An embarrassing question

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Anniegirl

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Is masturbation a mortal sin? If so, why? I’m confused because I know one of the criteria for a sin to be mortal is that it involves grave matter. While I think it is one of the worse venial sins, I really don’t see how it involves grave matter. Can someone explain?
 
Hi Annie,

This is what the CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH says about it.
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."138 “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."139
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**2396 **Among the sins gravely contrary to chastity are masturbation, fornication, pornography, and homosexual practices.
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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.
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Regarding your question as to whether it is considered a venial or a mortal sin… According to the last paragraph (underlined), your confessor would be the best advisor to help each person determine the moral culpability in each each case.

I pray this helps,

To Jesus through Mary 👍

Edward Henry
 
Any act with the goal of sexual gratification is gravely immoral unless it is both:
  • Between a married man and woman, AND
  • open to life.
Masturbation is neither of these.
 
Anniegirl, selfishness and lack of love is the biggest reason why.

The subject of masturbation has been discussed quite a lot on CAF, so if you do a search on it, you will find a wealth of information. If I were you, I’d do that. You can spend the entire weekend reading A LOT.😃
 
Anniegirl
Yes, but why?
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Once again, I will let the Catechism give you the answers.
2337 Chastity means the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being. Sexuality, in which man’s belonging to the bodily and biological world is expressed, becomes personal and truly human when it is integrated into the relationship of one person to another, in the complete and lifelong mutual gift of a man and a woman.
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According to the Theology of The Body, our misuse of our sexual faculties in any other way than that expressed by the Catechism is wrong not because our sexual gift is dirty, but because it is holy.

I pray this helps,

To Jesus through Mary 👍

Edward Henry
 
That does help, thank you, but I still don’t see why it is mortal rather than a venial sin.
 
I think it’s a mortal sin if you consciously choose to do it. I’ve heard of people becoming addicted to masturbation though, and some people apparently have to do it to avoid sharp pains in the groin. I don’t know if that changes anything.
 
May I suggest Vita Consecrata and the Theology of the Body (mentioned above). Both of these are so spiritually moving and inspiring that they remind Catholics of what virtue means and how satisfying virtuous living can be. Beautifully pastoral with blessed enlightenment throughout.

Chastity, as it pertains to one’s state of life, is such a beautiful virtue. Masturbation is not only sinful but also a violation of the selfless virtue of chastity.

catholic.com/seminars/evert.asp

ewtn.com/series/2007/pure_life.htm
 
It’s a mortal sin because that’s what Holy Mother Church teaches. Leave the thinking to the spiritual fathers, doctors and intellectuals. Your opinion is hardly better than two thousand years of sacred tradition. Stop rationalizing your sin and obey the truth as it has been revealed.
 
Mark_Robert said:
It’s a mortal sin because that’s what Holy Mother Church teaches. Leave the thinking to the spiritual fathers, doctors and intellectuals. Your opinion is hardly better than two thousand years of sacred tradition. Stop rationalizing your sin and obey the truth as it has been revealed.
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So much for “love the sinner, hate the sin.”
 
Anniegirl said:
That does help, thank you, but I still don’t see why it is mortal rather than a venial sin.
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I have done some thinking about this - on why it is mortal. This was my line of thinking.

I can understand that homosexuality is a mortal sin. Well, I being a man, if I give pleasure to myself, is not much different from a homosexual act. It would a man (myself) giving pleasure to a man (myself). I am not saying that anyone who maturbates has homosexual tendencies. I just can see how God would be offended with masturbation just as much as homosexuality. Actually, at least there can be love involved in a homosexual act. Masturbation is without love, it is purely narsistic.
 
I personally think that it’s more to do with one’s mindset when masturbating than the physical action itself. Grave matter is defined as breaking one of the 10 commandments, and masturbation seems like the ultimate manifestation of coveting your neighbor’s wife, (except maybe rape.)

I am very skeptical of people who claim they masturbate without any lust.
 
Mark_Robert said:
It’s a mortal sin because that’s what Holy Mother Church teaches.
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I wholeheartedly disagree. Gravity doesn’t exist because Newton teaches it. Rather, Newton teaches gravity because gravity exists.

If something was wrong simply because the church says so, then wouldn’t it be great if the church said that nothing was wrong?
Leave the thinking to the spiritual fathers, doctors and intellectuals. Your opinion is hardly better than two thousand years of sacred tradition. Stop rationalizing your sin and obey the truth as it has been revealed.
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God forbid that people actually think for themselves.
 
Awake said:
I wholeheartedly disagree. Gravity doesn’t exist because Newton teaches it. Rather, Newton teaches gravity because gravity exists.
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I think Mark was saying that the Church recognized that it is wrong because God revealed this to her. Just as Newton merely recogized gravity, But it is God who made it happen.
If something was wrong simply because the church says so, then wouldn’t it be great if the church said that nothing was wrong?
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The Church recognizes truth as revealed by God. The Church does not make up the truth.
God forbid that people actually think for themselves.
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The greatest thinking in the history of the world has been done by Catholics. Look at Augustine or Aquinas. Or in modern times, there is GK Chesterton, Hillare Belloc, Dietrich Von Hildrebrand, and John Paul II. These men really knew how to think for themselves. And one of the first things they realized is that without absolute truth being an anchor to our thoughts, all our thinking is just mindless emptiness. And with their own brilliant thinking, they found that this absolute truth resides in the Catholic Church.

To paraphrase Chesteron, to be a Catholic is to no longer be a slave to your own time. Awake, it is you who are unable to think on your own. You may think you do, but your own environment dictates to you what is in vogue and what is not. If you had lived in the South before the Civil War, your “thinking for yourself” would have no doubt have been pro-slavery. If you had lived in Nazi Germany, you would have thought it was a good idea to round up Jews into concentration camps. If you lived in the Soviet Union, you would have thought that giving all you own to the state was a great idea. But the Catholic Church transended these fads, even when went against popular opinion at that time. The Catholic Church was against slavery when everyone was for it. The Catholic Church hid 800,000 Jews in its monasteries when all the other countries in the world refused to accept Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe. Dietrich Von Hilbrand gave up his job as a teacher and became a homeless beggar instead of giving into the pressure of joining the Nazi party. John Paul II spoke out against communism even when he was in Poland. Throughout history, Catholics and the Catholic Church were able to think and stand for the truth even when the rest of world was stuck in the mud.

Each time period within our history dictates to the people what they should think and what they should not think. The Catholic Church transcends any time period. The devout Catholic stands up against the current fads and stands for the timeless truths even if they are unpopular in his own time. It is Catholics who are really the ones who are free to think.
 
packermann said:
The greatest thinking in the history of the world has been done by Catholics. Look at Augustine or Aquinas. Or in modern times, there is GK Chesterton, Hillare Belloc, Dietrich Von Hildrebrand, and John Paul II. These men really knew how to think for themselves. And one of the first things they realized is that without absolute truth being an anchor to our thoughts, all our thinking is just mindless emptiness. And with their own brilliant thinking, they found that this absolute truth resides in the Catholic Church.
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What about all the brilliant non-Catholic thinkers? What about Einstein, Socrates, Adam Smith, Bohr, Locke, Kant, Fleming, Darwin, CS Lewis, and Feynman just to name a few?
To paraphrase Chesteron, to be a Catholic is to no longer be a slave to your own time. Awake, it is you who are unable to think on your own. You may think you do, but your own environment dictates to you what is in vogue and what is not. If you had lived in the South before the Civil War, your “thinking for yourself” would have no doubt have been pro-slavery. If you had lived in Nazi Germany, you would have thought it was a good idea to round up Jews into concentration camps. If you lived in the Soviet Union, you would have thought that giving all you own to the state was a great idea. But the Catholic Church transended these fads, even when went against popular opinion at that time. The Catholic Church was against slavery when everyone was for it. The Catholic Church hid 800,000 Jews in its monasteries when all the other countries in the world refused to accept Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe. Dietrich Von Hilbrand gave up his job as a teacher and became a homeless beggar instead of giving into the pressure of joining the Nazi party. John Paul II spoke out against communism even when he was in Poland. Throughout history, Catholics and the Catholic Church were able to think and stand for the truth even when the rest of world was stuck in the mud.
Click to expand...
Each time period within our history dictates to the people what they should think and what they should not think. The Catholic Church transcends any time period. The devout Catholic stands up against the current fads and stands for the timeless truths even if they are unpopular in his own time. It is Catholics who are really the ones who are free to think.
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I don’t want to hijack this thread, but I will say that being Catholic doesn’t mean that you cease to think for yourself. It’s blind obedience to religion that leads to things like the Crusades. Even the Catechism states that “(Man) must not be forced to act contrary to his conscience. Nor must he be prevented from acting according to his conscience, especially in religious matters.”

Catholic philosophy and theology is constantly being refined. (Not changed, but refined). If everyone had the view that one shouldn’t question or think about Catholic teaching at all, than our understanding of God would be stagnant.

Anniegirl is doing the right thing: she has a different view than the church does, so she is questioning and investigating the Church’s teaching so that she can hopefully refine her view and understanding of the issue.
 
Well to me, if the magestarium of the Church was made up of 20 year olds, we’d see a different position, when it comes to masturbation.

However, being its made up of men, well beyond their raging hormonal puberty years, the position stands as is. However, even then they’ve added the little bit about a confessor must evaluate the maturity and intellectual development of the person, to determine if its a mortal sine or not.

The church never taught this part, when I was growing up. It was a deadly sin, and could also cause blindness. 😃

Jim
 
JimR-OCDS said:
Well to me, if the magestarium of the Church was made up of 20 year olds, we’d see a different position, when it comes to masturbation.

However, being its made up of men, well beyond their raging hormonal puberty years, the position stands as is. However, even then they’ve added the little bit about a confessor must evaluate the maturity and intellectual development of the person, to determine if its a mortal sine or not.

Jim
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I totally disagree. Please read my previous post. The Catholic Church has historical transended above the fads of certain times to give us timeless truths. When the whole world was into slavery in the 1800’s, Church condemned slavery as sin. When all the Europeans were excited about entering Word War I, the Church was against it. When eugenics (forcing certain people to be sterilized in order to build a master race) was popular before Word War II, the Church condemned it. The Church go against the trend of the world, and history would then show that the Church was right and the world was wrong.
 
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