Archive, Conversation with
Conversation with Iben Tranholm
This interview was published in the Danish paper Udfordringen on 6. December 2024.
Now that even ordinary grocery stores keep sex toys on their shelves, it may be difficult to imagine why anyone should be interested in living chastely. Yet the Catholic bishop of Trondheim, Erik Varden, swims against the current by means of his new book Chastity: Reconciliation of the Senses, which has just been published in Norwegian translation.
In the book he reflects on the value of chastity and defines its place in our modern world. He stresses that chastity is not about a suppression of sexuality; it is about channeling it towards a higher end. He contends that sexuality needs a structure to grow on in order to flourish. From the bishop’s point of view it seems, paradoxically, that chastity can lead to greater joy and wholeness in sexual being. Udfordringen has talked to the bishop, asking why chastity may be relevant in a world obsessed with sex.
What motivated you to write a book about chastity, which hardly anyone now practises?
– I don’t agree with the contention that chastity is not practiced. On the contrary, it seems to me that it is undergoing a kind of renaissance. Think, for example of Jason and Crystallina Evert’s Chastity Project in the US, that has a great following. At World Youth Day in Lisbon, Jason was welcomed as if he were a rock star. Or take Exodus90, followed by thousands of young men worldwide, also in Scandinavia: this programme proposes Christian exercise in self-control and purity, offering a kind of manual for a healthy negotiation of the senses. So something’s going on. That said, my chief motivation for writing the book was the superficial tone one often encounters in discussions about sexuality and affectivity. It irritates me that the Catholic Church is mostly caricatured as either a stern moral judge standing in a posture of perpetual admonition, saying ‘No!’ to everything, or as an institution that simply floats along with the currents of our times. For it has an infinitely more nuance and profound contribution to make.
Where does the ideal of chastity come from? Was it introduced by Christianity?
– The chaste ideal has roots that reach back to the beginning of our civilisation. At first it was not principally associated with sexual morality. The old Romans used ‘castus’, which gives us the English ‘chaste’, as a synonym for the word ‘integer’, from which we derive ‘integrity’. To live chastely, then, is to strive for wholeness; it is to try to gather the various parts of one’s personality, temperament, history, and vocation into a harmonious, life-giving whole. The process is many-faceted, of course; relationships are important to it. The moral theology of the Middle Ages focused on the relationship between man and woman. Increasingly chastity was understood as a feminine virtue. And so the notion of chastity grew narrower. That is why I have set myself the task of shedding new life on the potential of chastity, not just as a moral term, but as a way of being human, a way of helping us live and thrive more fully.
How do you think sexual liberation has affected us? Do you consider sexual liberation somehing that has in fact damaged our attitude to sex?
– Above all, I think we should try to step outside a mindset that sees reality in terms of black and white, where we either loudly condemn or clap our hands with abandon. Human experience rarely fits into simple pigeon holes. That holds not least for sexual experience, which is complex. Freud has helped us to greater insight here, had we not realised it already. Speaking of ‘sexual liberation’ we slap a problematic label onto a complex cultural development. In fact, the term rather undermines itself. For it is striking that the same cultural context that strove for ‘sexual liberation’ also speaks of ‘sexual addiction’. It was doubtless positive that some of the taboos attaching to sexuality were lifted; that we came to realise how important sexuality is in human life; that we reached a better understanding of the instincts behind it. At the same time something was lost. Today we have almost entirely lost the sense of the mystery of sexuality, its sacred dimension. This duality was central in Antiquity and in the Middle Ages. We find it in Scripture, too. I think we would benefit from rediscovering it.
Is chastity the same as sexual abstinence? Or is it about the maturing of character?
– It is astonishing how many assume that chastity and celibacy are synonymous. They are not. Celibacy is a special vocation; whereas chastity is a universal human virtue. To live chastely is to pursue a responsible approach to sensuality and sexuality.
Does chastity only concern singles, or can it also be practised in marriage?
– Absolutely. The goal is to be freed from the tendency to see other human beings, be it one’s spouse, as an object or a possession, to let go of the illusion that I am the only subject of consequence in my universe and that other people exist purely to satisfy my needs and desires. To become chase is to learn to look upon the world with respect, cured of possessiveness. That presupposes an effort to see my own cravings in perspective, not to let them govern everything.
Denmark was the first country in the world to legalise porn in 1969. Our is a nation renowned for its sexual liberation. This aura attaches to all of Scandinavia. What is your chief message to a culture such as ours? And how do you think it might be heard in a culture that considers free sex an untouchable and ‘holy’ principle?
– I think the culture we live in is transmitting its own message to itself. Has all this sexual liberation made us happier, freer, rid of complexes? Through the internet, pornography has become an ever-present part of everyday life. Many women and men, young and old (not to mention children), experience pornography as a net that keeps them trapped. Any pastor, any psychologist knows that. Can we, then, honestly refer to it as an expression of ‘freedom’? As for ‘free sex’ as a sacred cow: what are we to say about the increasing number of people who declare themselves ‘asexual’, fed up with libido? Miranda France wrote not so long ago in the TLS: ‘More and more young people are opting for sexit. Where centuries of prohibition failed, society has finally found the way to dampen teenage appetite: sexual saturation.’ Now, doesn’t that give food for thought? France’s observation indicates that it is in fact highly relevant to speak of chastity as a dynamically affirmative reality.
May it also strengthen society more broadly if more people practise chastity? If so, how?
– Absolutely. I said that chastity principally stands for integrity. Looking at the world we live in, who would doubt that a greater proportion of women and men embodying real, intelligent, fearless integrity would be a much-needed good?
Gwen John, Young Woman in a Red Shawl, York Art Gallery