Chastity is expressed notably in friendship with one�s neighbor. Whether it develops between persons of the same or opposite sex, friendship represents a great good for all. It leads to spiritual communion.
The Various forms of Chastity
All the baptized are called to chastity. The Christian has to �put on Christ�, the model of all chastity. All Christ�s faithful are called to lead a chaste life in keeping with their particular states in life. At the moment of his baptism, the Christian is pledged to lead a life of chaste love.
People should cultivate chastity in the way that is suited to their state in life. Some profess virginity or consecrated celibacy which enables them to give themselves to God alone with an undivided heart. Single persons live lives of chaste love in continence. Married people are called to live with conjugal chastity.
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The first is that of spouses,
The second is that of widows,
And the third is that of virgins and celibates.
We do not praise any one of them to the exclusion of the other.
Those who are engaged to marry are called to live chastity in abstinence. They should see in this time of testing a discovery of mutual respect, an apprenticeship in fidelity, and the hope of receiving one another from God. They should reserve for marriage the expressions of affection that belong to married love.
Lust is a disordered desire for or inordinate enjoyment of sexual pleasure. Sexual pleasure is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated from its procreative and unitive purposes in marriage.
Masturbation is understood as the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure. Both the Magisterium of the Church, in the course of a constant tradition, and the moral sense of the faithful has been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action. The deliberate use of sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose. Sexual pleasure would then be sought outside of the relationship which is demanded by the moral order. Only in marriage is the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love achieved.
To form an equitable judgment about ones moral responsibility to guide others, one must take into account the affective immaturity, force or acquired habit, conditions of anxiety, or other psychological or social factors that lessen or even extenuate moral culpability.
Fornication is sexual union between an unmarried man and an unmarried woman. It is gravely contrary to the dignity of persons and of human sexuality which is naturally ordered to the good of spouses, and the generation and education of children. Moreover, it is a grave scandal when there is corruption of the young.