Temperance, or voluntary self restraint, is a
spirituel disposition, it concerns control of
our passions; reactions, feelings, desires,
and the subject lies in our willpower.
Temperance is linked to Justice; to
be right with God and with each other,
we must be just, we must be prudent,
we must reflect before speaking,
we must especially guard our tongue in
controlling our passions, because it is
by our words that we create most damage
to others.
The passions are divided into 2 main groups:
The Concupiscible:
Joy, Sadness, Desire, Love, Hatred, Disgust
The Irascible;
Hope, Despair, Courage, Fear, Anger
The fact that we need to practise self-restraint
vis-a-vis the passions, does not mean that the
passions are bad, on the contrary; they are good,
they are made by God, it is rather a matter of
keeping oneself on the straight line, where we
are in control.
Reactions and feelings are normal, they show
that we are healthy human beings.
Temperance is rather a matter of not being carried
away by our feelings and reactions,
which is a tendency and weakness we humans have.
Modesty and shyness however, should not be confused
with the virtue of temperance, because they are in reality
natural bulwarks that God puts in place in a child, to act
as protection, while temperance is being developed and
the child is being educated and formed, so as a mature
person the shyness would have been replaced by
temperance.
Temperance is the regulation of pleasure.
Pleasure in itself is morally neutral, but we
say it is "good" when it pursues a good end,
and it is "bad" when it pursues a bad end.
The pleasure concerned does not have a
moral status in itself, it is a means to an end.
We take pleasure in eating, and it is a good thing
to have nice things to eat, but the objective of
putting food into our bodies is to nourish ourselves,
because if we do not eat, we die.
So God, who has made everything perfectly, gave
us pleasure a the motivator to eat.
Imagine if eating was equivalent to hard labour,
something heavy and unpleasant, I'd imagine the
human race would have died out long ago.
And equally, if there was no physical attraction
between a man and a woman, and no pleasure to
be had, there would be no babies born, we would die
out as a species.
Pleasure is means to an end, and to act out the
pleasure without the objective as the end, is a
sin; a disorder, a deviation.
Eating solely for the pleasure of it, or to continue
eating long after one is full, has the consequences
of dulling the mind.
It is a diversion of the end; a separation of the act
of eating from it's end; to nourish the body.
Overeating also has concrete and visible results;
overweight and obesity, which is unhealthy also for
the body.
Gluttony is an abuse of something that is allowed:
food.
There is an imbalance created, it affects the mind,
it makes people stupid and nonsensical.
As for abusing alcohol to the point of being drunk;
the sin does not consist in being drunk;
the sin is the decision one takes in drinking so much
that one knows that one is going to get drunk, and
risk doing stupid things that one would not normally
do.
The subject lies in our willpower.
With the willpower it is we who decide.
Sexual relations, which is the most supreme
gift that God has created, has as it's inherent goal
of creating new life.
Again, if there was no pleasure attached, people
just wouldn't find the motivation.
And also again; to separate the act from the
potential end result is against natural law, and
against God's law.
Thus the use of contraceptives is sinful, as it
does not respect or accept the potential
outcome of the act which is
conception of life.
Therefore also it is confined to a legal marriage.
God made us to be one with Him, to live
with Him, through Him and in Him.
If we go against the design of our own natural
bodies, which are made to reproduce, we go
against ourselves, there are consequences.
No, it is not necessary to have 25 children,
a woman is only fertile a few days in a monthly
cycle, and today she can easily monitor that.
By the way, the word chastity which in French is
chasteté, comes from the verb châtier, which means
to punish, (with the aim of refinement).
There is logic and coherence in the virtue of
temperance which is basic dogma of the
Church. There are reasons why it is like this.
