Rome Correspondent

VATICAN CITY — Preaching to the Pope doesn't mean consulting only the great saints and doctors of the Church. It means going to the newsstand, too.

Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, the preacher of the papal household, discussed in a mid-December Advent sermon to Pope John Paul II and other curia officials the issues of celibacy and virginity, a theme chosen this year in response to the sexual-abuse scandals involving priests.

“The word ‘virginity’ is reappearing in the mass media and not in an ironic sense, as in the past,” Father Cantalamessa began. “[In early December] the American magazine Newsweek came out with a cover featuring two young people under the headline: ‘The New Virginity.’ Inside there were stories of young people who, for different reasons, declared their decision to remain virgins until marriage.”

The magazine reported that according to a recent study from the Centers for Disease Control, the number of high-school students who say they are virgins rose by almost 10% between 1991 and 2001.

Father Cantalamessa noted that a well-known Italian newspaper followed up that report with its own stories of Italian youth who are “rediscovering the joy of virginity.”

Referring to the Song of Solomon, the papal preacher said virginity before marriage and the virginity proper to priests and religious are united by the idea of preserving the “choice fruits … which I have laid up for you, O my beloved (Song 7:13).”

In both cases, the young person preserves the “inestimable gift which every person secretly desires” for his or her future spouse, or in the case of the consecrated virgin or celibate priest, to be given to God directly.

Noting that sexual abuse in society attacks the “very sources of life and nature,” Father Cantalamessa called for a renewed commitment to “rediscover the radical alternative of the Gospel.”

“This alternative does not disqualify or blame sex, as opposed to what the secular press says,” the Capuchin observed. “On the contrary, it emphasizes its human, free and rational character, impeding its degenerating into pure instinct and animality.”

He noted in particular the danger to chastity posed by suggestive images found in television, on the Internet and in other media.

“Speaking of mortification, I believe that one must insist upon that of the eyes,” Father Cantalamessa said. “The ruinous fall of David began with a look. The image, more than the written word, has become in today's society the favored vehicle of a worldly ideology saturated with sensuality, which has made human sexuality its battle cry, separating it completely from the original meaning conferred on it by God. Remember that there are 167 million Internet sites related to the word ‘sex.’ A healthy fasting from images has become, today, more important that fasting from food. Food and drink, per se, are never impure; certain images instead are impure.”

The previous day, a newspaper published a lengthy report titled “Sex: Internet Offers 167 Million Occasions. A Really Global Obsession.”

“Certainly, we must not have too many illusions,” Father Cantalamessa said.

However, Father Cantalamessa commented, “at least there are signs of a certain change of tendency, of a certain saturation.”

He also noted the duty of priests and religious to avoid temptation.

“When our struggling brothers, weak and tempted by the flesh, come to us, they expect to find a steady hand to help them up out of the quicksand of sensuality,” he said. “But what help can we give them if we ourselves are struggling, or worse, trapped in that same quicksand?”

“It is necessary to distinguish between sin and temptation,” he continued. “Choosing virginity does not save one from temptations and, in fact, if one looks at the lives of saints, it seems to increase them.”

However, he said, every temptation overcome through prayer and total reliance on God gives strength to one's commitment to celibacy.

“As the poet Rabindranath Tagore said, chastity is a richness that proceeds from the abundance of love and not from a lack of love,” Father Cantalamessa concluded, “and this happens both in the consecrated life as in marriage.”

Father Raymond J. de Souza writes from Rome.