section_path: Social, moral and cultural issues/Sexual morality/Chastity and marriage
section_name: Chastity and marriage
paragraph_text: Chastity and marriage
  
  Catholic teaching regarding sexuality calls for a practice of chastity according to their state of life, with a focus on maintaining the spiritual and bodily integrity of the human person.
  
  In the church's teaching, sexual activity should be reserved to married couples without artificial birth control; marriage is considered the only appropriate context whether in a sacramental marriage among Christians or in a natural marriage where one or both spouses are unbaptized. Even in romantic relationships, particularly engagement to marriage, partners are called to practise continence, in order to test mutual respect and fidelity.
  
  Chastity in marriage requires, in particular, conjugal fidelity and protecting the fecundity of marriage. The couple must foster trust and honesty as well as spiritual and physical intimacy. Sexual activity must always be open to the transmission of new life; the church calls this the procreative significance. It must likewise always bring a couple together in love; the church calls this the unitive significance. Artificial contraception and certain other sexual practices are not permitted, although natural family planning methods are permitted to provide healthy spacing between births, or to postpone children for a just reason.
  
  Church teachings about sexuality have become an issue of increasing controversy in the Western world, especially after the close of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, due to changing cultural attitudes described as the sexual revolution. Pope Francis said in 2015 that he is worried that the church has grown "obsessed" with issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage and contraception, and for prioritizing moral doctrines over helping the poor and marginalized.