How do people do it

[vash88]

Pity the poor souls who torture themselves with guilt thinking that God hates them because they gave into a weakness experienced by the bulk of the world.

One could be a raging alcoholic their entire lives and no one would consider that a sin but God forbid that a young man should touch himself.

I don’t mean to discourage or scare the original poster, but using what the rest of the world does as an excuse for any sin goes against the teachings. We’re not to conform to the ways of the world.

Having said that, to the original poster, you shouldn’t beat yourself up too much as that doesn’t help in any situation. There’s lots of good advice in this thread.

 

[Tim_D]

I don’t mean to discourage or scare the original poster, but using what the rest of the world does as an excuse for any sin goes against the teachings. We’re not to conform to the ways of the world.

Have you ever read what the catechism says about the subject? There is a reason why so many people are taken with this act and it has nothing to do with conforming to the ways of the world. It is physiological and, to a lesser degree, psychological. I can promise you that no one masturbates thinking “everyone else does it, so it must be ok.”

 

[John_Martin_1]

Here is precisely what the Catechism has to say about masturbation:

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

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.