human person contravenes the clear teaching of the Church; in fact, as early as the ninth century, the Church in ecumenical council authoritatively affirmed that no such spiritual duality exists within the human person.See IV Constantinople (DS 657).

Just as the gospel itself repudiates all insinuations of cosmological and psychological dualisms, Christian morality rejects all forms of material determinism in the human person. Gaudium et spes points to the excellence of the human soul as the grounds for recognizing the true dignity and vocation of the human person.

Humankind is not mistaken in recognizing its superiority over bodily things and in considering itself not just as a particle of nature or an impersonal element of human society. By its interior life it far exceeds the totality of things, and it experiences this deep interiority when it enters into the heart where God, the searcher of hearts, is waiting and where it decides its own destiny in the sight of God.Gaudium et spes, no. 14.

Christian believers possess the consolation of knowing that deliberate actions originate from “within them” (Jer 31: 33), that is, from what the Church’s spiritual tradition calls the human heart. The virtues of temperance in particular indicate both the psychosomatic unity of the human person and the subordination of matter (including the matter of the human body) to the human vocation that realizes itself in intelligence and freedom.

Theological ethics must take full account of human needs and tendencies insofar as they form an integral part of human life. Nevertheless, because of the excellence of human interiority, no moral judgment can be made about human actions simply by reason of the fact that they allegedly fulfill needs or tendencies. To hold such a view implies an extraordinarily superficial assessment of human nature and conduct. The Church rather instructs the faithful to acknowledge the spiritual immortal soul along with the biologically rooted needs and tendencies, so as to “attain that profound truth about reality” and to avoid deceptive and misleading explanations of what it means to be fully human.ibid. What Gaudium et spes calls the “profound truth of reality” (profundam rei veritatem) means the truth about the human person, but it also points to the truth about human conduct. The goal of virtue is to achieve the truth of life, the veritas vitae, and this happens only when the person brings his or her activity into a right conformity with the supreme norm for all human conduct, which, as St Augustine has instructed the Christian theological tradition, remains the eternal law.

Temperance particularly concerns pleasure. As a virtue, temperance embodies a measured temper communicated by intelligence that restrains our desire for what exerts strong attraction on the human person. Temperance, then, helps the human person deal with the lower goods that perfect the human person, those, moreover, that so easily engage human attachments. Within the classical distinction of the five senses, cardinal temperance primarily concerns the sense of touch, for one cannot accomplish the activities that it directs without some form of bodily contact. The Christian tradition usually places food and sexual gratification among the principal objects that provide the strongest pull, whereas moral theologians prefer to discuss the material objects of temperance in a strictly formal sense: whatever produces pleasurable sensation as a concomitant of appropriate activity with food or a sexual partner. So while well-tempered passion forms an essential characteristic of all virtue, temperance, nonetheless constitutes a special virtue, since we can identify its specific formal object. Aquinas introduces a further precision into the scope of temperance. “The virtue of temperance,” he says, “is engaged first with emotions of desire and pleasure about goods of sense, and then as well with emotions of grief arising from their absence.”Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 141, a. 3.

Since it forms the raison d’etre of temperance, we need to consider the phenomenon of pleasure. In the Summa theologiae, Aquinas adopts a philosophical definition that describes pleasure “as a movement of the soul, perceptibly establishing a person in a condition which is in harmony with human nature, and which is an instantaneous whole.”See Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 31, a. 1. Aristotle’s text comes from his Rhetoric. In order to clarify this definition, the scholastic commentatorial tradition proposes five conditions that must be fulfilled in order to verify the experience of pleasure.See Cajetan’s commentary In primam secundae q. 31, a. 1. First, in order for pleasure to occur, a subject must be conjoined to an object through a certain and definite operation. Second, the human person experiencing the pleasure must actually know that the object is present and that the connection exists.For further information on this point, see G. E. M. Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy” in Ethics, Religion, and Politics (Minneapolis, MN, 1981), p. 27. Next, pleasure requires a movement of the appetite, viz, an active and present delight that results from the happy accomplishment of the operation. Then, because there exists a connaturality between the person experiencing the pleasure and the object, a certain ecstatic quality marks the achievement of fulfillment. Finally, the climax or term of the operation cannot leave some essential element of the pleasurable movement yet to be attained, for in that case, the person experiences the emotion of hope instead of pleasure. When put into the context of virtue, there is a relationship between the right ordering of one’s life and the experience of pleasure. In order to illustrate convincingly this thesis, Aquinas maintains that in the state of original justice, men and women would have experienced greater sexual pleasure in coitus, for the restraint of sinful disorder would not have been active.See Summa theologiae Ia q. 98, a. 2, ad 3.

This phenomenological description of pleasure provides helpful information for developing consensus on important issues in moral theology that concern the human person’s craving for pleasure. First, pleasure never occurs without a person engaging in some operation; this operation can be actually exercised or imagined, that is, represented by the internal senses. The operation, then, serves as the principal basis for making a moral judgment about pleasure. In itself, pleasure remains morally neutral and, as a physical experience, always good. However, the right relationship of object and operation is required in order to establish the basic moral character of a given pleasure. Moreover, since pleasure remains a delightful good, a bonum delectabile, Christian ethics must ensure that this accompanies the embrace of an authentic good, a bonum honestum. Because objects specify their actions, we determine both the physical feature and the moral meaning of pleasure by reference to some object that justifies both the coming-to-be and the enjoyment of a given pleasure.See Thomas Gilby’s important remark in Temperance (2a2ae. 141 -154), vol. 43, p. 27: “To be delectabile is the quality of an end, nevertheless the ‘pleasure-extract’ there is not the end-cause as such; cf. the classical criticism of hedonism, Ia-IIae 4,2. It is a consequence of that, namely the real value there, honestum. And this itself, while not a utile, may be an end subordinate to a higher end, and so the pleasure it gives may in this sense be for a purpose, cf. Summa contra Gentiles III, 27.” For example, if a person claims pleasure from putting food into his ears, we have grounds for questioning the good sense, and also the morality, of such “pleasurable” activity. And this same rule of measure holds true when it comes to improper sexual conduct, of the kind that contravenes both the purpose and the design of the Creator.

In the virtue of temperance, the natural finalities of the human operations that serve nutrition and procreation establish the basic parameters for virtuous living. Aquinas asks whether the needs of the present life set the standard for temperance.Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 141, a. 6. The formal measure for temperance lies in the ends of the operations that promote the preservation of both the individual human person and the human species. In this sense, temperance does not differ from the other virtues, though the physical ends whose attainment temperance regulates stimulate reactions more immediate and felt than those controlled by the virtues of justice and fortitude. Because of the importance that preservation of the human race holds as an end, a provident God left little to the personal taste and discrimination of individual men and women. Moreover, “sexuality,” explains Pope John Paul II in Familiaris consortio, “by means of which man and woman give themselves to one another through the acts which are proper and exclusive to spouses, is by no means something purely biological, but concerns the innermost being of the human person as such.”Familiaris consortio, no. 11. And the moral theologian could easily adapt this principle in order to show that, for the human person, eating and drinking should also constitute distinctively human activities.

Christian moral theology identifies the pleasures of and desires for satisfying the senses of touch and taste as the principal matters of temperance. Temperance moderates the desires and pleasures of touch and, derivatively, the aversions and sorrows that arise when any sense is suitably deprived of its object. While the theologian ought not to ignore the sense pleasure that derives from the other senses, viz, from admiring looks, pleasant words, sweet smells, and other sensations, nevertheless, on account of its connection to nutrition, temperance especially (though secondarily) concerns the sense of taste. Unlike those theologies overly influenced by Stoic outlooks on life, Christian theology does not deem the necessary operations of life as regrettable. The theologian warns only against unreasonable indulgence. At the same time, as the workings of internal senses such as the imagination or fantasy demonstrate, the human person can attempt to infinitize sense pleasure that in itself is limited.

Some sinners strive to make an idol out of pleasure. These are the people who come to live only by their senses, so that carnal desires predominate in their lives to the exclusion of everything else. In other words, the shape of a person’s emotional life actually dictates how he or she will discriminate among a range of options. Disordered desires obviously affect the practical judgment an individual makes about the use of certain goods, about how he or she approaches a desired end. Accordingly, the drunkard wants only more intoxicating liquid; the profligate seeks more sexual gratification; the glutton more food, and so forth. These are the carnal sinners, as Dante calls them in the Inferno, “who subject reason to desire.”Inferno, Canto V, 37-39: “Intesi ch’a cosi fatto tormento enno dannati i peccator carnali, che la ragion sommettono al talento.” But this exertion always concludes in personal disorder; for by definition, created goods remain limited, and so they never lead humankind to the “wisdom which gently draws the human mind to seek and love what is true and good, and which leads men and women through visible realities to those which are invisible.”Gaudium et spes, no. 15.

For reasons that largely derive from theological considerations of eschatological fulfillment or final beatitude, Christian ethics customarily distinguishes between the sense experiences of joy and pleasure.The scholastics considered that simple joy represents the fruit of the rational appetite (cf. Summa theologiae Ia-IIae q. 31, aa. 3, 4), whereas felt joy involves the sense appetites (delectatio cum reduntia in appetitu inferiori). Pleasure or voluptas means sense pleasure, and can unfold as a result of cognition (delectatio secundum cognitionem) which is called aesthesis (cf. Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 141, a. 4, ad 3 um), or from touch (delectatio in ordine ad sensibilia tactus), which is called carnal pleasure (cf. Summa theologiae Ia-IIae q. 31, a. 6; q. 32). In order to understand this distinction, we must recall that in the human person there are both external senses such as touch and taste and internal senses such as memory and imagination; furthermore, the concupiscible appetite can react to sensations from both of these sense powers. When the internal senses experience something good, the Christian spiritual tradition speaks about joy, but when the external senses are at work, it speaks about pleasure. Even though both internal and external senses are presented with objects and receive their stimulation in different ways, they represent movements of the sense appetites in response to sense experienced objects. This distinction, of course, points up the importance of the imagination in the moral life. Self-indulgence by means of the interior senses, while less directly perceptible to an external observer, nonetheless causes the same moral harm as disordered self-indulgence through the external senses. From a different perspective, the distinction between pleasure and joy explains why the Christian martyrs claim to experience a profound joy even in the midst of their painful physical sufferings.

Because their objects concern the goods that least distinguish the human person from other living organisms, the virtues of temperance rank last on the hierarchy of objective worth. As a virtue of personal discipline, temperance concerns the use that the human person makes of some thing or object. Moderation’s rule for using pleasurable things derives from how much we need them to live. Still, the virtues of personal discipline possess a social dimension. Unlimited self-gratification, whether it concerns comestibles or erotic gratification, bears directly on the way that a person is able to participate in the life of the community. The wisdom literature of the Old Testament greatly esteems moderation: “Do not follow your base desires,” counsels Sirach, “but restrain your appetites. If you allow your soul to take pleasure in base desire, it will make you the laughingstock of your enemies”’ (Sir 18: 30-31). Among all of the vices, intemperance particularly affects the person’s capacity for engaging effectively in social communication.

When he talks about verecundia and honestas as related to cardinal temperance, Aquinas takes his cue, but not his entire teaching, from classical moral philosophy. As integral parts of a cardinal virtue, these qualities represent special sensitivities in the temperate person. The first of these, shame or verecundia, causes the temperate person to recoil from what is dishonorable and disgraceful. Sensitivity to shame (verecundia) does not form a distinctive habitus’, rather, it denotes a certain psychological trait that promotes temperance in general. We can further describe this trait as a reserve and good sense that amounts to a right fear of being shamed by the commission of moral ugliness or disgrace. The trait promotes a repulsion against what does not conform to a proper moral comportment. Unfortunately, since people easily develop a preference for the morally ugly instead of what comprises the morally beautiful, these component elements of temperance easily fall dormant in human consciousness, resulting in a deformed moral conscience. Those who are brazen about vice no longer recognize the difference between the morally aesthetic and the ugly; and such people are said in fact to lack all shame. It can also happen that those advanced in age or true saints may lack feelings of shame, but this occurs only on account of the unlikelihood that persons of such qualities will commit intemperate acts. In any case, shamelessness, except among the saints, leaves a person liable to making gross misjudgments concerning what is proper and fitting in matters dealing with temperance.

The other integral part of temperance is a sense of honor or honestas. Like truthfulness, honor - because it signifies a certain gracefulness and beauty of spirit - represents a quality that marks the whole of the virtuous life. Some authors teach that it actually corresponds with spiritual beauty itself. “By the honorable,“says St Augustine, “I mean what is beautiful to the mind, and this we properly designate as spiritual.”83 Quaestiones 30 (PL 40: 19). It may strike one as odd, then, that Aquinas considers such an important quality of the moral life as only an integral part of the lowest moral virtue. But since honestas represents the realization of a true moral aesthetic, the person who possesses this trait instinctually rejects anything that smacks of the indecent and the morally ugly. In other terms, the honorable person always chooses the beauty and grace that, according to God’s providential design, characterizes the moral life.

When it comes to drawing up a complete list of the potential parts of temperance, the moral theologian faces some perplexing questions. Since every virtue implies moderation of one kind or another - the so-called virtuous mean - it is difficult to identify the particular virtues that share directly in the power of cardinal temperance. Aquinas, for example, divides the potential parts of temperance among those that moderate our inner feelings and those that moderate bodily poise and other external things. The first category includes virtues such as humility, an important Christian virtue that moderates our self-appreciation, clemency and gentleness that moderate anger and the desire for revenge. Aquinas also includes in this list the act of continence - not, properly speaking, a virtue - for it does effect the moderation of particular movements of concupiscence at particular times. The second category of virtues includes modesty, which particularly concerns external deportment, decency in dress, which concerns moderation of style and fashion, and, of special note, the virtue of study, which, says Aquinas, moderates an excessive curiosity about learning. The supposition behind Aquinas’s view comes from Aristotle, who affirmed that there exists among human beings a natural urge to find out. The sins against the potential parts of the virtue of temperance include: incontinence, wrath and cruelty, and inquisitiveness or useless curiosity.

The subjective parts of temperance are easy to identify. The specific types of virtues of temperance fall under two main headings, viz, those about the pleasures of the table and those about sexual gratification.Aquinas treats the virtues and vices concerned with nutrition in Summa theologiae IIa-IIae qq. 146-148 (abstinence about food) and qq. 149-150 (sobriety about food) and with procreation in q. 151, aa. 1-3 (chastity and orgasm) and purity in general (qq. 151, a. 4- 154). Abstinence is the virtue that moderates the desire for the pleasure of food and sobriety the virtue that does the same for drink, especially inebriating drink and other mind-altering substances. Both abstinence and chastity moderate pleasures associated with touch, but they remain distinct virtues because of the two operations, viz, ingestion and coitus, that generate their distinctive pleasures.See Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 151, a. 3, ad 2 where Aquinas reflects on St Augustine’s estimate of conjugal pleasures. Chastity strictly speaking pertains to moderating sexual climax; whereas purity pertains to the desires, thoughts, words and actions that promote, foster, and initiate sexual union.See Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 151, aa. 1, 2. The ea quae sunt ad finem that chastity promotes concern nothing less than the survival of ihe human race itself. False teachings about sexuality always ignore the fundamental reason for chastity. While chastity obviously constitutes a special virtue, there is a sense in which every virtuous act exhibits a certain chasteness of spirit. In a particularly beautiful phrase, Aquinas expresses the fundamental note that chastity ensures in the moral life. There is a metaphorical meaning to chastity, he says, “for if God is our heart’s delight, our attachment is where it should be, and we shall refrain from enjoying things against his design.”Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 151, a. 2. Particular norms for human conduct in matters of conjugal and personal chastity always reflect the divine design, and so the freedom of spirit that those who are conformed to God’s law enjoy eliminates all suggestion of undue restraint or repression.

Because the sense of touch plays such an important role in the preservation of human life, moral theology traditionally concerns itself with human sexuality.For background, see Summa theologiae Ia-IIae q. 31, a. 6. The Augustinian doctrine on original sin contributed to some misunderstandings about the role that disordered concupiscence plays in the Christian life. While Aquinas modifies considerably the standard teaching of his day, he still recognizes that sexuality suffers more than other human capacities from the disorientation of original sin.See Summa theologiae Ia-IIae q. 83, a. 4. In other terms, he accepts the view that the capacities more closely linked to human biology are less able to withstand the disordering effects of sin than are the higher capacities. While this view has led some theologians to prejudice sexual pleasure in itself, Aquinas applies his principle so that even sexual ecstasy remains an authentic human good whose moral character depends on the “setting” in which the pleasure occurs.For more information, see Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 141, aa. 4,5.

Given the vehemence that characterizes sexual pleasure, the fact that sense-pleasures in themselves provide no standard of moral good and evil remains an important truth for Christian ethics.See Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 153, a. 2. Also, since “our genital motions are less subject than our other bodily members to reason,’” temperance must regulate everything that relates to promoting sexual climax, e.g. looks, kisses, embraces. Human appetites decide only what is pleasurable, and in the state of fallen nature they sometimes run at odds with the reasonable good. Aquinas explains this important point of Christian anthropology in the following way:

The gift bestowed upon man in his first state, as a result of which reason kept the lower parts entirely in check, and the soul kept in check the body, was not from the efficacy of any natural principles but from the efficacy of original justice, which was given by divine liberality over and above them. When this justice was removed by sin, man returned to a state which befitted him according to his own natural principles… Just as man naturally dies and cannot be restored to immortality except miraculously, in the same way the concupiscible power naturally tends to what is pleasurable… even outside the order of reason.De veritate q. 25, a. 7.

Because of original sin, erotic pleasure requires the attention of a special moderating virtue. But the Christian tradition encourages a balanced interest in sexual morality. Moreover, the Christian faith assures the believer that Christ himself provides the balance; or as Origen insists, Christ is the substance of the virtues. Because the experience of pleasure forms part of the original integrity of man and woman, “conjugal love,” says Pope John Paul II, “reaches that fullness to which it is interiorly ordained [in] conjugal chastity.”Familiaris consortio, no. 13. As a specific part of temperance, conjugal chastity, the Pope continues, “is the proper and specific way in which the spouses participate in and are called to live the very charity of Christ, who gave himself on the cross.”Ibid.

Even the classical philosophers remarked on the unruly character of sexual urges in the human person, judging that they possess, as it were, a life of their own. And St Paul registers a similar view concerning the power which the “law of the members” exercises in our lives (see Rom 7: 23, 24), by which he of course means the movement of all the human appetites after the loss of original justice. In the Christian life of faith and sacraments, infused virtue actually and directly affects the sense appetites. Aquinas supports this claim by appealing to the Pauline teaching on Spirit and law:

Infused virtue is of value in that, even though the passions be felt, still they in no way gain control. For infused virtue effects that a man in no way obey the concupiscences of sin; and while this virtue remains, it does this infallibly. Acquired virtue falls short in this respect, although in only a few instances, as other natural inclinations fail in only a minor part. Hence the Apostle declares in Romans 7: 5,6: “While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we are slaves not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.”De virtutibus in communi a. 10, ad 14.

In other terms, the infused virtues conform unruly sense appetites to the law of reason as Christ perfects it in the evangelical law. This ordering of the emotions or passions happens through what Aquinas calls the “impression of reason” on the appetites, so that by reason of his or her conformity to Christ, the Christian believer enjoys the power to achieve a rectified emotional life.Summa theologiae Ia-IIae q. 60, a. 1.

But must the Christian theologian insist on reasonableness even in the context of sexual effervescence? Cajetan observes that one has to distinguish between an intermission of reason that leaves intelligence in a state of suspension and one which leads to a disordering of reason. Virtuous sex falls into the first category; intoxication provides an example of the second. In this regard, it is important to recall that Aquinas felt that, on the basis of the more profound harmony between the human powers which existed in pre-lapsarian man and woman, coitus would have been more pleasurable in the state of original justice than it is now, “for the pleasure of sense would have been all the greater, given the greater purity of man’s nature and sensibility of soul.”See Summa theologiae Ia-IIae q. 98, a. 2, ad 2. Moreover, Aquinas held this view in opposition to the Franciscan school represented in the 13th century by Alexander of Hales and St Bonaventure. Even today, the Church recognizes that communication in charity between spouses enhances the warmth of spousal love. So there is nothing in Christian teaching that would allow one to conclude that Christianity covertly promotes the fear that sex makes people behave more like animals. Rather Christian truth invites men and women to embrace the honest realization that disordered sex does mar the beauty of the creature in a way that other capital sins do not, “for a person sunk in carnal delights,” Aquinas warns, “has no taste for spiritual joys.”Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 153, a. 5.

The rectification of the sense appetites exists preeminently in the case of Christ, who had full and strong human passions or emotions that remained rightly ordered from within because his virtues of moderation and strengthening were so perfect in their formation.See Summa theologiae IIIa q. 15, a. 2. What the grace of union accomplishes in Christ, chastity infused with charity effects in the one united with Christ. The French poet Charles Peguy gives this mystery poetic expression.

Car le surnaturel est lui-même charnel,
Et l’arbre de la grâce est raciné profond
Et plonge dans le sol et cherche jusqu’au fond
Et l’arbre de la race est lui-même éternel.Charles Peguy, Eve in Oeuvres poetiques completes (Paris, 1941), p. 813: “For the supernatural itself is carnal, / And the tree of grace is rooted so deeply / And seeks the depths and sinks in soil so steeply / And the tree of the race itself is eternal” (translated by Fr Kevin McCaffrey, O.P.).

Grace perfects nature, gratia perficit naturam. “The virtue of chastity,” says one author, “is a perfect virtue because it consists in making sexual desires and joys participate in the reasonable order of the love of moral beauty, but it comes up against a great resistance of the passions become anarchic since original sin.”Albert Pie, O.P., Chastity and the Affective Life, trans. Marie Claude Thompson (New York, 1966). But through the healing power of divine grace - gratia sanans - Christ conquers sin in each one of his disciples. Chastity, as Pope John Paul explains in Familiaris consortio, touches directly on divine charity and, thereby, aids the principal commandment of the law that forbids placing any creature or created thing before God. As with every virtue, grace conforms human nature - in this instance, the emotional life - to the good of divine truth. And because of this union of hearts between the believer and Christ, divine grace frees the human person to join in the perfect worship of Christ the high priest. Pope John Paul II recalls the New Testament parallel between unchastity and idolatry: “The same sin which can harm the conjugal covenant becomes an image of the infidelity of the people to their God.”Familiaris consortio, no. 12. Because unregulated emotion of any kind thwarts the realization of divine truth, every offense against chastity represents a miniature idolatry. The special gravity of lechery lies in its capacity to wean a person away from a full-hearted love of God.

Because the most important vocation for the Christian believer is to become a saint, the New Testament teaches that the contemplation of divine truth is more important than the pursuits of marriage. For this reason, both married persons and those who remain celibate are bound to give themselves as fully as possible to a life of prayer and worship. “Marriage and virginity or celibacy,” says Pope John Paul II, “are two ways of expressing and living the one mystery of the covenant of God with his people.”Familiaris consortio, no. 16. Just as Christian martyrdom illustrates fortitude in an exemplary way, so the consecrated virgin or celibate must maintain a chaste love for those whom they serve. In this exercise of celibate chastity, moreover, they become spiritually fruitful, the fathers and mothers of many whom they bring to life in the Christian faith. And so the Church considers virginity and celibacy as a sign of the eschatological marriage of Christ with the Church; for those who dedicate themselves to this way of life liberate the heart “so as to make it burn with greater love for God and all humankind.”Perfectae caritatis, no. 12. In Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 152, a. 1, Aquinas explains what he considers essential to virginity: “Since virginity is defined in terms of moral integrity, the unbroken hymen is incidental to it, the immunity from the pleasures of orgasm is like its material, whereas the purpose of perpetually abstaining from this pleasure gives it completion and meaning.” See also, a. 3, ad 2 & ad 3 for Aquinas’s teaching on virginity in praeparatione mentis, and his view on regaining the virtue of virginity through repentance. In the male, the waste of semen (outside of what occurs in the course of nature - the nocturnal emission) marks the end of physical virginity. Because he considers this greater love as objectively associated with virgins and celibates, who dedicate themselves more completely to the contemplation of divine truth, Aquinas argues that these states of life retain their special eminence in the Church.See Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 152, a. 2.

Some theological opinion maintains that virginity in itself constitutes a better way of life. Whether this is true or not, the position provides a starting point for discussion with those who appraise virginity and celibacy as having only pragmatic value. Still, even Christian virginity remains a means to God; it is not an end in itself. Aquinas approvingly quotes St Augustine on the relative perfection of the celibate vocation: “Virgins follow the Lamb wherever he goes because, as Augustine puts it, theirs is the imitation of Christ by integrity of flesh as well as of soul. So virgins follow in more ways, but not necessarily more closely, for other virtues cleave to God more closely by conformity of mind.”Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 152, a. 5. In this text, both Aquinas and Augustine make reference to the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. These virtues, that are given to every believer in grace, constitute the one true state of perfection for the human person. To fulfill perfectly this vocation, moreover, is the call directed to every member of the Church.

The vice opposed to temperance is intemperance. Intemperance results from the pursuit of sense pleasures outside the order of right reason. Even Aristotle recognizes that intemperance especially corrupts practical reasonableness; intemperantia maxime corrumpit prudentiam.For Aquinas’s commentary on this important principle, see De malo q. 15, a. 4. Since sins of intemperance impair one’s ability to recognize the standards of graceful beauty, disordered lust handicaps intelligent behavior in a particular way.Aquinas holds, however, that rightly ordered lust figures into the divine plan for virtue: “The fact that the reason’s free attention to spiritual things cannot be simultaneous with [venereal] pleasure does not show that there is something contrary to virtue here, any more than when the reason suspends its activity according to right reason. Otherwise it would be against virtue to go to sleep.” See Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 153, a. 2, ad 2. Common experience shows that intemperance strikes at probity, decorum, and the like; indeed, people customarily hesitate to speak about sins of intemperance, more than they do about objectively graver sins. But as with every moral virtue, temperance has a defective form that appears to resemble more closely the practice of the cardinal virtue than its exaggerated form does. Temperance moderates passion; it does not destroy it. And, because the vice of unfeelingness or insensitivity restricts a person’s capacity to enjoy pleasure, it represents a vicious deformation of true temperance.See Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 153, a. 3, ad 3. But the Christian enjoyment of pleasure does not serve as the only principle in the moral life. The Christian life still requires the practice of asceticism, especially in those who devote themselves to contemplation and the study of divine matters and who, for that reason, should withdraw more from the allurement of carnal affairs.Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 142, a. 1.

Intemperance particularly identifies the morally immature person; and such a one typically manifests unreasonableness and resistance to correction. And on account of this intransigence, intemperance usually warrants strong and immediate correction. So, while intemperance ranks far from being the worst of sins, it nonetheless is associated with a kind of shame that brings reproach (exprobrabilis) upon those who indulge themselves without moderation. “Intemperance,” says Aquinas, “is grouped among the carnal vices, which, according to Gregory the Great, ‘although less culpable are more infamous.’ “Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 142, a. 4. To put it differently, because it skirts the proper measure that human actions should possess as regards rectitude, probity, decorum, and the like, intemperance especially erodes the moral beauty that distinguishes a person of upright life.

While he squarely rejects the view that the pleasure of sexual intercourse inevitably begets some sin, Aquinas devotes considerable attention to the capital vice of luxuria, which is the generic name for all sins against chastity and purity.See Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 153, a. 2, ad 2: “The virtuous mean lies in agreement with right reason, not in the amount of material. Consequently the abundance of pleasure in a well-ordered sex-act is not inimical to right reason.” Right reason establishes both an order and a measure for venereal pleasure; lechery violates this order and measure, with the result that a person oversteps the proper norms for conduct in matters pertaining to sexual pleasure (ut ordinem et modum rationis excedat circa venerea). Order refers to the proper setting for sexual activity; measure applies to the proper amount of pleasure that the right setting calls for. These norms are invariable and precise: the only order for sexual activity exists between lawfully married man and woman; the measure for sexual gratification is that which respects both the unitive and procreative purposes of marriage.

Christian discussion of the specific kinds of debauchery includes an analysis of simple fornication, seduction, rape, adultery, incest, and sacrilege, which are treated as serious expressions of the vice of venery, as well as the “sins against nature.”For further information, see Summa theologiae IIa-IIae qq. 153 -154. The sins against nature include masturbation,See Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 153, a. 3, ad 1 on the reason for the malice of masturbation and other auto-erotic acts that lead to sexual climax. The wrong does not consist in the wastefulness of the male semen, but in the dislocation of gratification from its condition, of being shared between persons. bestiality, homosexual acts (sodomy), and violations of the natural style of heterosexual intercourse. Aquinas judges these as more serious expressions of vice than the other forms of luxuria because such activities more clearly depart from embodying the purposes and designs of sexual communication. At the same time, Aquinas would maintain that, because of the harm rape causes to the bond of charity, the seriousness of rape - to cite one example - ordinarily surpasses that of solitary masturbation. For the Christian life, charity remains the principal good that chastity or any virtue embodies.Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 151, a. 2. Thus in his Moralia, St Gregory the Great takes pains to illustrate how the vices associated with lechery especially work disorder in the pursuit of the entire moral life.See Moralia 31, 45 (PL 41: 436). Also, Aquinas in Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 153, a. 5.

The sins against the other principal virtues of temperance, viz, abstinence and sobriety, are gluttony and drunkenness respectively. Gula, says Henry Fairlie, is more concerned about eating than about food. As with all sins, gluttony makes us solitary, even at a table of sharing.Henry Fairlie, The Seven Deadly Sins Today (Notre Dame, IN, 1979), pp. 155ff. All the more does this sad commentary apply to those who fail in reaching the proper mean when using inebriating liquors or other mind-altering substances.

Like the virtue of fortitude, Christian temperance serves the needs of the Church. As a gift that observes the norm of grace, infused temperance may observe a different rule or measure with respect to food; this happens in fasting and abstinence or even with regard to sexual abstinence, as is the case with consecrated chastity and celibacy. Although in his mature schema, Aquinas assigns no gift of the Holy Spirit exclusively to cardinal temperance, he does indicate that the most appropriate gift is Fear of the Lord.See Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 141, a. 1, ad 3. And he gives the following explanation. Although they embody in a certain sense only peripheral and surface gratifications, temperance’s objects exercise such an attractive power on the human person that they risk throwing off the sway of reason and God’s law in order to attain them. In his Spiritual Exercises, St Ignatius lays down the principle and foundation for the Christian life: we exist to praise, reverence, and serve God. A loving and chaste fear helps us to keep a proper poise and to live out this principle. The gift of Fear of the Lord aids all the virtues of cardinal temperance, that is, all the virtues of the general type of moderation, so that they keep the Christian properly focused on the important matters of life, but especially interested in the pursuit of divine goods.

In speaking about the first Beatitude, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 5: 3), which the spiritual tradition associates with Fear, Aquinas summarizes his Christian theology of temperance and humility:

In a proper sense, poverty of spirit does correspond to fear, the reason being that filial fear is connected with showing reverence to God and being subject to him, and so the consequences of such subjection are likewise attributed to the gift of Fear. Resulting from such submission of self to God is a disinclination to seek glorification in oneself or in any other except God. For this would be irreconcilable with perfect subjection to God; and, in effect, this is what is meant in the Psalm, “Some put their trust in chariots and some in horses, but we invoke the name of our God.” Perfect fear of God, then, accounts for the fact that one seeks neither self-exaltation in a spirit of pride nor the eminence that can be gained through exterior goods, such as honors and wealth. These attitudes characterize poverty of spirit.See Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 19, a. 12.

The fulfillment of the Christian life remains conformity to Christ that is progressively achieved through a life of self-emptying love. Because of the dynamics of divine grace, the beatitude of poverty of spirit epitomizes the disposition required in order to fulfill the evangelical law. As the humble handmaid of the Lord, the blessed Virgin Mary embodies the “obedience of faith” (Rom 1: 5) that, on St Paul’s authority, must characterize every Christian believer on pilgrimage to God.

From this meditation we learn that, in a certain sense, humility crowns the life of Christian love, even as it provides the first steps for beginning the life of charity. However, this virtue that ranks so importantly in the Christian view of life falls only among the potential parts of temperance. Humility belongs to the virtues of moderation because it restrains the craving that people experience for the esteem of others. Recall that Aquinas orders the virtues according to their formal type, not necessarily by their position in the hierarchy of gospel values. In any event, Aquinas discovers nothing in the writings of Aristotle to aid his presentation of Christian humility. Indeed, because humility moderates reaching for the stars, this virtue actually seems to oppose the super-virtue of philosophical ethics which is magnanimity. Magnanimity affirms and sustains the hope for some great good; humility restrains the soul lest it push forward immoderately toward the achievement of great things. In the paradox of Christian grace, both objectives remain realizable for the humble person who puts his trust in the Lord.

In his treatment of the virtue of humility, Aquinas acknowledges the influence of St Benedict and the recognized twelve steps of humility found in the Rule that bears his name. In the Church, the monastic program illustrates that the moral virtues associated with the practice of religion, namely humility, hope, and love, represent the basic configuration of the Christian life:

Now, therefore, after ascending all these [twelve] steps of humility, the monk will quickly arrive at that “perfect love” of God which “casts out fear” (1 Jn 4: 18). Through this love, all that he once performed with dread, he will now begin to observe without effort, as though naturally, from habit, no longer out of fear of hell, but out of love for Christ, good habit and delight in virtue. All this the Lord will by the Holy Spirit graciously manifest in his workman now cleansed of vices and sins.The Rule ofSt Benedict, chap. 7.

Because humility and theological hope are connected, the gift of Fear of the Lord aids the humble person to find true and lasting peace within the communio of divine charity. For when a person recognizes his inadequacy before God, such a one turns to the merciful omnipotence of the heavenly Father in order to attain the help that he or she needs.

Humility moderates our emotions. While acquired humility is possible, especially in the religious person who exhibits the characteristic acts of submission, prayer, and obedience, because of its relationship to divine grace and the example of Christ, infused humility is of great interest in theological ethics. Christian art and literature bear witness to the emphasis that spiritual authors have put on the virtue of humility. In the 12th-century Liber floridus Lamberti, an illustrated encyclopedia that shows the reader the “Good Tree” of virtues as a symbol of the Church, humility is accompanied by two angels of peace (“Angeli pacis”), harbingers of the blessed happiness to which the virtuous man or woman may attain.

As a positive quality of character, humility represents “the reverence a person bears toward God, which prevents one from claiming more than is due to a person according to a divinely appointed lot.”Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 161, a. 2, ad 3. Cajetan says that the humble person considers himself or herself ut indignus as unworthy, but the humble person is also abidingly conscious that everything he or she has received comes from God. The saints who show us the way of spiritual childhood help us to recognize this ideal, for they are the ones who have done God’s will throughout the ages. True prudence ensures that Christian humility never becomes identified with forms of subservience; our blessed Lady, the handmaid of the Lord, remains the exemplar of this particularly Christian posture. For among the saints, the Church recognizes as the spiritual mother of all sanctity and virtue, the blessed Virgin Mary. St Ambrose of Milan compares our blessed Lady to a mirror which reflects all the virtues: “Therefore, let the life of virginity of Mary which has been described be for you just like an image, from which the appearance of chastity and the form of virtue shine forth as from a mirror.”“Sit igitur vobis tamquam in imagine descripta virginitatis vita Mariae, de qua velut speculo refulgeat species castitatis et forma virtutis” (De virginibus, Bk 2, chap. 2 [PL 16: 208]). Virginity is the source of motherhood in the Holy Spirit. The blessed Virgin Mary is a mother in the spiritual order for all those who are united with her Son in the one Church. And so believers confidently turn to her as one who molds them into the perfect image of the Father’s glory. And this filial invocation of the blessed Mother of Christ does not disappoint: “Ipsam rogans non desperas, ipsam cogitans non erras.”St Bernard, Homilia 2, super “Missus est.”