
Choosing Decision Virtues
When I began developing the plans for the Virtue Works Media VIRTUE LITERACY PROJECT, I felt urged by God to frame this work around the spiritual strengths paradigm of Dr. Richard Johnson, PhD. This paradigm describes 30 virtues that can flourish in our personalities to make us spiritually strong. These strengths are categorized in habit groups based on how virtue typically operates in us. I always struggled with the fact that chastity, such an important virtue, was not named in any of the habit groups. Upon further reflection, I realized why. Chastity is a synthesis of ALL the decision-focused virtues. Chastity is a multi-faceted CHOICE.How to Empower Virtues of Choice?
In a society that now could make folks from Sodom and Gomorrah blush, how do we even reintroduce the notion of virtue? How do we move away from sex as a recreational sport, for which a fetus is simply an inconvenient parasite … which is easily removed at a local clinic? We need to get inside people’s heads. The power of sleazy novels, explicit movies and “hot” music has normalized impulse-based, pleasure-enslaved behavior. These SAME cultural touchpoint mechanisms are the path back to virtue’s true freedom. I have gathered a very special collection of recommended books and films that speak to the hearts and minds of young adolescents and teens. Young people are the most vulnerable age group affected by our culture’s celebration of sexual vice. These are NOT teaching guide books. They are NOT a curriculum. They teach as Jesus taught: through the power of parable. They implicitly imbue the notion of chastity, and gently empower the practical decision virtues that make chastity possible … through the power of story.
Start a conversation in which chastity is framed as a positive lifestyle of proactive choices, not a restrictive rule to get in the way of fun. Our youth face an onslaught of creative messaging that is selling them slavery to pleasure impulses … like it’s a good thing. Abortion is the bloody collateral damage of a society that stokes self-serving sexual appetites. Cultivating the internal virtues that dispose us for the choice of chastity is the long-term solution that will make huge strides toward ending abortion. Books, movies, and music that show, rather than tell, the true freedom of virtue and chastity, enable young people to imagine and internalize the goodness of it.
Imagining Healthy and Holy Sexuality
Pope Saint John Paul II understood the power of the arts to propose, rather than impose, faith and virtue … so that people will be open and more disposed to embrace it. His incredible Theology of the Body gave us the blueprint for healthy and holy human sexuality. Over time, more and more writers and visual storytellers, inspired by his genius, are crafting creative and compelling stories that bring his philosophy and anthropology … alive.Copyright 2018 Cathy Gilmore
Image credit: By Jasmine Wallace Carter (2018), Pexels.com
About the Author

Cathy Gilmore
Cathy Gilmore is an award-winning author, educator, and founder of the Virtue Literacy Project, an innovative approach to family virtue formation. Follow Cathy on Twitter @PowerofParable.
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