Nature et virginité (2ᵃ ed.): Considérations physiologiques sur le célibat religieux

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DOCX & EPUB are a DeepL Pro NMT machine English translation.

The great Édouard Hugon, O.P., in his "Les vœux de religion contre les attaques actuelles," cited Dr. Dufieux's work, saying "il y a là certaines pages très scientifiques, très belles, qui n’ont pas vieilli. " Fr. Henri-Dominique Lacordaire, O.P., also was impressed by it; his letter to the author is included in the beginning of the book.

I've read a few parts of it, and I'm very impressed by the unity of faith and reason in his work. He counters anti-Catholic objections that the Church's teachings on celibacy, virginity, fasting, and abstinence are all unhealthy, on psychological, physiological, and even demographic levels. I learned that even the Druids honored perpetual virginity (p. 415), and that physicians/nutritionists from ancient Greece up to modern times all considered temperance/sobriety the foundational principle of hygiene, arguing that sacrifice is natural for man (unlike for animals)! He even mentions the Trappists' diet and explains grace and nature. How far modern medicine has regressed since the mid-19th century!

p. 444:

Il est étrange, après cela, de rencontrer des hommes qui repoussent la privation, et qui font un crime à l'église romaine, d'exalter l'abstinence et le jeûne! Cette révolte contre la foi, n'est-elle pas aussi une révolte contre la raison et la science? *

cf. John 9:27, in which the blind Pharisees' hatred of the faith made them doubt the blind man's empirical-scientific account of how he was cured: "Dixi vobis [stulti!] jam, et audistis: quod iterum vultis audire?* "

A Nobel Prize winner in medicine spoke about a recent medical advance allowing one to eat as much as one wants without any adverse health effects! This is the deplorable state of modern science!

pp. 46-52 (PDF pp. 66-72): "De l'isolement des sexes."

p. 441 (PDF p. 461) quotes Hippocrates (De Morbis Vulgaribus~~, lib. 6~~Ἐπιδημίαι l. 6 c. 4 §18): "Taking care of one's health is not to eat to satiety." (ἄσκησις ὑγιής, ἀκορίη τροφῆς, ἀοκνίη πόνων. = "Healthy discipline, not gluttonizing, not avoiding work.")

pp. 514-548 (PDF pp. 534-568) are on the relationship between virginity and marriage, "de l'influence combinee du mariage et de la virginité sur la propagation de l'espèce ".

PDF pp. 553ff. prove the thesis that the celibate priesthood increases the human race.

PDF pp. 417-18, § "Unanimous feeling of the people concerning the unworthiness (indignité) of the copulatory act.":

When certain things are regarded as impure by all peoples, in all countries and in all times, it is because they are truly so; for, as we have already established, a sentiment cannot become so generalized, and be perpetuated from age to age, if it does not really belong to human nature, if it is not the expression of truth. It is evident, therefore, that if religion has been called upon to interfere in marriages in all countries and in all times, it has been called upon by the great voice of nature.

There is something sweet, mysterious and holy in the appearance of a young virgin that cannot be defined. It is like a perfume that exhales sweetly and deliciously, and which produces in our soul an inexpressible feeling of freshness, purity, and tenderness to which we allow ourselves to be drawn with an affectionate abandon. Virginity is like a fresh and pure flower which we fear to wither; it recommends admiration and respect. So when we see a young bride being led to the nuptial bed, we feel a certain emotion that almost resembles regret, because when she wakes up as a wife, she will no longer be intact, she will no longer be pure, she will no longer be a virgin. Thus, the performance of the conjugal act, even if legitimate, carries with it an idea of defilement and impurity. Everywhere, and in every language, a virgin has been called pure , intact and unblemished ; everywhere, and in every language, a wife has not been judged worthy of these names. Why? Because the act of copulation has always been considered a stain which destroys the purity of innocence, a blight which removes modesty from the virginal brow and places shame upon it, an impurity which defiles and degrades that which is heavenly and divine.

Why God seals a virgin's womb with a hymen, claustrum virginale : "to make us conclude […] that the conjugal act was [un]necessary" (pp. 35-6, PDF pp. 55-6):

The organization of the woman furnishes us with another interesting observation, and one which is especially apt to add new force to the proofs we have just given, in favour of our opinion. At the entrance of the vagina, in the virgin girl, there is a small membranous organ, usually semi-lunar, which closes the orifice in such a way as to leave only a narrow opening, destined for the flow of the menses. This organ, which is called in science membranne hymen, and which theologians know under the name of claustrum virginale , is really the partition of virginity, that is to say the barrier which closes the entrance of the copulatory organs; by it the organs of the woman are truly sealed; the Creator does not seem to have willed that it should be possible to penetrate it without doing violence to nature; real violence, since, in order to accomplish the first act, it is necessary to break this membrane which is a testimony of innocence; violence which makes nature groan, since the deflowering of a virgin is a real suffering, both for her and for the one who approaches her. Thus, the first cry of love is a double cry of pain torn from nature itself even. It seems as if the Creator, fearing that he had made the sexual organs of women too easily accessible, wished to place an obstacle in front of them, not one that would prohibit their use, but one that would at least make us understand that it was not his intention to place these organs in such a way as to make us conclude from their presence that the conjugal act was necessary.