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Chapter 30. Sixth Commandment: Marital Fidelity • 411
guarantee successful married life, as has been revealed in the painful
experience of many, and is detrimental to future commitment.
Polygamy (having more than one spouse at a time) violates the
understanding of the equal dignity that a man and woman bring to mar-
riage and contradicts the unitive purpose of marriage.
Attempts to justify same-sex unions or relationships or to give them
matrimonial status also contradict God’s plan—as revealed from the
beginning both in nature and in Revelation—for marriage to be a life-
long union of a man and a woman.
1. What is the divine plan for marriage?
Each of the two sexes is an image of the power and ten-
derness of God, with equal dignity though in a different
way. The
union of man and woman
in marriage is a way of
imitating in the flesh the Creator’s generosity and fecun-
dity. (CCC, no. 2335)
2. What is the link between charity and chastity?
Charity is the
form
of all the virtues. Under its influence,
chastity appears as a school of the gift of the person. Self-
mastery is ordered to the gift of self. Chastity leads him
who practices it to become a witness to his neighbor of
God’s fidelity and loving kindness. (CCC, no. 2346)
3. What is the marital covenant?
The covenant which spouses have freely entered into
entails faithful love. It imposes on them the obligation to
keep their marriage indissoluble. (CCC, no. 2397)
FROM THE CATECHISM