How would you explain to an 18yr old Catholic the advantages of remaining a virgin until marriage?
There really are no advantages to waiting for marriage, considering that there are happy couples that never marry and that live together as though they are married. You could put an emphasis on waiting for financial stability, i.e. the ability to support a child, before engaging in sexual activity- if only for the off chance that the girl might become pregnant. Since she’s on the pill, and because of the ready availability of condoms, even this does not seem like a terribly great argument. Honestly, unless one is serious about their religion, I think it better to experience it before marriage while still young and virile- and most of all to ensure that when one does find the person they want to stick with for the rest of their life, they will have a much better idea of how to please them.
Some thoughts: From LDS scripture: Jacob 2:28 28 For I, the Lord God, delight in the chastity of women. And whoredoms are an abomination before me; thus saith the Lord of Hosts. There is one . . . oil that is so precious that without adding it to the other oils no wick will burn. Without it, the light from all the others will dim and go out. This is the oil of chastity. What would happen if we truly treated our bodies as temples? The result would be a dramatic increase in chastity, modesty,, and a similar decrease in the problems of pornography and abuse, for we would regard the body, like the temple, as a sacred sanctuary of the Spirit. Just as no unclean thing may enter the temple, we would be vigilant to keep impurity of any sort from entering the temple of our bodies. Moderation and appropriateness should govern all of our physical desires. A loving Heavenly Father has given us physical beauties and pleasures “both to please the eye and to gladden the heart” (D&C 59:18), but with t
