On Friday, September 29th, the EWTN Vatican Bureau hosted Roman Nights, an event that brings together people of faith from Rome to discuss life, culture, and religion.
EWTN Vatican Bureau Chief Andreas Thonhauser welcomed the participants to the 10th edition of Roman Nights. Roman Nights brings people together from various walks of life, whether visiting Rome or actually living in the Eternal City: diplomats, business people, academics, and often many who walk the very streets of Vatican City.
The theme chosen for the month of September was “chastity.” The event attempted to address the profound questions that the contemporary world raises with regard to this virtue.
One of the speakers was Sister Anna Mirijam Kaschner, a participant in the ongoing Synod on synodality and religious sister from Denmark, who presently serves as the General Secretary and Press Officer of the Nordic Bishops’ Conference. Making her vows in 2001, she contextualized her vow of chastity as a religious sister in a world that doesn’t even know how a nun lives.
She said, “During the journey of my life as a religious sister, I’ve had to discuss this topic several times. Now, I’m living in a very secularized country in Denmark, where people don’t even know what a religious sister is. So I meet people on the street, and they will ask me, are you a nun? Yes, I am. Are you married? No. Do you have children? No. So this is my situation. I had to find a way for myself in my religious life that chastity is not only about sexuality, something I don’t use in my everyday life, but that there must be something more in it.”
Bishop Erik Varden, a Norwegian Catholic Bishop, Trappist monk, and acclaimed spiritual writer, was another speaker. Bishop Varden has recently written a book on chastity, which will be released next week, and he presented it during Roman Nights. He also emphasized that “Chastity stands for so much more than we normally assume. Many people, including those who should know better, often assume that chastity is the same as celibacy, which is not the case. Chastity is ultimately not reducible simply to sexual ethics, and it’s certainly not reducible just to erotic abstinence. It stands for a way of being human and for a way of being whole.”
Another participant in Roman Nights, Vincenzo Bassi, who serves as the President of the European Catholic Family Associations, also spoke about the crucial role of chastity in family life. Highlighting a pervasive problem, Bassi said, “There are so many problems. I can tell you now that there is consumerism, which lets us think that we can consume everything. So when you are at home, and of course with your kids, you cannot speak so directly about this topic. You just give examples. You speak about the fact that you must not consume relations. You need engagement because, through engagement, you can become happy.”
Three walks of life: nun, bishop, layman. Chastity in any and every state of life is a virtue that provides a way of being human, a way of being whole. It is a virtue that the masses have forgotten; thus, its recovery is now more urgent than ever before.
Edited by Jacob Stein.
