In the previous chapter we explained the value of courtship and sexual continence, seen not as repression, but as the ordering of values. Such ordering cannot be carried out by anyone concerned with only immediate gains, the bird in hand of pleasurable sensations. This hedonistic attitude, obsessed with the easy attainment of satisfying impressions, leads to the glorification of premarital relations to such a point that the pressure by certain communications media along this line leads many young persons to think of virginity as frustration – as recounted by Dr. Affemann.

At this moment of affective and spiritual confusion it is well to underline strongly that the important thing in life, that which gives dignity, is not being narrow or broad minded, but knowing where to go. I do not determine my path by my way of thinking; it is, to a great extent, indicated by my personal reality which has to develop; my duty is to lead it to its goal.

Conscious of this, let us ask: does the sexually stimulative climate of today’s society and the consequent dismissal of the highest values favor correct development? This is the decisive question, for even if all public opinion, or at least all that passes as such, leans towards a massive cult of eroticism this does not constitute a solid criterium of action. Obsession with erotica neither builds one nor makes one happy; rather it unbalances one and makes one neurotic.

Years ago, Doctor Gregorio Marañón made this forecast:

Marañón was a liberal-minded humanist who opened paths to medical research, developed historical studies, and was constantly on the lookout in society for the progress of events. From this privileged position he pointed out that the future of modern man lies in the return to eternal values, that is, the values which, by their high quality, have the power to last and be valid for all times.

Amongst these values, here we shall point out three that concern human love: inner freedom, modesty and marital unity.

Training for love is training for freedom, for the capacity to be genuinely free in the practice of sexuality. Learning this art is the great task of courtship and marriage. No public law can decree this form of freedom; we must strive to conquer it, which striving requires accustoming ourselves to choosing in virtue not of the whims of the moment, but of the ideal we have set ourselves.

Discovering the authentic ideal of all truly human life is another and none too easy task, to be tackled in every process of training for love. Without an ideal suited to one’s real vocation, no freedom is possible. Nowadays so much is said about breaking free from norms and taboos, that more than ever absolute clarity is needed about the ideal which must drive and guide our life. To free oneself from every kind of moral tie in order to immerse oneself in the well of obsession for immediate gains is grotesque. The word "freedom" is used as a "talisman" to take advantage of its present prestige and to impress the unwary. If the guiding task to be carried out is more than pure manipulation, it is essential to clarify what freedom consists in, its forms, and which of these is the highest and most exemplary.

Modesty today is too often ridiculed as "straight-laced" and considered typical of people who are against everything physical or bodily. "The body is not bad, it is said; all its parts have the same value and it is fine to exhibit them and enjoy their beauty." In this regard it is necessary to determine clearly on what plane of reality we move when we say that the body is not evil: biological or that of personal interaction. Otherwise, we explain nothing and confuse everything, as says the Little Prince: "Grown-ups mix everything, confuse everything.". The first rule of thought is to distinguish what is different, separate what is contradictory, join what is combinable.

In the biological plane obviously all the parts of the body carry out their function and have no need to be ashamed of doing so. There is no sense in hiding any of them as if it were out of place and had no reason for being. In the hospital where the body is analyzed and treated in its biological aspect, one spontaneously shows each of its parts making no distinctions and with no need to blush. Nakedness in this case is ethically neutral; it is neither good nor bad but simply useful for therapeutic effects.

But to step up a level, the body plays an expressive role in the web of human life where it does indeed hold ethical value, that is, acquires positive or negative meaning as regards the full realization of the person. For modern philosophical anthropology the body is the word of the spirit, the place where one develops himself or herself as a person. It is not simply a tool that man owns and can use at will. Far from being reduced to an object, the body constitutes a facet of the person, the privileged place where one expresses oneself and takes shape. When one person embraces another not only do two bodies intertwine, but two people establish a field of mutual affection. Two people joining sexually do not merely carry out sexual intercourse, but create a very intense interpersonal relationship.

In sexual relations, the body plays an extraordinarily expressive role. It is not a simple trampoline for progressing to something else, as when a news item reported. Here the body intervenes, but as a plain messenger who disappears before the importance of what has just been said. Though I talk to you for two hours at the end you may be incapable of saying what color my eyes are; you have not noticed, because my body was only a means of communication. In the amorous relationship, however, the body passes to the foreground, taking the honors as the main character; it becomes valuable and therefore is seriously affected by the sense or nonsense of what is being done.

What is being carried out is an intimate action. Being your intimate friend does not mean I have to go outside of myself and merge with you, as Manuel Machado wished when in a poem he confessed to his loved one: "I should like to be liquid, pour myself into your veins and lose myself in you." But if one merges with a loved one, one stops loving him or her, because one has lost one’s personal identity. Nor is it intimacy to go outside oneself and lose oneself in the other.

Intimacy means simply and deeply that you and I establish a common field of play, in which the division between the here and the there, the within and the without, the mine and the yours is surpassed. If we are intimate, you are not outside me, nor opposite me. We are both in a field of interplay in which we act spontaneously, sincerely, with an open spirit, confidence and fidelity. This fluid, generous, fruitful, sincere exchange is intimacy.

Intimacy is a field of encounter then, of an intermingling of two life ambits or spheres. As all encounter is a source of light, by finding each other we learn who we are, what ideals motivate our life, what is the sense of our existence. Everything that happens in private is clear to those who establish an ambit of encounter, but not to those who remain outside it. In consequence, exhibiting what happens within that private area lacks all sense.

Every human action always has a meaning and, in certain cases, may also make sense. A sex relationship holds meaning for those who experience it, giving them, for example, a certain satisfaction. But if either has created an ambit of love with someone else and has promised to be faithful to that commitment, the sex act has no sense because it means giving preference to a lower value over another that is far higher. It has no sense; yet it has meaning.

For those who are quite outside and contemplate it only to satisfy their curiosity or take sheer erotic excitement, it has neither meaning nor sense. It would be taken as a means to an end that is alien to their human relationships. But humans in their acts – above all, those which touch the most sensitive areas – can never be taken as a means for an end; they are an end in themselves. This was made quite plain by Kant in his Critique of Practical Reason. Lowering what is an end in itself to the condition of means to extraneous ends means literally "prostitution" and is the essence of degradation.

To observe others in an intimate act is unbecoming of an adult simply because it makes no sense. It may not be forbidden, but it makes no sense because the act has meaning only for the people performing it, not for those viewing it from outside. To observe this makes no sense, and this nonsense is not lessened by the fact that such act gives pleasure or what is being contemplated holds a certain beauty. Beauty and pleasure certainly constitute two forms of value, but all assumption of values must be made within a meaningful context. A young mother on a train breastfeeding her child performs an intimate action inspired from start to finish by a spirit of shelter and protection. This is a living picture of motherhood, the figure preferred by artists who capture the noblest and most significant of human spheres or ambits. This is shaped by the spirit which as the origin of the creative force transfigures all gestures, glorifies the female form, and embellishes it with an aura of respect. Everything is brimming with sense in the gesture of the humble mother.

In contrast, despite the attraction which an erotic exhibition may have in certain cases and for certain people, in the end it does not incite true admiration and pleasure, but commiseration and sadness. Only when an uprooted action really constitutes the plastic expression necessary to a dramatic event can it achieve sense and a certain nobleness.

To protest meaning is the goal of modesty. An action endowed with full, not just partial, sense is a modest action, because sense gathers up actions, assembles them in a structure and thereby shelters them. The logic of degradation runs parallel to the logic of the annulment of structures and the loss of sense. Sense is lost when privacy is exhibited and withers.

We consider as intimate parts of the body those that play an expressive role in acts of sexual intimacy. In themselves such parts are neither good nor bad, but simply perform the function assigned them by nature. This function is intimate, integrated in acts which make no sense in the public sphere, but only in the private sphere of the dual relationship to which biological creativeness and a good part of amorous creativeness is entrusted. This private nature of the sex relationship is in contradiction not to the tendency to create a home life that human sexuality should have, but to public exhibition which is quite different.

This makes it possible to understand positively what modesty means. It does not mean priggishness or irrational attachment to prudish customs; rather it means respect for a very significant facet of humanity which loses its deepest sense when exposed to a look from outside, objectifying, degrading. In one’s life there are relationships and acts which are eminently creative, and whose strict meaning cannot really be understood other than from within – and, in consequence, by those carrying them out. To proffer them to the eager stare of those who cannot understand their intimacy is to dishonor them.

Being modest is equivalent to defending one’s dignity from all attempts at sadistic belittlement. We know well that a stare is very possessive and constitutes a kind of touch from a distance. "Let me see," we say, in order to take charge of something, or "Seeing is believing". Seeing is like feeling the reality of something, and to a certain extent taking possession.

As a condition for keeping his recently rescued loved one, Eurydice, Orpheus could not look at her face for one whole night. In literature and mythology, night means a trial period; look means putting at stake the desire to possess; the face is the place where a person’s whole being vibrates. Hence, not looking at the face means relinquishing the desire to possess a person, who should never be the object of possession.

Showing the most particular, most private and personal parts of a body implies letting oneself be possessed. Protecting oneself from stares does not mean priggishness or subjection to irrational religious precepts, as sometimes is commonly affirmed. It responds to the conviction that sex relations and the related aspects of the body hold a special meaning, not given in the plane of pure anatomy.

Modesty tries not to ignore sex, to leave it aside or repress it, but to value it properly and give it its right order. Modesty does not take as its goal hiding a certain percentage of the corporeal surface, but safeguarding one from indiscriminate, disrespectful, manipulative and possessive use of one’s creative strength.

Now it can be seen better how the practice of exhibitionism, under the pretext of "liberating" one from norms and taboos, is a flagrant contradiction, because it means submitting to a process of debasement of human life which can lead only to enslavement.

Sex occupies an important part in the whole structure that is human life and within this structure acquires its personal meaning. Broken away, it loses sense and is prostituted. All exhibition suggests an act of surrender and, since personal surrender cannot be done collectively, public exhibition constitutes a mere game with gratifying stimulae. This trite game is light years away from any creative personal relationship, indeed, in the same measure it manifests degradation.

Collectively to watch pornographic scenes on cinema or television screens is to expose oneself to this degradation. Some say that it is not degrading because it does not intrude unfairly on privacy, since the actor consented to being filmed in acts of intimacy, but they consent for money for the purchase of their services so that formal prostitution is coupled with the degradation of all exhibitionism. Because it is prostituted, pornography produces only tremendous sadness. It is as difficult to imagine a smiling pornographic picture as it is a happy rock singer. There is nothing but harshness, gloominess, ill humor and, at heart, bitterness.

It is time to define eroticism and pornography more precisely. Sometimes it is said that whereas pornography is crude, gross and vulgar, eroticism has a beautiful countenance, and is sweet and harmonic, charming and attractive. If, by eroticism the sexual aspect of human love is understood then, of course, it has these qualities. But the eroticism in the media is something quite different. It is a breaking away of sexuality from its natural context of human love. As we have seen, every breakingaway is violent in itself, apart from any morals or religion. This form of eroticism may appear in a refined manner, resorting to the aesthetics of the ellipsis, or brutally showing every minor detail of the most intimate sex acts. Such unashamed exhibition is usually called pornography. It should, however, be emphasized that pornography is but a form of eroticism. Indeed it is not the most dangerous kind, because it bares its vulgar primitivism and banality which repulses the normally sensitive person.

What is really dangerous in eroticism does not lie so much in the exhibition of intimate acts as in its point of departure: the decision to take sexuality as a means to attain satisfactions and leave aside the connection with friendship, the projection of love into the home and the fruitfulness thereof.

A literary or cinematographic work that shows intimate scenes, but also the danger of erotic breakaway from sexuality, is not destructive. It is, in fact, a lesson for those with sufficient education not to allow themselves to be fascinated by crudeness, and with the capacity to rise above the work and capture its overall message. But works that exalt the break between sex and love are destructive in the maximum, even if they do not exhibit indecencies.

What is serious is that at present important communications media have replaced quality literature with cultural by-products which attempt to substitute the lack of talent with stimulants. This low level culture exercises an extremely harmful influence on people, especially those less cultured. There is need here first of all for quality, a high level of culture, and humanistic authenticity, because if human themes are treated at the right level then the ethical plane is gained by that very fact.

The ethical plane begins when creativeness, correctly understood, is put into play, namely, when relations of productive encounter are created, as happens in the process of ecstasy. In contrast, the vertigo process wipes out the possibility of the encounter and reduces to the minimum the human capacity to create high forms of unity. With this it destroys real culture, which is to say, everything one does to establish fruitful forms of unity with what is real.

Everything said about human love has a very positive objective, namely, to guide one towards fulfillment and happiness, towards accomplishing vocation and mission, towards personal authenticity. Such authenticity and fulfillment are achieved only when one has sufficient inner freedom to choose always that which leads to the realization of the ideal of unity. Man may establish very different and widely ranging forms of unity with the realities around him. The art of living consists in discerning which forms of unity are the highest and carrying them out in life.

Married life, properly understood, is a school of unity, a place suitable for founding relevant forms of unity. This is where its value lies.

It is a pity that so much is spoken about the problems that arise in married life, of the conflicts that tear it apart, of the ways out offered for spiritual ruptures of the married couple. Hardly any time or skill is dedicated to pointing out the magnificence of the forms of unity that married people are called to realize between themselves and the surrounding society.

This noble task corresponds to both civil and religious marriages. In both, the promise to devote life to establishing together outstanding forms of union is made; they differ only in quality.

In a Christian religious marriage, for example, this quality is set by a pattern to be copied. Those young people who take each other as spouse before God’s minister and the assembly of believers who receive their love and their words, promise to create between them a form of unity so high that each day it becomes more like the unity that Jesus held with the Father and with men. In virtue of this unity, the Saviour gave his life for friends and enemies. "A church wedding" is not, therefore, just a ceremony, but places the requirement to live in unity very high on the list of creating high forms of union in life.

We know from the Gospel that Jesus summarized his entire life on the one value of unity. "In this you will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another". "When two or more are joined in my name, I shall be in their midst." "May they be one, Father, as you and I are." Unity is the hidden pearl we must buy at the cost of everything we own. It is the ideal to which we must adhere. When we reach it, we achieve our fulfillment as men and women and become the spokesmen for the whole universe. God created the world from love which means making men free willingly to return to their origins and give glory to the Creator. The wheat glorifies God when it ripens and gives nourishment, the star in following its orbit, the flower when exuding perfume. All give glory to the Creator, but they do not know this. The one who knows this is the human person. We know that we give glory to God by being true to our destiny, which is to establish valuable forms of unity. By truly joining one to the other and to God, we actively enter into the grand circuit of creative love. Thus, we return to our origins, become true, attain maximum dignity and achieve full development and authenticity; and with us is joined the entire universe to which we give voice.

When two young people at the altar promise everlasting faithfulness and proclaim before the community of believers their wish to establish a union similar to that which Jesus had with the Father and with men, something very great takes place in the universe: the circle of love which brought it into existence is closed and everything takes on its final and definitive meaning. The flowers the bride carries in her arms and which adorn the church, the wax candles that light and give warmth and light, the metals which give the liturgical act an expression of strength, the very architectural structure with its space and capacity to shelter, all are assembled in a flow of return to the Creator, and so take on full meaning and beauty.

If each person, in the status he or she has embraced, follows this path of unity with perseverance, then their lives will overflow with joy, because joy, as we saw, "always announces the triumph of life" (Bergson). There is no greater triumph than dedication to doing good. Goethe used to recommend: "Do not delay in putting into play the forces of good." The Apostle Paul exhorted the first Christians: "Tire not of doing good." Supreme good comes with the establishment of the most valuable forms of unity. This task gives full meaning to our existence, carrying it out must be our ideal. How to do this day by day is a lengthy subject for discussion elsewhere. For now I will make one final consideration.

From all we have considered it can be deduced that the life of love is not easy: it requires training and effort, but is worthwhile. It fills us with joy and light so that life becomes a feast, albeit difficult. On the other hand, if there is no true love, existence becomes harsh and gloomy. "He who is untouched by love walks in darkness", wrote Plato. This darkness invades us when marital unity is broken and divorce is sought – a desperate solution that may or may not appear to be necessary in certain cases, but which always constitutes an immense loss.

Now, finally, at the summit of our study of the magnificence of genuine love, the present day exaltation of eroticism can be seen to be so paltry and wretched that it is painful. There is no need to subject it to lengthy criticism; the best criticism is to confront it with the correct view of love. This brings into relief its incompleteness, its incapacity to establish a human life of co-existence, its falseness, its fantasy.

In the deluge of erotic publicity, the best solution for retaining inner freedom is to experience the creation of valuable forms of union, thereby entering into the magnetic field of real love and glimpsing its magnificence. Once this value is seen close up, any offer of false substitutes will lose its power of persuasion.

"Love has such power," observed Saint Teresa, "that we forget our contentment to content Whom we love." This forgetting of oneself in order to serve others is the essence of generosity. From generosity springs all that is great, noble and beautiful embellishing human life. Directing life unselfishly is the optimum path towards becoming a full person and being truly happy. For "Real magnificence," said Jacques Leclerc, "that of God himself, does not consist in ruling, nor in possessing, nor in bedazzling, but in loving, in saving, in uplifting and making live."

Gustav Thibon stressed the need to link marital love with friendship, beyond mere passion:

This marital love linked to friendship is inspired and upheld by the common tendency towards an ideal of high level of life which frees those who love each other from seclusion within an egoism. Marcello Peretti underlines this clearly:

In Auschwitz, Viktor Frankl experienced what a true love relationship can mean in order to overcome an extremely painful situation. His account bears the title: "When there is nothing more left".

2. One method for carrying out this type of training was explained in my works: Análisis estético de obras literarias (Madrid: Narcea, 1982); Análisis literario y formación humanística (Madrid: Escuela Española, 1986); Obras literarias de hoy (with cassettes and leaflet) (Madrid: Edit. CS, 1982).

3. Cf. Der Mensch vor der Frage nach dem Sinn, p. 94.

4. Cf. La sexualidad en la vida de los jóvenes, p. 87.

5. Op. cit., p. 88.

6. Ibid., 89-90.

7. Ibid., p. 91.

8. Ibid., p. 92.

9. Ibid., p. 91.

10. Cf. Sobre el amor humano (Madrid: Rialp, 1961), pp. 149, 153.

11. Cf. "Sex Education as Education for Love", in La educación sexual (Madrid: Herder, 1975), pp. 188-189.

12. Cf. Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy (New York: Pocket Book, e.d.), pp. 56-61.