# The Catechism of the Council of Trent/Part 3: The Sixth Commandment

THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT.
"THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTERY."
As the bond which subsists between man and wife is one of strictest union, nothing can be more gratifying to both than to know that they are objects of mutual and undivided affection; and as, on the other hand, nothing inflicts deeper anguish than the alienation of the legitimate love which they owe to each other, this commandment, which prohibits concubinage and adultery, follows with propriety, and in order, that which protects human life against the hand of the murderer. It prohibits to violate or sunder, by the crime of adultery, the holy and honourable union of marriage, a union which is generally the source of ardent affection and love.
​In the exposition of this commandment, the pastor has occasion for extreme caution and prudence, and should treat with great delicacy a subject which requires brevity rather than copiousness of exposition; for there is great reason to apprehend, that by detailing too diffusely the variety of ways in which men depart from the observance of this law, he may perhaps light upon those things, which, instead of extinguishing, serve rather to inflame corrupt passion. As however the precept contains many things which cannot be passed over in silence, the pastor will explain them in their proper order and place.
This commandment, then, resolves itself into two heads; the one expressed, which prohibits adultery; the other implied, which inculcates purity of mind and body. To begin with the prohibitory part of the commandment, adultery is the defilement of the lawful bed, whether it be one's own or another's: if a married man have criminal intercourse with an unmarried woman, he violates the integrity of his marriage bed; and if an unmarried man have intercourse with a married woman, he defiles the sanctity of the marriage bed of another.
But that every species of licentiousness and every violation of chastity are included in this prohibition of adultery, is proved by the concurrent testimonies of St. Augustine and St. Ambrose, and that such is the spirit of the commandment is an inference borne out by the authority of the Old as well as of the New Testament. In the writings of Moses, besides adultery, other sins against chastity are punished: the book of Genesis records the judgment of Judah against his daughter-in-law: " that there should be no harlot amongst the daughters of Israel," is an excellent law of Moses, found in Deuteronomy:
"Take heed to keep thyself, my son, from all fornication," is the exhortation of Tobias to his son; and in Ecclesiasticus we read: " Be ashamed of looking upon a harlot." In the Gospel, too, Christ the Lord says: "From the heart came forth adulteries and fornications, which defile a man;" and the Apostle Paul expresses his detestation of this crime frequently, and in the strongest terms: " This," says he, " is the will of God, your sanctification; that you should abstain from fornication:" " Fly fornication:" "Keep not company with fornicators." " Fornication, and all uncleanness and covetousness, let it not so much as be named among you, as becometh saints:"" " Neither fornicators, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor liers ​with mankind shall possess the kingdom of God." But adultery is thus strictly forbidden, because to the turpitude common alike to it and to other excesses it adds the sin of injustice, not only against our neighbour, but also against civil society. Certain it also is, that he, who abstains not from other sins against chastity, will easily fall into the crime of adultery. By the prohibition of adultery, therefore, we at once see that every sort of immodesty, impurity, and defilement is prohibited; nay that every inward thought against chastity is forbidden by this commandment is clear, as well from the very force of the law, which is evidently spiritual, as also from these words of Christ our Lord: " But I say to you, that whosoever shall see a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart."
This is the outline of those things which we have deemed proper matter for public instruction: to it, however, the pastor will add the decrees of the holy Synod of Trent against adulterers, and those who keep harlots and concubines; omitting many other species of immodesty and lust, of which each individual is to be admonished privately, as circumstances of time and person may require.
We now come to explain the positive part of the precept. The faithful are to be taught, and earnestly exhorted, to cultivate with zealous assiduity, continence and chastity, "to cleanse themselves from all defilements of the flesh and of the spirit, perfecting sanctification in the fear of God." The virtue of chastity, it is true, shines with a brighter lustre in those who, with holy and religious fidelity, lead a life of perpetual continency: an ordinance in itself admirable, in its origin divine: yet it is a virtue which belongs also to those who lead a life of celibacy; or who, in the married state, preserve them selves pure and undefiled from unlawful desire. The Holy Fathers have delivered many important lessons of instruction, which teach to subdue the passions, and to restrain sinful pleasure: the pastor, therefore, will make it his study to explain them accurately to the faithful, and will use the utmost diligence in their exposition.
Of these instructions some relate to thoughts, some to actions. The remedy prescribed against sins of thought consists in our forming a just conception of the turpitude and evil of this crime; and this knowledge will lead more easily to the considerations which prompt to its detestation. The evil of this crime we may learn from this reflection alone; by its commission, the perpetrator is banished and excluded from the kingdom of God; an evil which exceeds all others in magnitude. This calamity is, it is true, common to every mortal sin; but to this sin it is peculiar, that fornicators are said to sin against their own bodies, according to the words of St. ​Paul: "Fly fornication: every sin that a man doth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication, sinneth against his own body." The reason is, that, by violating its sanctity, he does an injury to his own body; and hence the Apostle writing to the Thessalonians says: " This is the will of God, your sanctification; that you should abstain from fornication, that every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour; not in the passion of lust, like the Gentiles that know not God." Again, it is an aggravation of the sinner's guilt, that by the foul crime of fornication, the Christian makes the members of Christ the members of an harlot, according to these words of St. Paul: " Know you not that your bodies are the members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid; or know you not, that he who is joined to an harlot is made one body?" Moreover, a Christian, as St. Paul testifies, is " the temple of the Holy Ghost;" and to violate this temple, what is it but to expel the Holy Ghost?
But the crime of adultery involves that of grievous injustice. If, as the Apostle says, they who are joined in wedlock are so subject to each other, that neither has power or right over his or her body, but both are bound, as it were, by a mutual bond of subjection, the husband to accommodate himself to the will of the wife, the wife to the will of the husband; most certainly if either dissociate his or her person, which is the right of the other, from him or her to whom it is bound, the offender is guilty of an act of flagrant injustice, and of a grievous crime.
As dread of infamy strongly stimulates to the performance of duty, and deters from the commission of crime, the pastor will also teach that adultery brands its guilty perpetrators with an indelible stigma: " He that is an adulterer," says Solomon, " for the folly of his heart shall destroy his own soul: he gathereth to himself shame and dishonour, and his reproach shall not be blotted out."
The grievousness of the sin of adultery may be easily inferred from the severity of its punishment. According to the law promulgated by God in the Old Testament, the adulterer was condemned to be stoned to death; and even for the criminal passion of one man, (the facts are recorded in the inspired Volume) not only the perpetrators of the crime, but also, as we read with regard to the Sichemites, sometimes the inhabitants of an entire city have been destroyed. The Sacred Scriptures abound with examples of the divine vengeance invoked by such crimes; such as the destruction of Sodom and of the neigh bouring cities, the punishment of the Israelites who committed fornication in the wilderness with the daughters of Moab, and ​the slaughter of the Benjamites; examples which the pastor will adduce to deter from similar enormities.
The punishment of death may not, it is true, always await such criminality; but it does not therefore always escape the visitations of the divine wrath. The mind of the adulterer is frequently a prey to agonizing torture: blinded by his own infatuation, the heaviest chastisement with which sin can be visited, he is lost to all regard for God, for reputation, for honour, for family, and even for life; and thus, utterly abandoned and useless, he is undeserving of confidence in any matter of moment, and incompetent to the discharge of duty of any sort. Of this we find signal examples in the persons of David and of Solomon. David had no sooner fallen into the crime of adultery than he degenerated into a character the very reverse of what he had been before; from the mildest of men becoming a monster of cruelty, and consigning to death Urias, a man who had deserved well of him; whilst Solomon, having abandoned himself to the lust of women, abandoned the true religion, to follow strange gods. This sin, therefore, as Osee observes, plucks out the heart, and often blinds the under standing.
We now come to the remedies which are applicable to this moral disease. The first is studiously to avoid idleness: for, according to Ezekiel, it was by yielding themselves up to its enervating influence, that the Sodomites plunged into all the turpitude of the most base and criminal lust. In the next place, intemperance in eating and drinking is carefully to be avoided: "I fed them to the full," says the prophet, " and they committed adultery." Repletion and satiety beget lust, as our Lord intimates in these words: " Take heed to yourselves, lest perhaps your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness;" " Be not drunk with wine," says St. Paul, " wherein is luxury." But the eyes, in particular, are the inlets to criminal passion, and to this refer these words of our Lord; " If thine eye scandalize thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee." The prophets, also, frequently speak to the same effect: " made a covenant with mine eyes," says Job, " that I would not so much as think upon a virgin." Finally, there are on record innumerable examples of the evils which have their origin in the concupiscence of the eyes: to it we trace the fall of David; the king of Sichem fell a victim to its seductive influence; and the elders, who became the false accusers of the chaste Susanna, afford a melancholy example of its baneful effects.
Too much ornamental elegance of dress, which solicits the eye, is but too frequently an occasion of sin; and hence the ​admonition of Ecclesiasticus: "Turn away thy face from a woman dressed up." A passion for dress often characterizes female weakness: it will not, therefore, be unseasonable in the pastor to give some attention to the subject; mingling reproofs with admonition, in the impressive words of the Apostle Peter: "Whose adorning," says he, " let it not be the outward plaiting of the hair, or the wearing of gold, or the putting on of apparel;" and also in the language of St. Paul: "Not with plaited hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly attire." Many females, adorned with gold and precious stones, have lost their only true ornament, the gem of female virtue.
Next to the excitement of desire, usually provoked by too studied an elegance of dress, follows another, which is indecent and obscene conversation. Obscene language is a torch which lights up the worst passions of the young mind; and an inspired Apostle has said, that "evil communications corrupt good manners." Indelicate and lascivious songs and dances seldom fail to produce the same fatal effects, and are, therefore, cautiously to be avoided. In the same class are to be numbered soft and obscene books: possessing, as they do, a fatal influence in exciting to filthy allurements, and in kindling criminal desire in the mind of youth: they are to be shunned as pictures of licentiousness, and incentives to turpitude.
But to avoid with the most scrupulous care the occasions of sin, which we have now enumerated, is to remove almost every excitement to lust; whilst frequent recourse to confession and to the Holy Eucharist operates most efficaciously in subduing its violence. Unceasing and devout prayer to God, accompanied by fasting and alms-deeds, has the same salutary effect. Chastity is a gift of God: to those who ask it "aright" he denies it not; nor does he suffer us to be tempted beyond our strength. But the body is to be mortified, and the sensual appetites to be repressed not only by fasting, and particularly, by the fasts instituted by the Church, but also by watching, pious pilgrimages, and other penitential austerities. By these and similar penitential observances is the virtue of temperance chiefly evinced; and in accordance with this doctrine, St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, says: " Every one that striveth for the mastery, refraineth himself from all things; and they indeed that they may receive a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible one;" and a little after; " I chastise my body, and bring it into subjection, lest, perhaps, when I have preached to others, I myself should become reprobate;" and in another place; "Make not provision for the flesh in its concupiscence."
* ↑ Exod. xx. 14.
* ↑ Vide 32. q. 4. c. meretrices; item ibid, multa alia capita; item Amb. de Abra ham, c. 4. Hier. contr. Jovin. lib. 1. et2. item in cap. 5. epist ad Gal. ad ilia verba, manifest, autem; item in c. 5. ad Ephes. ad ha?c yerba, viri! diligite; Aug. de bono conjug. c. 16 et lib. 22. contra Faust, cap. 47, 48. item in quasi. Deut. q. 37. ad cap 23. iterum Amb. in serm. de St. Joan, qui sic incip. diximus superiore Dominica est, 65. item. Greg, in moral, lib. 12. c. 21. D. Thorn. 1. 2. q. 100. a. 5. et 2. 2. q. 122. a. 6.
* ↑ Amb. lib. 1. officior. 1. c. 50, in fine. Aug. quaes. 71. super Exod.
* ↑ Gen. xxxviii. 14.
* ↑ Deut. xxiii. 17.
* ↑ Tob. iv. 13.
* ↑ Eccl. xli. 35.
* ↑ Matt. xvi. 19.
* ↑ 1 Thess. iv. 3
* ↑ 1 Cor. vi. 18.
* ↑ 1 Cor. v. 9.
* ↑ 1 Cor. vi 9.
* ↑ Matt. v. 27, 28.
* ↑ Sess. 24. c. 24. de reform.
* ↑ 2 Cor. vii. 1.
* ↑ Vid. D. Thom. 2. 2. q. 151 Trid. 24. de matrim. c. 3. et sess. 25. de regular.
* ↑ 1Cor. vi. 18.
* ↑ 1 Thess. iv. 35.
* ↑ 1 Cor. vi. 15, 16.
* ↑ 1 Cor.vi. 19.
* ↑ 1 Cor. vii. 4.
* ↑ Prov. vi. 32.
* ↑ Levit, xx. 10. Job viii. 5
* ↑ Gen. xxxiv 25.
* ↑ Gen. xix. 24.
* ↑ Num. xxv. 4.
* ↑ Judges xx.
* ↑ 2 Kings xi. and xii.
* ↑ 3 Kings xi
* ↑ Osee iv. 1 1.
* ↑ Ezek. xvi. 49.
* ↑ Jerem. v. 7.
* ↑ Luke xxi 31.
* ↑ Ephes. v. 18.
* ↑ Matt. v. 29, 30
* ↑ Job xxxi 1.
* ↑ 2 Kings xi. 6.
* ↑ Gen. xxxiv. 2.
* ↑ Dan. xiii. 8.
* ↑ Eccl. ix. 8.
* ↑ 1 Pet. iii. 3.
* ↑ 1 Tim. ii. 9.
* ↑ 1 Cor. xv. 33.
* ↑ Parochus imprimis curet, ut quse de sacris imaginibus a Sacrosancto Concilio Tridentino pie religioseque constitituta sunt, ea sanctissime serventur. Vid. sess, 25. decret. de invocal, &c. vener. et. sacris inrmgin. i&gt;
* ↑ 1 Cor. vii. 7.
* ↑ 1 Cor. x. 13. Vid. Tert. de Monog. in fine Nazianz. oraf. 3. Basil, do virg. ultra, medium. Chrys. et Hieron. in c. 16. Matt. Aug. lib. 6. confess, c. 11.
* ↑ 1 Cor. ix. 25.
* ↑ Rom. xiii. 14.