One of the most compelling love affairs in U.S. history involved a president. And I'm not talking about Thomas Jefferson's dalliances with his slave, Sally Hemings. No, for my money, the “hottest” romance in White House history was the one that starred John and Abigail Adams.

A husband and wife — how boring! Right? But, as contemporary historians have turned their attention to this fascinating marriage, an inspiring portrait of sacrifice and devotion has emerged that rivals the best romantic fiction. Perhaps most intriguing is the revelation that, behind Abigail Adams’ “dearest friend” (as she always referred to John in their voluminous correspondence) stood a wife who was in every sense the president's partner, his alter ego — and, not infrequently, his better half.

The past few years have seen a revival of “moral biographies” of some of America's early leaders. Richard Brookhiser's Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington looked at the first American president from the perspective of the moral virtues that made him who he was. David McCullough's recent biography John Adams, still riding the best-seller lists a year after its release, does the same thing for the second president.

Recounting the occasion on which John first met Abigail, McCullough cites an excerpt from Adams’ own diary. It's worth quoting at length:

I had my favorites among the young women and spent many of my evenings in their company and this disposition although controlled for seven years after my entrance into college, returned and engaged me too much til I was married. I shall … [not] give any enumeration of my youthful flames. … This I will say — they were all modest and virtuous girls and always maintained that character throughout life. No virgin or matron ever had cause to blush at the sight of me, or to regret her acquaintance with me. No father, brother, son or friend ever had cause of grief or resentment for any intercourse between me and any … relation of the female sex. My children may be assured that no illegitimate brother or sister exists or ever existed.

Nearly two centuries later, a young Krakow priest was doing research in preparation for a university teaching appointment. He continued to do pastoral work in the parish, ministering to students, and, that spring, would make at least three excursions into the mountains of southern Poland with his beloved students. In 1952, he would also publish his very first article dealing with sexual morality: a two-part reflection on chastity. The priest, Father Karol Wojtyla, was the future Pope John Paul II.

Instinct, Love and Marriage (and its 1953 companion, The Religious Experience of Chastity) predated Wojtyla's opus Love and Responsibility by eight years. Even in the latter book, however, the virtue of chastity takes up the whole of an entire section.

What do an early-American president and a contemporary Catholic pope have in common? Both lived model lives of Christian sexual morality. Wojtyla both explains and lives chastity; Adams shows how it is lived out in a non-celibate, marital relationship.

Cheerful Chastity

Chastity is not, Wojtyla notes, asexuality: The chaste person is not one devoid of eyes or hormones. The chaste person does not deny sex or the values associated with it.

John Adams admitted he was “of an amorous disposition,” and enjoyed “the society of females” from age 10. He had four children.

Chastity is not, says Wojtyla, primarily a “No.” Indeed, chastity is not negative in any way; it is a positive virtue that “consists in the quickness to affirm the value of the person in every situation, and [to raise] to the personal level all reactions to the value of ‘the body and sex.’” Chastity does not deny that a person can be sexually attractive; it insists, however, that the other is a person — never a sex object.

The reverse side of the coin is that, because men and women are first and foremost persons, sometimes one has to say No to one's instincts, appetites and feelings. For example, if you make another person the object of a “one-night stand” — even when that person willingly invites or even tempts you to such an exploit — you injure that person's dignity. The object of your fleeting passion may not feel hurt or used, but God is offended.

John Adams clearly valued all the girls he loved before, sufficiently to keep a discreet silence about his “youthful flames.” (You can be sure that his definition of “loved” in this context is not the same as today's.) Even more importantly, he insisted that they were, and remained, “virtuous.” For Adams, it's clearly not a question of “kiss and don't tell.” It's a question of character driving behavior that results in none of his flames having “cause to blush at the sight of me.” Surely it took some self-denial, “seven years” since entering Harvard, but Adams did it. And in Adams’ day, the Ivy League did not distribute condoms at freshman orientation.

Christian love is not passionless, even at the level of emotion or physical attraction. But “love” and “lust” have nothing in common except for being two four-letter “L” words.

The Power of Propriety

When I was teaching moral theology to undergraduates, this was a common stumbling point. Lots of my students thought that the Christian view of love and marriage demands that one be oblivious to physical attraction or emotional compatibility. It doesn't. It does demand, however, that we always treat the other as a person, not just as a source of our physical or emotional fulfillment.

In his Diary excerpt, Adams calls his old girlfriends “modest.” Wojtyla also speaks about modesty when discussing “shame.” Wojtyla reminds us, however, that shame is not necessarily bad; neither is it necessarily an indication we've done something bad. In the area of sex, shame and modesty can be, in fact, good things.

A husband and wife are not “ashamed” of their nakedness (just as Adam and Eve were at first unashamed in Paradise). Where a relationship is characterized by love, a person is willing to be vulnerable. One can “bare one's self” before the other.

When a relationship is infected by something other than love — like lust, for example — the picture changes. One instinctively wants to limit one's vulnerability in order to protect one's self. In the area of sex, modesty does not mean “I'm afraid of sex.” It means “I am afraid of being used if your motives are less than love.” Adam and Eve start covering up after the Fall because, on account of sin, their relationship could now be one of love or one of lust. Because morally healthy people don't want to be used, they literally limit their exposure. Adam and Eve started looking at each other differently because of sin, not because they visited Eden's optometrist.

In his writings, John Adams also highlights the social dimension of chastity. Sex is not just an act “between two consenting adults.” Sex affects the partners themselves, particularly the woman. She may, after all, become a mother. Sex affects children born of the union. And it affects that woman's and that man's relationships to their own and other peoples’ families. Sex is society's business because society lives with its consequences (and its fallout).

To be sure, John Adams was, in many ways, a man of his times. Our America bears little resemblance to the homeland he knew. But, as Pope John Paul II has shown us and taught us, sexual virtue is timeless.

John M. Grondelski, a moral theologian,writes from Warsaw.