There are people who smile when they hear chastity mentioned. Theirs is a joyless and dead smile, the product of a sick mind. And they tell you: 'Hardly anyone believes in that any more!' One of the things I used to say to the young men who accompanied me when I used to go, so very many years ago, to the slums and hospitals on the outskirts of Madrid was: 'As you know, there is a mineral kingdom; then, on a higher plane, a vegetable kingdom, where we find life as well as existence. Higher still there is the animal kingdom, comprised of beings endowed, for the most part, with sensitivity and movement.'

Then I would explain to them, in a manner that may not have been very scientific, although it made the point, that we ought to establish another kingdom, the hominal kingdom, made up of human beings. This is because rational creatures possess a wonderful intelligence, a spark of the Divine Wisdom which enables them to reason on their own. And they also have the marvellous gift of freedom whereby they can accept or reject one thing or another, as they see fit.

Now in this kingdom of human beings (I would tell them, drawing on the experience gained from all my priestly work) for normal people, sex comes in fourth or fifth place. First come spiritual ideals, with each person choosing his own. Next, a whole series of matters that concern ordinary men and women: their father and mother, home, children and so on. After that, one's job or profession. Only then, in fourth or fifth place, does the sexual impulse come in.

For this reason, whenever I have met people who make sex the central topic of their conversation and interests, I have felt they were abnormal, wretched people, even sick perhaps. And I would add (and the young people to whom I was speaking would burst out laughing at this point) that these poor things made me feel as much pity as would the sight of a deformed child with a big, enormous head, one yard round. They are unhappy individuals. For our part, besides praying for them, we should feel a brotherly compassion for them because we want them to be cured of their pitiful illness. But what is quite clear is that they are in no way more manly or womanly than people who don't go around obsessed with sex.