The Ninth Commandment: You shall not covet your neighbor's wife.
What good is shame?
Shame safeguards a person's intimate space: his mystery, his most personal and inmost being, his dignity, but especially his capacity for love and sexual self-giving. It relates also to that which only love may see.
Many young Christians live in an environment where it is taken for granted that everything should be on display and people are systematically trained to ignore feelings of shame. But shamelessness is inhuman. Animals experience no shame. In a human being, in contrast, it is an essential feature. It does not hide something inferior but rather protects something valuable, namely, the dignity of the person in his capacity to love. The feeling of shame is found in all cultures, although it assumes different forms. It has nothing to do with prudery or a repressive upbringing. A person is also ashamed of his sins and other things that would demean him if they were made generally known. Someone who offends another person's natural feeling of shame by words, glances, gestures, or actions robs him of his dignity. (YOUCAT question 464)
Dig Deeper: CCC section (2521-2525) and other references here.
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