Editor's Note
A Misunderstood Virtue
In two years of editing NC Catholics, I don’t think preparing any issue has been more educational for me than this one. To begin with, our theme, Chastity, is not only widely misunderstood, but really under attack in our society. If we’re confused about this virtue, there are good reasons. For instance, when I tried Googling chastity, the first page listed several web sites promoting the exact opposite. Most of us who have been parents in the last couple of decades know the feeling of watching a seemingly innocent television program with our children and suddenly getting slammed with an advertisement that’s not innocent at all. So much of what we’re exposed to portrays chastity as limiting, old-fashioned and “prudish.” So, I hope this issue will give you, as it did me, a clearer understanding of the way chastity is in fact crucial to our development as whole human beings.
Second, in interviewing people around the diocese for this issue, I learned about the depth of commitment so many bring to Catholic moral development, as parents and as spouses and as single people. I attended a parents’ night for “Changes and Challenges,” a chastity education program in our diocese (p. 12), and the resolve of those parents to instill Catholic values in their children, the seriousness with which they took their own vocations as their children’s chief teachers, was palpable. Learning about the role of chastity in marriage from a couple who volunteer as teachers of Natural Family Planning (p. 15) was inspiring.
My education was supplemented by our columnists this month, including Fr. David McBriar, O.F.M., who explains, in case you didn’t know it, the difference between chastity and celibacy.
On another subject, I had the pleasure of talking with Mrs. Maria Iniquen-Gomez, who teaches science and social studies in the middle school at Blessed Sacrament School in Burlington. She is this year’s winner of the Msgr. Gerald Lewis Award, given annually to an outstanding educator in our diocese. Read her interview and learn the meaning of “seventh-grade-itis.”
Thanks as always for your reaction and input. I’m at 715 Nazareth Street, Raleigh, NC 27606 or reece@raldioc.org.