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Despite the naysayers, authoritative Catholic teaching is not capricious.  The first assault is usually volleyed against the Church’s negative view of masturbation or onanism.  Often citing modern psychology, the critics will contend that it is a natural juvenile stage of human sexual development which is pretty much universally first experienced by all teens.  The critics condemn the Church’s prohibition as wrongfully inflicting guilt upon young people and a negative self-interpretation precisely at a time that teens are grappling with maturation and their sexual identity.  There may be some truth to this charge if such a teaching makes no room for human weakness, ignorance and compassion.  The concern of the faith is that this behavior is misdirected and highly addictive.  We should not encourage or deem as neutral a form of behavior which easily tends toward self-absorption.  It may be likely that this is a sin with which most will struggle; but this fact in itself does not legitimize such activity.  While sexual sins, even masturbation, may be a matter of mortal sin; it may be that there are so many intervening subjective elements that it most often tends to be venial, especially among young people.  What may drive it fully into serious sin is that which is envisioned in the imagination and/or assisted by the evil of pornography.  Virtually adultery or adultery in the heart can poison the soul.  Masturbation may be, as men and women get older, a preoccupation with that which they cannot or do not have.  A crucial element of satisfaction is missing from their lives.  Catholicism is not a fascination with fantasy but with that which is most real.  The sexual powers of men and women are directed to the marital act and to the family.  Human bodies were not fashioned as playthings or as toys for recreation.

One critic of Catholic teaching lamented that masturbation is not even allowed so as to obtain a semen specimen for medical examination.  However, even the smallest deviation is an infidelity to one’s spouse.  Regarding such cases, the married man usually has intercourse with his wife while wearing a perforated condom.  The act is still open to the generation of human life but semen will be collected for medical examination.  (The single man will have to embrace something of the Cross, either that or a sin that would be readily forgiven in the confessional.  Single Catholic men sometimes have semen extracted either by prostatic manipulation or by a syringe with needle.)

The linkage of masturbation to the story of Onan is deeper than merely the physical wasting of the seed.  It signifies a denial of God’s will and the overall purpose of human generative faculties.  This is where Scriptural teaching intersects our views on the natural law.  While almost everyone today can admit to an overriding disgust at the scandalous stories of youth being abused by clergy and others; far fewer are willing to acknowledge that people can “pollute” their own persons or “abuse” themselves.

After a few words on Christian chastity, the universal catechism addresses the issue of masturbation.

[CCC 2352] By masturbation is to be understood the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure. “Both the Magisterium of the Church, in the course of a constant tradition, and the moral sense of the faithful have been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action” (CDF, Persona humana 9).  “The deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose.” For here sexual pleasure is sought outside of “the sexual relationship which is demanded by the moral order and in which the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love is achieved” (CDF, Persona humana 9).

Lest anyone should think that Catholic teaching is cold and heartless, the same article in the universal catechism goes on to state:

To form an equitable judgment about the subjects’ moral responsibility and to guide pastoral action, one must take into account the affective immaturity, force of acquired habit, conditions of anxiety or other psychological or social factors that lessen, if not even reduce to a minimum, moral culpability.

Filed under: Catholic, Modesty, Morality, Sexuality, Sin |